Rwandan researcher to launch book on Genocide

KIGALI - A Rwandan-Canadian researcher, Dr. Jean-Paul Kimonyo, is expected to launch a book on the Rwanda Genocide next week. The book titled “Rwanda, un Genocide Populaire” (“Rwanda; The Popular Genocide”), and written in French was reseased last week. It was published by a French publishing house called Karthala. “I carried out personal enquiries while the genocide was happening and I became concerned at the swiftness with which the entire population of a country was wiped; this motivated me to write the book,” Kimonyo said Tuesday during an interview. He said the main purpose of the book was to give an insight as to why so many people participated in the Genocide yet there was no infrastructural mechanism to concentrate the victims before they were killed as had been the case of Nazi Germany. “Rwanda is a small country; it was possible that when the Tutsi were targeted for murder, they could have escaped to neighbouring states. The entire population was mobilized to prevent victims from escaping,” he said. Kimonyo who currently manages a private consultancy firm, was a member of the seven-man commission of inquiry that was charged with adducing evidence on the role France might have played in the Genocide which left over one million Rwandans dead. Speaking about the recent arrest warrants against Rwandan military officers, he said that his book does not directly respond to the warrants but said that it answers the motivation behind the warrants. “The Genocide was caused by extreme factors that combined together at a certain time and place but the ideology began as far back as 1959,” he said. A PhD holder in political science from the University of Québéc in Canada, Kimonyo has written other books including a collection called Revue Critique des interpretations du conflit Rwandais, 2000. Ends

National

Rwandan researcher to launch book on Genocide