Fred Mukasa Mbidde, a member of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) on Sunday underscored the ills of Genocide ideology and the role of politicians to curb it. His message was delivered yesterday at the 25th Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. Rwandans, friends of Rwanda, diplomats and others were there to commemorate the victims of the 1994 Genocide. More than one million innocent Tutsi were savagely and systematically exterminated in a Genocidal killing that lasted for three months. In all atrocities that happened in the world, Mbidde said, history has it that genocides orchestrated by the political leadership in Government has always been successful. “The Jews Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Cambodian genocide and the (1994) Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda were all given political impetus, he said. Whereas all these massacres openly took place in a broad daylight, the international community continued to play a spectator’s role and as such, Rwandans were abandoned in the hands of killers and massacred. The very few Tutsis who survived are till now deeply traumatized, left in agony with both physical and psychological wounds. The lawmaker noted how many international bodies including the AU and UN have in the past commissioned studies to establish facts of what exactly transpired in Rwanda in 1994, though not called for, because it was crystal clear that what happened in Rwanda was actually genocide. He stressed that, indeed all these commissions’ reports were in affirmative. What remains unclear, he stressed, is the peculiar motive of some individuals to side with perpetrators of the genocide. No sooner had different findings on the 1994 genocide been published confirming its occurrence than the opportunists and arch-enemies of Rwanda and mankind took it blasphemous and rushed to clamour that what happened in 1994 was not a genocide, he said. Today, as Rwanda is hustling with the recovery process, national building and uniting Rwandans, there are still many genocide related upshots and negative propagandists many of which are really unwarranted. Like in the past, he added, you could listen to debates around the globe especially in international fora, discussing not about the lives lost but on the terminologies and semantics of the subject matter, as of whether it was a genocide against the Tutsi or that of Rwanda. Mbidde, a Ugandan national, used the opportunity to call upon East African Partner States to rise up to this same cause and support our own in the restoration of peace and stability in Rwanda. I recently read a report implicating the African continent and the EAC in particular that majority of the genocide fugitives are hiding within this region, almost half the number of the perpetrators on the wanted list, we are actually living and hobnobbing with them in this region, but we haven’t done much to prosecute them as a way of fighting this heinous crime against humanity. He recalled that immediately after the end of the 1994 Genocide, Rwanda was desolate and the international community thought that the country would permanently be in that state of wanting, or possibly be a UN protectorate in perpetuity. Nevertheless, Mbidde said, the last 25 years proved otherwise as Rwandans chose to take a completely different path of resilience and courage. Political influence Mbidde said: This shows the invincible influence of political leadership in steering the affairs of a country, once a bad leadership is in power, such atrocities happen but with good leadership like Rwanda has today, we are seeing many economic miracles of recovery, unity and reconciliation happening within a short time. The same way it was easy for the genocide government to fuel hatred and genocide, the post genocide government has laboured to create a conducive and peaceful environment for better life of all Rwandan citizens. Unfortunately, he pointed out, in the recent past and even today, genocide perpetrators and their henchmen have been offered platforms across the world to deny the occurrence of the 1994 Genocide, to distort facts and attempt to rewrite Rwanda’s history in full impunity. Such actions, he said, need to stop as they adversely haunt those touched by this heinous crime, especially survivors’ families and derail the healing process. He appealed to the UN member countries to execute their international law obligations by prosecuting genocide suspects or hand them over to Rwanda for prosecution
