[Nr.10]

If the reality of the events had conformed to the official version we were given fourteen years ago, it would be reasonable to think that, despite the unusual dimensions of the events that shook the Great Lakes region after 1990, the situation would, after all this time, have stabilized. It is obvious that this is far from being the case. So, rather than continuing in this iniquitous uncertainty, would it not be more responsible to try and answer all these many and persistent questions? That someone wants to know what really happened is no reason automatically to label him or her a revisionist or negationist. It is not about trying to exonerate those who took part in the genocide of 1994, at whatever level. It is, however, appropriate to admit that we find ourselves in a situation that is, to say the least, paradoxical.

On the one hand, for more than ten years the ICTR has been in session and despite the millions of dollars spent on trying to demonstrate that there was planning for the genocide, one can not help but notice (whether one agrees or not) that the Tribunal in Arusha has not been able to produce any evidence of such planning. It is not a matter here of mere point of view or of some gratuitous affirmation, but of an undeniable fact.

On the other hand, a passel of convergent testimony from every corner of the earth casts serious doubt on the actual role of those who pretend to have stopped the genocide.

So, isn’t it time to take a closer look at these things? Just imagine the height of a pile of 6 to 8 million corpses. Isn’t it time finally to deliver justice for these millions of victims of the thirst for power in some and the reprehensible indifference in many others? Isn’t it time that those who plunged the African Great Lakes and their populations into chaos (and also those who keep them in it) finally answered for their acts directly to their victims, but also to History? How much longer will we tolerate those who assume the right to teach the whole world, while everything demonstrates (until proven otherwise) that they are among the most responsible for this holocaust that has degraded all of humanity?

[by Luc MARCHAL is a Colonel in the Belgian Army and a former Commander in the UN Peacekeeping Forces in Rwanda (UNAMIR)]

Luc Marchal
Former Commander
Kigali Sector-UNAMIR
April 2008

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Luc Marchal, gewezen bevelhebber van de VN-Blauwhelmen in Kigali.