By Silver Bugingo
The New Times

With the passing of time, genocide-related issues have taken a new twist. Now, an association of genocide survivors living in the United Kingdom want the former presidential candidate for the 2003 democratic elections, Faustin Twagiramungu, indicted for allegedly denying that the 1994 Genocide was not a systematic plan to exterminate ethnic Tutsis by the then regime.

The association, Rwandan Genocide Survivors Living in the United Kingdom recently petitioned the Prosecutor of Kigali City to indict Twagiramungu on three counts; denying that the 1994 Genocide did not target the Tutsis; that the genocide was not a systematic plan by the Habyarimana regime as well as establishing an internet website through which he is fomenting ethnic hate propaganda.

The Kigali City resident prosecutor Rafael Ngarambe yesterday confirmed receipt of the petition. “Yes. It is true we have received the detailed petition but we are still scrutinizing the merits of the case. We will forward the case file to the competent court as soon as possible” Ngarambe said on phone Tuesday.

Talking to The New Times on phone the London-based Spokesman for the survivors’ association, Jackson Butare said Article 4 of Law No. 33 bis/ 2003 of November 2003 envisages the punishment of persons who suppress the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The Article states inter alia: ‘Any person who will have publicly shown that by his or her words, writings, images or by any other means that he/she has negated the genocide committed, rudely minimizes it or attempts to justify or approve of its grounds or any person who will have hidden or destroyed its evidence shall be sentenced to an imprisonment of ten to twenty years’.

Butare said that the association has overwhelming evidence of recorded audio-visual CDs and the regular hate speeches featuring on Twagiramungu’s website, www.Twagiramungu.net/audio.htm, allegedly committed in April 2004, while giving a public lecture in Brussels on the 10th Genocide anniversary.

At the time, Twagiramungu was quoted as saying he believes there were massacres against innocent Rwandans generally but that there was no ethnic cleansing aimed at exterminating the Tutsi ethnic group.

Twagiramungu was also allegedly quoted at the same conference as denying that, “We do not know of any systematic master plan by the regime in power to exterminate the Tutsis.”

This assertion according to Butare, means that the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide did not premeditate or harbor criminal intentions ‘yet this is the first element that constitutes the crime of genocide’.

To justify the foregoing arguments Twagiramungu was also quoted as saying that, ‘the massacres triggered by the plane clash of the evening of April 6 1994 in which then President of Rwanda Juveneral Habyarimana died, offsetting the atrocities the following day justified the Genocide’. Twagiramungu was also quoted as saying that ‘there were many people who were worried that the revolution of 1959 would be repressed by the external invaders’.

Asked whether it will be possible for Twagiramungu to voluntarily return to answer to the charges against him in Rwandan courts or extradited from his Belgian self-imposed exile Butare said: “As to whether he can be tried in the Rwandan courts, we do not mind.

Our concern is to see to it that he is tried by Rwandan courts whether he physically appears or in absentia, the court verdict remains in force and applicable wherever he may be” he asserted.

Butare further contended that the Rwandan Forum of Political Parties’ mandate be reviewed so that politicians like Twagiramungu are held accountable by the forum. “We have tabled that proposal to the Forum but we have not got the feedback as yet” Butare revealed.

When this reporter contacted the Executive Secretary of the Forum François Ngarambe, who also doubles as RPF Executive Secretary, he confirmed receipt of the petition and said: “the Forum of Political Parties in Rwanda is governed by a law that was voted by the people and its mandate is to restrict political parties, we cannot therefore, bend it for the sake of dealing with Twagiramungu,” Ngarambe said but hastened to add: “This however, doesn’t exonerate him from being prosecuted in courts of law.”

In a related development, the former Premier and presidential aspirant was quoted in a Rwandan weekly vernacular newspaper, Umuseso, as saying that he would not hesitate to come and face the panel if he is summoned.

Twagiramungu also said that should he be convicted of the charges he would serve the sentence.