By: Tom Ndahiro
Ms Judi Rever’s book, ‘In Praise of Blood’ has been extensively publicised, as expected, of a book published by a major global publishing house. Touted as a product of investigative journalism, it is in fact nothing of the sort. It is rather a reproduction of the concocted narratives and material of the planners and perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi in their perverse attempt to shift blame for their crime onto their victims and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to make them responsible for their own genocide.
From 1959 to today, Hutu-Power ideologues have invariably pushed the view that Tutsi in general, and the RPF in particular which they identify as exclusively Tutsi, are associated with insecurity and war. Both are portrayed as agents of death and all its accoutrements—disease, parasites, anguish, distress and suffering, terror, anxiety, extermination, slavery, subjugation, dictatorship, unpredictability, injustice, manipulation, self-interest, thievery, deceit, inequality, inhumanity, cruelty, indifference, arrogance, heartlessness, contempt for others, etc. This is the same mind-set that Judi Rever and all her fellow apologists for the genocidaires bring to their advocacy efforts.
Good schoolgirl from Canada
Rever’s book has six interrelated storylines, positioning her as among the genocidaires’ most avid disciples: Her posturing as a truth-finder and teller; conviction that Tutsi are evil by nature and that RPF members are comparable to or worse than the Nazis; that genocide of “the Tutsi and Hutu was RPF policy”; that Hutu intellectuals are RPF’s enemies and hence targets; that the Genocide against the Rwandan Tutsi was fully justified and lastly, her association with known supporters of genocide and her use of genocidaires’ narratives and material without attribution.
All through her book, Rever portrays herself as an altruistic, courageous journalist who for a long time was in search of hidden or ignored truths about the Genocide against the Tutsi which she in any case denies happened. In keeping with this pro-genocidaire stance, the term she chooses to use on the very first page of her book is “Rwandan genocide”, or sometimes “ethnic and political violence that engulfed the country” which, for her, “stands as the most tragic and misunderstood event of the 20th century.”
Emphatically, she blames what she sees as this misjudgement writers of books (other than hers) and “mainstream media … who failed to grasp the real story” which, she believes, to be “more complex and frightening.” It is allegedly after her detection of that void that she’d been “on the trail of the complete story,” reminiscent of Jean Kambanda’s deployment of his intelligence people to look for the real and untold story.
Rever also charges the international audience of too easily believing the RPF and its leadership (p.153). But as she felt she was dealing with a terrible monster, in a chapter titled “Becoming a target”, she claims she needed to keep her head down and embark on “the search for the truth” (p.199).
She messianically declares the “real truth”, which is that “the RPF never stopped the genocide because they killed before, during and after the genocide with the support of the West and gullible journalists” (p.220)
A good genocidaire devotee
Rever seems not to realise that her very language originates from the Rwandan genocidaires of the 1960s and of the 1990s. The words ‘genocide’ and ‘extermination’ first appeared in relation to the wanton killings of Rwanda’s Tutsi in early 1963-64 bloodbaths of tens of thousands.
The genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsi did not happen only in 1994, but was recurrent and went unpunished for over 34 years. On 1 February 1964, the Associated Press reported an ongoing genocide in Rwanda with systematic slaughter of Tutsis—with rivers filled with mutilated bodies. Two days later on 3 February, The Times of London carried a headline “Rwanda Policy of Genocide Alleged”, while the Belgian daily Le Soir of the same day warned an indifferent world that 250,000 Tutsis were in danger of extermination if nothing was done to save them.
Four days later, on 7 February, a Belgian government report acknowledged genocide in Rwanda was underway, with the slaughter having started on Christmas Eve of 1963. Belgium was wondering about the attitude its diplomats and citizens in Rwanda should adopt with regard to the “ongoing operation of liquidating Tutsis”. The indifferent bystander attitude of the Kingdom worried the government which admitted the cataclysm was taking on an international dimension in which Belgium risked appearing complicit. “It must be borne in mind that Belgium can be accused of participation in a genocide,” the report stated.
To veil the truth of the crimes, Rwanda’s foreign ministry published a 30 page document in early 1964, titled: Toute la Verité sur le Terrorisme Inyenzi Au Rwanda or “The whole Truth about Inyenzi Terrorism in Rwanda.’ The ministry denied any governmental role of in the pogroms instead blaming the rebels “who were attacking government positions in different parts of the country.” This is exactly is the approach Rever adopts.
