Public forum to determine French writer’s fate

PARIS - A public hearing will soon be held in Paris, France to verify racism and defamatory charges mounted on a French national Pierre Pean. Pean is accused of having promoted racism and divisionism in his book, ‘Noirs Furueres Blancs Manteurs’ (loosely translated to mean ‘black furies, white liars’), published in November 2005, about the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. “A date has not yet been set, but it has been communicated that there will soon be a public hearing that will involve the prosecution, the accused and SOS Racisme. The public will not contribute,” Bernard Maingain, the defense counsel of Ibuka –a Genocide survivors’ umbrella organization told a press conference at Hotel Des Mille on Friday. Ibuka filed a petition against Pean in 2006, through SOS Racisme, an anti-racism rights organization since laws require that that a foreign organisation can only file a lawsuit in French court after five years of operation on a French territory. Maingain said that the decision was reached upon after SOS Racisme; an anti-racism rights organization presented its report to the ‘Cour Correctionnelle de Paris’ criticizing the French writer’s defamatory work. He added that; “we analysed the content of the book and found out that there were serious elements of defamation and racism of the Tutsi community. It is important that the public and the media listen to all this”. Former President of Ibuka –a Genocide survivors’ umbrella organization – Francois Xavier Ngarambe said that the hearing will play a major role in reversing the harmful information spread by the French writer. “He is a journalist who is widely known among many French speaking countries, so we need to come in a strong way to denounce his wrong and negative portrayal of the Rwandan Genocide. There is every need to eradicate this Genocide ideology,” Ngarambe said. He added that many Genocide victims from Europe had already been mobilised to attend the hearing. He promised that several victims in Rwanda would also travel to Paris to attend the hearing. In his book, the Frenchman wrote that what took place in Rwanda was not genocide against Tutsis by extremist Hutus but rather the reverse.Ends