Let us now turn to another sentence of the 16 which six NGOs, acting as plaintiffs, have chosen in Paris to attack Charles Onana and his editor Damien Serieyx as genocide deniers.
Sentence 5 : "In his book on the October 1990 war, the former FAR officer Pascal Simbikangwa, convicted in France not on the basis of truth, but to set an example, thus allowing official history to be celebrated, reveals his feelings (on the October invasion): "The war that we are going to experience in the pages that come is not a war, it is nonsense, it is nonsense, I say, because it lacks meaning, it has no beginning and has no end because it was made in people's heads and will never end until we have all become monsters. Which requires a long-term educational effort." (page 437, Rwanda, la vérité sur l'opération Turquoise, 2019 )
The part of the sentence under review “not on the basis of truth, but to set an example” refers to a 2019 book written by Pascal Simbikangwa [1]’s French Defense lawyer Fabrice Epstein, Un génocide pour l'exemple, which questions due process around this first trial of a Rwandan accused of genocide held before a French court.
In a previous article we underlined that the French 2017 law which condemns genocide denial, according to University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne researcher Thomas Hochmann, does not cover opinions on specific trials, in his words during the Paris Onana trial: “It does not prohibit contesting the precise content of a court decision.”The first part of Onana’s sentence under review quotes the accused Simbikangwa’s lawyer and his opinion on this specific trial.
In his book, Un génocide pour l'exemple, former secretary of the conference of lawyers of the Paris bar and Simbikangwa’s defense attorney Epstein addresses behind-the-scenes proceedings: “Did the accused have the right to access his file? Were all the witnesses credible? Did the magistrates conduct the debates impartially? Did the defense have the same rights as the prosecution? Did the court have the opportunity to reconstruct the facts at the crime scene? “
Epstein already criticized the judicial set up in France stating in 2014 : "We have the impression that it is the 20th anniversary of the Tutsi genocide and that Pascal Simbikangwa must therefore be condemned, because he is the first to be brought before a criminal court and thus he must be condemned as an example."
Epstein underscores in a 2016 Jeune Afrique article the difficulty of holding this trial for the defense which did not have the financial means to carry out any serious research and not at all in Rwanda.
However, the subject of Onana’s sentence under review actually begins a sub-chapter whose subject is the reactions of the Rwandan National Army to the 1 October 1990 invasion on the part of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
The sub-chapter preceding this one looks at archival documents that all underscored the military build-up of the RPF on the ground, despite the embargo imposed on both sides of the conflict as part of the Arusha peace process.
Onana cites Belgian Lieutenant colonel Bem Anthierens, who had spent at the time three years in Rwanda, who speaks of a forgotten 30-month war which actually began in October 1990, a key turning point in understanding recent Rwandan history.
The sources which Onana quotes are mostly diplomatic cables from the time that all address the military buildup on the part of the RPF, ranging from authoritative figures such as high-level United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) personnel Romeo Dallaire, Luc Marshal or Jacques Robert Booh Booh; Belgian staff from the United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda (UNOMUR) which the UN Security Council set up in June 1993 for the monitoring of the Ugandan-Rwandan border; Belgian UNAMIR intelligence officer lieutenant Nees; former RPF officer Abdul Ruzibiza; ICTR prosecutor expert Andre Guichaoua; captain Amadou Deme, UNAMIR military intelligence officer.
Lieutenant Nees in a February 1994 cable wrote: “according to well- informed sources the RPF employed 10 to 20 military personnel in every Rwandan sector, reaching approximately 1,500.”
It is all the more important to underline the military aspect as well as the emotionally destabilizing consequences to this event in Rwanda, as at this Onana trial in Paris the plaintiffs denied this first regime change attempt on the part of the RPF. For example, plaintiffs witness Lawyer Bernard Maingain called the October 1990 invasion a “false coup attempt.” It is precisely this sanitizing of the RPF’s actions on the part of pro-Kagame apologists which Onana contests, as not only does it falsify history, but it also obfuscates an objective appreciation of the patterns of violence on the ground in Rwanda at the time. Thousands were arrested in the days following the invasion, but were subsequently released. If the coup is concealed from the narrative, the crackdown is not appreciated for what it was: to halt and counter an attempted regime change.
