An editorial we ran as the 19th commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi was apprehensive that we would soon see a surge in cases of genocide ideology. The editorial was calling on the authorities to be on the alert. The fears were informed by experience: unrepentant Genocide revisionists always take advantage of this mourning period, when survivors of the 1994 Genocide are most vulnerable, to twist the knife in their wounds by making provocative or pejorative remarks. Just this week, several people were arrested for the crime, an indication that our society still has a long way to go in eradicating the scourge. The scariest thing is that some of the suspects were less than ten years old at the height of the Genocide, an indication that the hatred virus was instilled into them at a vulnerable age. Propagators of the ideology find solace and allies in so-called defenders of human rights who downplay the seriousness of the subject. They often come rushing to their defence that the genocide ideology is a weapon used by the government to fight dissent, but keep mum when the same law is applied to fight deniers of the Holocaust. Rwandans killed Rwandans, in Rwanda; therefore, they are best suited to solve their own problems, and the best weapon is deterrence. They have the evidence of the effects of hate speech in the form of mass graves that dot the countryside. They do not need busybodies pontificating without fully comprehending the dangers and the nightmares survivors live through every day.
