Kayibanda is holding a speech in front of the whole diplomatic corps, including representatives from the Holly See. He has just massacred all the Tutsi from Gikongoro who made up between 40 and 50% of the population there, in retaliation to an attack of Inyenzi rebels coming from Burundi.
None of the diplomats has made any protests, to what the Russell-Sartre Tribuna[1] denounces at the time in 1964 as the Genocide against Tutsi.
He has been speaking in Kinyarwanda for a while, but now he wants to switch to French so that his masters can be proud of him. He has one last thing to say in Kinyarwanda though: ‘Ubu rero ndagirango mbwire igice cy’abanyarwanda bitwa abatutsi: Ako gasuzuguro kanyu, ubu kagomba kurangira!’
Paul Dijonx in his last days
We are on the 11th April 1964. He clears his throat, and goes: ‘Au dessus des soucis que la folie de certains d’entre vous me cause […] A supposer par l’impossible que vous veniez à prendre Kigali d’assaut […] Ce serait la fin totale et précipitée de la race Tutsi’. Tutsis in attendance hide their faces, everyone else, cheers…
Paul Dijon, Director of African Affaires in the Francois Miterant government, is meeting in France, a delegation of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that came from Mulindi to discuss a cease-fire with then Habyarimana Government. Major General Paul Kagame, then head of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, is part of the delegation.
The year is 1992, Dijout turns to him and warns: ‘if you continue advancing your troupes, you will not find any single one of your people left in Rwanda’. Everyone in the room is shocked – it is all documented in Francois Soudan’s book: ‘Iron Man’. For those who don’t understand Kinyarwanda or French, Dijous’ remarks are identical to Kayibanda’s speech said 1964; both men were in sync’ on their genocide plans.
Fast forward 2016 and I am talking to a diplomat at a happy hour in Kigali; the first thing he/she tells me is: ‘did you hear? The report is out! The UN group of experts on the DRC said that Rwanda is recruiting from the camp.’
What I had heard also, is that the same UN group has published another report, extensively documenting the crimes against humanity that the Burundi government is perpetrating against its own people: thousands of dead, disappeared, detained incommunicado, and displaced innocent civilians, women and children.
But my diplomat friend hasn’t heard of that report, of course… or he/she would rather talk to me about the sole country, which is allegedly trying to do something about that.
My response: Rwanda should not be recruiting refugees from the camps, it should be sending its special forces; elite commandos to stop that regime from perpetrating crimes against humanity. That is what I want to talk about: Jean Dijoux!
When the crisis in Burundi started, the Rwandan president was the first to criticize what was happening. Understandably so; he is the only man alive to have stopped a Genocide – all the while the international community watched. This time the same international community has conspired to bully him into inaction. They fear, he may stop a second genocide – while they still seat by.
When I visited Germany recently, our ambassador was telling me how the Burundi government had organized, in partnership with the German ministry of foreign affaires a conference on peace in the Great Lakes Region, where the theme was: ‘how Rwanda failed to pacify its people’; they had invited him…
A few weeks later, the International Conference ‘on peace’ in the Great Lakes Region held a conference, called by Burundi again, to assess Rwanda’s meddling into the Burundi affaires, and issued a communiqué asking Rwanda to refrain from any such actions. The communiqué was followed by an article, in the Washington Post, titled: ‘Burundi’s Dangerous Neighbor’.
Are you kidding me? The Burundian government has been massacring its own people every day that passes, but you want the whole international opinion to remain pointed on Rwanda. What do you make of the Responsibility to Protect?
This is an all too familiar pattern, chronically applied by genocidaires of our region under the protection of international community, namely: ‘If you try to interfere with our systematic extermination of the people now held hostage in the country, we’ll speed up the process.’
It is like they take some sick pleasure in the death of the Tutsi people. Now they figured if they create a body: The UN Group of experts that keeps accusing Rwanda, as they did from the first day of the Burundi crisis, then Rwanda will be incapacitated from doing anything to stop the genocide, just like they sent a UN contingent to protect the FDLR in the DRC, while the same Group of Experts continues to wrongly accuse Rwanda of meddling with Congo business.
Let’s be clear, did Rwanda create, train and arm the Imbonerakure militia? Did Rwanda burn all the private media stations, did Rwanda ask the Vice-President of the Supreme Court to flee, half the members of the ruling CNDD-FDD to mutineer, the Generals of the Army to mount a coup? Did Rwanda ask the Vice-president of the senate to tell his people to ‘go to work’ – another familiar genocide terminology? What are they talking about here?
Did Kagame write that Kayibanda speech in 1964, or Paul Dijon’s remarks in 1992? Did he create the Interahamwe, buy them machetes? Did he start the RTLM? Come on! I am tempted to use Mugabe’s terminology here: ‘Mister Ban Ki Moon: Tell them to shut their mouth!’
Whether what is taking place in Burundi qualifies as crimes against humanity is no longer contested. Indeed all the familiar stages, precursors to a genocide as we know them, namely: Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Persecution, Extermination and Denial have progressively fallen into place in Burundi.
Those are the legal terminologies; mere Genocide scholars’ definitions. As Rwandans though, we are aware of the main three elements that make genocides possible: 1. The inaction of the international community; 2. The Existence of the Kayibanda ideology and 3. the ‘Paul Dijoux’ element.
Paul Dijoux is a French man, but today he represents anyone who is bullying Rwanda and President Kagame to sit idle as crimes against humanity, occur just next door.
Paul Donjon is the diplomat who thought to make a point when he/she said to me the other day that the 100 thousand dollars of military support that his/her country gives to Rwanda would be cut, if we were to do anything to save Burundians. Paul Donjou is the Diplomat who would rather get excited about a report, which says that Rwanda is trying to do something to stop a genocide, instead of deploring the daily killings of the Burundian innocent people and contribute to organizing a response.
If Paul Donjux is the ideological father of most western diplomats in Rwanda and in the Great Lakes Region, Kayibanda is the spiritual leader to Habyarimana and Nkurunziza.
Today still, in 2016, we are dealing with Dijous and Kayibandas. Which is why innocent people continue to die. Thank God we have a Kagame, the right response to both; and the only hope for innocent people.
So Mister President, you know the drill: 1. Don’t listen to what Paul Donjons always say; 2. Stop Kayibandas from doing what they always do; and 3. Do what you always do: Stop a Genocide.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Tribunal