The second part of the sentence is a direct quote from Pascal Simbikangwa’s book written on the October 1990 war: La guerre d’Octobre. The book is an interesting document as it was written in December 1991, while the first part of the war had not yet ended, and not only does it go into detail on the military events, but it also outlines the psychological consequences of the October invasion on the Rwandan population in general. Simbikangwa defines his perspective as that of “a Rwandan soldier, a reserve soldier!” Having undergone an accident in the late 80s Simbikangwa was confined to a wheelchair.
Immediately after quoting Simbikangwa’s point of view Onana contrasts it with that of a Tutsi soldier from the RPF, Benjamin Rutabana, and cites from his 2014 book De l'enfer à l'enfer: Du Hutu Power à la dictature de Kagame.
By listing the grievances of those fighting on both sides of the war Onana gives the reader a clearer picture of what drove the war psychologically.
If we read the source cited in the sentence under review La guerre d’Octobre we see that just as Simbikangwa is critical of the anti-Tutsi policies in the aftermath of the 1959 social revolution, he is also critical of the feudal monarchical system, still fresh in the memories for many Rwandans at the time, which was run by a Tutsi minority that ruled over the Hutus. He gives a snapshot of some of these memories which reflect a apartheid-like system under the Tutsi monarchy: Hutus were for example not allowed to walk on the main roads or only when transporting their Tutsi rulers. Mutually acknowledging this cruelty is according to Simbikangwa an efficient way of moving forward and overcoming divisions.
The political dimension of what the ethnocratic feudal monarchy represented and which was overthrown with the 1959 social revolution, cannot be reduced to a strife between Hutus and Tutsis, as it reflected a political set-up where a small mostly Tutsi minority reigned over the majority Hutu population, in an often-brutal way.
The sentence right before the one quoted by Onana reads : “But make no mistake, the majority only lives when it respects the minority”. Simbikangwa is thus calling for a Rwanda which embraces its multiethnicity. The book is full of examples of all three Rwandan ethnic groups, Tutsi, Hutu and Twa, living together in harmony. The anti-Tutsi policies in the aftermaths of the 1959 social revolution are hurtful discrimination policies which he believes were largely overcome under the Habyarimana regime.
It is the “domination of a group” which Simbikangwa contests. 17 years later a wikileaks cable from 2008 Ethnicity in Rwanda,who governs the country? points to a dominant group of Ugandan Tutsis running the government, and with no effective power-sharing mechanisms in place in the country.
Simbikangwa writes : “ A man does not kill, he prevents it from being done.” He sees this war as nonsense, as he sees all wars so, in his words “ The next stage of human evolution should help us prevent unnecessary tragedies.”
Simbikangwa also adds in the annex of his book an interesting document, an open letter Expats testify, wartime anger, signed on 16 October 1990 by 115 expatriates living in Rwanda who deplore the world-wide media coverage of the war. In their words: “The analyses carried out in the West should be more detailed than at present and in any case not discredit the Rwandan government when it refuses to take armed people back to Rwanda.”
Both the expatriates in their letter, as well as Simbikangwa, mention how the refugee problem was being solved and shouldn’t be used as an excuse for acts of aggression.
In the expats words: “Despite the seriousness of recent events, the President of the Rwandan Republic has again invited refugees in his message to the nation of October 15, 1990 to participate in the work of reforming Rwandan political life. A man of peace, he prefers negotiation and discussion to the sound of boots.” (…) Hope comes from the fact that at no time was there a pogrom, an attempt at systematic liquidation of Tutsis, although the attacker was more closely related to this ethnic group.”
This sentence under review covers a period well before 1994 and can thus not be taken as an example of genocide denial.
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