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Africa News afrol News
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Africa News afrol News
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afrol.com, 24 August - In a press statement issued yesterday, Rwandan president Paul Kagame said that the Rwanda Government in general welcomes the launching of the report of the International Panel of Eminent Personalities (IPEP) which the people of Rwanda have been anxiously waiting for. However, parts of the report were not frowned on. - There is need to understand the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda because it has often been misunderstood, intentionally or not, in causation and impact. Some wrongly attributed it to age-old hatred between the two main communities in Rwanda, Bahutu and Batutsi, others to civil war and others, especially in the West, defined it in terms of old stereotypes of "Heart of Darkness" to the noble "African savage". - Where the investigation has remained within the mandate and terms of reference given by the OAU, the report has been relevant, informative and shows originality in its investigation, the Rwandan president stated. Kagame however criticized the parts of the report which he regarded "outside the mandate and terms of reference". Here, he mainly focuses on the "theory of a double genocide". It was felt equally unreasonable that Gerard Prunier (working for Human Rights Watch) and Philip Reintjens (Amnesty International) had been quoted throughout the report. - The Government of Rwanda has reservations about the report's over-reliance on the biased and revisionist literature of Gerard Prunier who has recently not only revised his book and his views on the genocide, but also revised the facts without further research to fit his newly acquired revisionist ideology, stance and solidarity with the perpetrators of the genocide, Kagame claims. According to Kagame, Prunier goes to the extent of comparing Rwanda today to the immediate pre-genocide situation, "an idea alarmingly noted though not tacitly supported by the Panel." - The Government of Rwanda has also as the primary concerned party communicated both verbally and in writing, its strong objections to the IPEP's inclusion of Mr. Philip Reintjens as one of editors of the draft report of the Panel. The objection was based on Rwandan allegations that Mr. Reintjens served as an advisor to the government that prepared and perpetrated the genocide. Both Reintjens and Prunier head the growing international condemnation of the human rights situation in Rwanda today. There is a growing documentation of human rights abuses in Rwanda, and refugee numbers are increasing. Also, there is new documentation of that the history of the genocide was not all that black and white. Kagame himself is accused of being one of the men behind the attack on the airplane that killed the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in 1994. The motive is said to have been destabilization, tactics followed by Kagame's party, the RPF, until the genocide was a fact. The report makes mention of both these issues, especially on the human rights violations in contemporary Rwanda reported by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. In its latest report on Rwanda, Human Rights watch accuses the Rwandan government of using the pretext of security to cover human rights abuses against Rwandan citizens, Human Rights Watch said in this report. The report details cases of assassination, murder, arbitrary detention, torture and other abuses perpetrated chiefly by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and by members of a government-backed citizens' militia called the Local Defense Force. However, Kagame and the RPF are right in one aspect, and that is that the genocide was executed by "the other party". And it is difficult for an African government to stand against accusations from world known organisations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International - which usually are doing an incredible job. Maybe it is still too early to leave aside the black and white approach to a genocide that happened that few year ago? Source: Press Office of the President of Rwanda
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