Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe has lambasted foreign based Genocide deniers who are seemingly amplifying their megaphones as the country prepares for #Kwibuka32 in April.
In a lengthy submition via his handle on platform X, Nduhungirehe condemned the denialist propaganda.
“Nearly 32 years after a genocide established by an international jurisdiction and recognised by the United Nations, such cynical and denialist propaganda can still be organised, in the “Land of Human Rights”, by one of the most controversial political figures residing on French territory,” Rwanda’s top Diplomat said.
Nduhungirehe said that as Rwanda prepares for the 32nd commemoration of Genocide against Tutsi, “the enterprise of denial and minimisation of the Genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi continues unabated from Paris.”
The Minister refered to a recent interview featuring Rwanda’s former First Lady, Agathe Kanziga, conducted by Kabera, saying it “represents the pinnacle of lies and cynicism.As the hashtag #Amateka suggests.”
“This interview aimed to recount recent Rwandan history through the eyes of the widow of former President Juvénal Habyarimana, herself accused of having participated in the genocide,” he observed.
Nduhungirehe Criticizes Kanziga Interview
Not a single word about the pogroms against the Tutsi (1959–1964) or about the 1963 Gikongoro genocide, even though Agathe Kanziga’s fiancé and later husband, Lieutenant/Captain Habyarimana, was already in command;
Not a single word about the persecution of Tutsi in schools in February 1973, in which her husband took part as Minister of the National Guard;
Blatant lie about the massacre of politicians from the First Republic, which is attributed solely to Théoneste Lizinde, supposedly causing “distress” to President Habyarimana. Yet it is well established that Habyarimana himself was the one giving the orders, even exiling the families of those assassinated politicians to their prefectures of origin, with a formal ban on setting foot in Kigali;
Blatant lie about the treatment of former President Grégoire Kayibanda and his wife, claiming that President Habyarimana “took care of them”, when in reality he starved them to death;
Blatant lie about the ethnic and regional discrimination organised by the Habyarimana regime, reducing it to a mere bad impression caused by the Belgian colonial administration’s recruitment of National Guard officers mainly from the prefectures of Gisenyi and Ruhengeri. Yet ethnic and regional discrimination under the Second Republic, especially in schools and employment, is well documented;
Not a single word about the political assassinations of the 1980s, notably those of MP Félicula Nyiramutarambirwa, journalist Silvio Sindambiwe and former minister François Muganza, victims of their continuous denunciation of corruption and of the ethnic and regional discrimination organised by the Habyarimana regime;
Not a single word about the “Akazu” or the “Zero Network”, which she herself had created together with her brothers and friends, to control the country’s institutions, seize state resources and persecute opponents and Tutsi;
Not a single word about the massacres of Tutsi in the 1990s in Murambi, Bugesera, Mukingo, Kibilira, Kibuye and elsewhere in the country, organised by the presidential party MRND;
Not a single word about the massacre of opposition politicians on 7 April 1994, some together with their families, carried out by members of the Presidential Guard, several of whom came directly from the presidential residence in Kanombe;
Not a single word about the Genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi, simply described as “war”; not a single word of empathy from Agathe Kanziga for more than one million of her fellow citizens, men, women and children, slaughtered by the Interahamwe militia created by her husband, supposedly to “avenge” him.
