Skepticism surrounding Simbikangwa trial justified

Editor, Refer to Felly Kimenyi’s article, “Why I won’t celebrate over France’s first Genocide trial” (The New Times, February 6). The West keeps up a drumbeat about their justice being independent from control of their governments. But why do you think it has taken 20 years since the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi for the first trial of a suspect in that massive crime to take place in France? Why has Paris ignored its own June 8, 2004 condemnation by the European Court of Human Rights for the extraordinary slowness of its delivery of justice in the case of the notorious Abbé Wenceslas Munyeshyaka? Why has France done absolutely nothing to bring to effective trial people like Agathe Kanziga Habyarimana, Dr Sosthène Munyemana- best known as the Butcher of Tumba –, Dr Eugène Rwamucyo, Dr Charles Twagira, Callixte Mbarushimana, and the hundreds of other lesser but equally important Genocide suspects who have found a very welcoming refuge in the land of the self-described “Cradle of Human Rights”? Indeed, only the most senior political leaders in France could have given their go-ahead for their legal system, in the person of Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, to attempt the impossible feat of transforming their genocidal allies into victims and the RPF/RPA, which stopped the genocide, into its perpetrators. And the additional proof of all that: just before the 20th commemoration of the Genocide, French authorities – no doubt at the highest level – decide to confer their topmost honour, the Légion d’Honneur, upon one of the most determined purveyors of anti-Tutsi venom, Pierre Pean. And so, like Mr Kimenyi, I, too, am not yet celebrating this Genocide trial France has decided to conduct, for whatever their reason(s). I have learnt to view anything from Paris, no matter how apparently positive, with a lot of caution. I am rarely disappointed. Mwene Kalinda, Rwanda ******************** I agree. The current French president, François Hollande, comes from the same socialist political party as François Mitterrand who was supporting génocidaire regime in Rwanda in early 1990s. If you look at things today, the former entourage of Mitterrand are the ones in UN in New York who are behind all sorts of nightmares of Rwanda such as UN Group of Experts’ reports accusing falsely and maliciously Rwanda of what is going on in DR Congo. They include Gérard Araud, the current France’s UN Permanent Representative, and Hervé Ladsous, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. They were both Mitterrand’s right-hand men when Rwanda was engulfed in the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994! Meddy Kamasa, India

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Skepticism surrounding Simbikangwa trial justified