By: Tom Ndahiro
Genocide ideology as a thread linking families weaves a complex web. In 1973, Juvenal Habyarimana appointed one Dominique Mbonyumutwa in an honorary position as Chancellor of National Orders of service. Mbonyumutwa held this position for thirteen years, up until his death in August of 1986. In that period, he used it to award the highest honours to members of the extremist Parmehutu party.
Fast forward twenty-four years and one Perpetue Muramutse establishes two awards: the Prix Jeunesse Engagee, or prize for the committed youth and the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Prize for Democracy and Peace.
Muramutse who is based in Canada, is the daughter of Dominique Mbonyumutwa. All the recipients of her prizes, including the first ever recipient of the Victoire Ingabire prize, Victoire Ingabire herself, are confirmed genocide deniers, and active supporters of genocidaires.
At the time of his appointment to administer the honour system, Dominique Mbonyumutwa had also been appointed interim President of Rwanda by the Belgian colonial authorities. He was also a senior member of the Parmehutu party. His tenure as president would last a mere nine months in 1961. His most notable achievement as President was to carry out Parmehutu’s wishes, by initiating the first massacres of Tutsi.
Although it theoretically ceased to exist in 1973, after the coup d’etat that brought then Major General Juvenal Habyarimana to power, in reality, Parmehutu continued to provide the intellectual basis for the ideology that would eventually culminate in the 1994 genocide, as they put it, to once and for all wipe out the Tutsi off the face of the earth.
It is a cause Mbonyumutwa has bequeathed to his descendants. The first recipient of Muramutse’s award for young people, was Ruhumuza Mbonyumutwa, the editor of JamboNews—a genocide denial website.
Ruhumuza’s father is Shingiro Mbonyumutwa, one of the leaders of the genocidal forces. On 21st April 1994, Shingiro was on National Radio in Rwanda, calling for the extermination of Tutsi. In every genocide, genocide perpetrators are depicted as the danger. It is what academic Roger Mucchielli called “accusations in the mirror” impute to your victims what you plan to do against them.
It is a lesson Parmehutu took to heart, and Shingiro applied well. “They are going to exterminate, exterminate, exterminate, exterminate They are going to exterminate you until they are the only ones left in this country, so that the power which their fathers kept for four hundred years, they can keep for a thousand years!” he repeated time and time again on national radio.
Now a fugitive wanted by the Rwandan justice system, Shingiro lives in Belgium. Shingiro Mbonyumutwa is brother to Perpetue Muramutse. The first recipient of her prize for committed youth, was Ruhumuza Mbonyumutwa, son to Shingiro, and her nephew. It is an unbroken chain of genocide ideology from grand-father Dominique to grandson and daughter.
The second recipient of the youth prize was Placide Kayumba. At the time of the award, 2011, he was President of Jambo Asbl. Like his colleagues, promotion of genocide ideology is a family tradition. His father Dominique Ntawukuriryayo was sentenced to twenty five years by the International Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), for crimes of genocide. In 1994, as Sous-prefet of Gisagara Ntawukuriryayo led the murder of 30,000 men, women and children.
Just like her father, Perpetue Muramutse honours the drivers of genocide ideology. The thread however takes a circuitous though logical route via the Refugee camps of what was Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Shingiro’s incitement to genocide was resonated by one of the Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy (RDR)’s ideologues, Charles Nkurunziza in Bukavu, May 1995.
Nkurunziza and his group emphasised that the Hutu “were not the authors of the genocide—it is the Tutsi who wanted to exterminate the Hutu, so that they will never have to share power.”
This RDR was created by the defeated genocidal army, Interahamwe militia, the leading planners of the genocide, in short the entire establishment of mass murderers, devised a strategy by which the ideology they had begun decades earlier would continue apace. The RDR, thought their new war to bring them back to power should be front by individuals who though to the cause, were outside Rwanda during the genocide and propaganda.
Priority was those who were minors then, and were coming of age, as well as those like Patrice Rudatinya Mbonyumutwa who were young adults at the time, and could escape the world’s attention. In addition friendly journalists would be encouraged to enter influential media bodies, and would be used to publicise the cause. This, included denying or defending the crimes committed by their parents.
Ostensibly, Muramutse’s prizes are to advance peace, democracy and other worthy aims. In reality they are an award system created to serve the RDR’s agenda, and is little more than a cover for the transmission of genocide ideology from generation to generation, often in the same family.
This is evident from the individuals chosen to be honoured, members of the jury who determine who gets the “Prize”, and people who present them. They inhabit a genocide denial echo chamber in which they reinforce each other’s prejudices. In the words of a Canadian historian academic Gerry Caplan, who has researched and written about Tutsi Genocide deniers, as people “who gleefully drink each other’s putrid bath water”.
Some of the recipients of Ingabire Prize include, Judi Rever, a Canadian Journalist known for her very close friendship with Rwandan genocidaires and distinguished among haters of the RPF. you also have Anneke Verbraeken, a Dutch investigative journalist, who has shown zeal in defending genocidaire like Jean Baptiste Mugimba and Iyamuremye Jean Claude who were recently deported from Holland to Rwanda to face trial on genocide cases. One of the recipients of the prize, Fred Holt (Norwegian) suggests that Victoire Ingabire “should be proposed as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize”. There is the family affair of Christiaan de Beule, and wife Martine Syoen. They run the SOS-Rwanda/Burundi website, and have been supporters of genocidaires for over twenty years.
One of the members of the jury to determine who gets the illicit prize is Juan Carrero, infamous for his ardent adhesion to the cause of RDR and terrorist organisation, “Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda” (FDLR). In the year 2000, Carrero became a “Nobel Prize Nominee” for Rwandan genocidaires represented by the RDR, senior FDLR operatives and their friends. Carrero, a Spanish from Catalonia, created a website “Inshuti” just to spread their hateful propaganda.
For Muramutse, and her group, the recruitment of foreigners, especially journalists, is crucial. It fulfils the exact wishes of the RDR, to keep the cause alive, while camouflaging it as defence of human rights, promotion of peace and Democracy. In due course they hope there will be no mention of the genocide against Tutsi, the RPF will be the villain of the peace, and the world will demand the restoration of Democracy, bearing in mind that in RDR’s ideology, “democracy” means the restoration of “Hutu-Power”. The group is safely quarantined from any view that might challenge their prejudices, and regard any such views as virtual heresy.