Fast forward to 1991 when the government of Rwanda started planning and preparing for the genocide against its Tutsi population. In March 1991, Association des Femmes Parlementaires pour la Défense des Droits de la Mère et de l’Enfant (AFAPADEM), in collaboration with convicted genocidaire Dr. Leon Mugesera published a pamphlet under the title “The Whole Truth on the October 1990 War Imposed upon Rwanda by the Aggressors from Uganda Armed Forces”. That style of discourse would continue with all subsequent genocidaire propaganda. Including genocidaires’ good student, Judi Rever.
The world, at least those who care, know the role played by Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) in fanning the fire of genocidal hatred. On 24 November 1993, Habimana Kantano on RTLM airwaves, tells how they are the truth-tellers and the RPF are liars. “They (the RPF) will hide the truth from you and RTLM will reveal it, even if it were to be in trouble because of that. That is our unique assignment.”
On the same day, another RTLM broadcaster declares “You (the RPF) will tell lies to people, and we (RTLM) will tell them the truth”. On 11 April 1994, four days into the genocide, RTLM’s Kantano announces “the RPF even use lies as a weapon” and four days later, on 15 April 1994—RTLM’s editor-in-chief Gaspar Gahigi states, “We will tell you the truth on our radio”.
The theme of the genocidaires’ veracity versus RPF’s fabrications is further explained by Gaspar Gahigi in his broadcast on RTLM, on 15 May 1994: “The war we are waging since its early days in 1990, was said to concern people who wanted to institute “democracy”. …We have said time and again that it was a lie. …These days, they trumpet, they say the Tutsi are being exterminated, they are being decimated by Hutu, and other things. I would like to tell you, dear listeners of RTLM, that the war we are waging is actually between these two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi.”
Post-July 1994 genocide denial was concretised by the defeated Rwanda Armed Forces (RAF) High Command in their retreat-meeting held in Goma, DR Congo—September 2-8, 1994. Their final report was sent on the day, after the meeting, by Major General Augustin Bizimungu to genocidaires Theodore Sindikubwabo and Jean Kambanda, as “President of the Republic of Rwanda and Prime Minister” of their government in exile.
Genocide denial as “truth” is one of the key stratagems in the report. RAF military officials were tasked by their military high command to appeal to Rwandan intellectuals “to tell the truth about the Rwandan problem”, recommending that these intellectuals “must apply for employment at the international level and interface with foreigners.” Ever since, the genocidaire agents have managed to convince a fringe group of foreign gullible disciples whose task is to spread their Rwandan genocidaire beneficiaries’ venomous ideology and gospel of genocide denial.
One of the first responses to the RAF’s proposed charm strategy came from Agnes Ntamabyariro, the Minister of Justice of the genocidal “Rwanda Interim Government” (RIG). Ntamabyariro and her fellow Cabinet members were all ministers of injustice and death, and nothing like justice in their thinking and practice.
On 21 September 1994, Ntamabyariro wrote to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNHCHR) attaching a 20 page document titled, Le Peuple rwandais accuse, or “The ‘Rwandan People Accuse’. The document, which is another magnifier “whole and real truth”, was meant “to help the international community to comprehend who was responsible for what had happened in Rwanda, in particular the genocide against the Tutsi.”
In this RIG document, the Tutsi are blamed for everything wrong and evil that had happened in Rwanda. The same accusation is found in a book titled “Rwanda: Is Hutu blood red?”published in 1995 by Jean Bosco Barayagwiza. The author of the book is another genocidaire “intellectual” and lawyer, the same Ntamabyariro.
On 3 April 1995, the RAF spearheaded the creation of a genocidaire organisation under the name Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy (RDR). One of its objectives was to “contribute in throwing light on the tragedy of the Rwandese people”, that is “making known the truth concerning what happened to Hutus”. In his book, which may have been another inspiration for Rever, Barayagwiza says the RPF killed as many Hutu as possible to reduce their number for the Tutsi to become majority people.
In May 1995, the Cameroon branch of intellectuals belonging to the RDR published a booklet entitled “La Verite sur le Drame Rwandais” (The Truth about the Rwandan Tragedy). This “truth”, according to the authors, is that there was no genocide but a tragedy whose victims were mainly the Hutu.
RAF and other killers’ template
In December 1995, the RAF published a huge document meant for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) titled, “Contribution of RAF to the search for the Truth on the Rwandan tragedy: The War of October 1990 and the Tragedy of April 1994.” The document denounces the world for its alleged bamboozling by the usual malefactor—the RPF, saying “…the international community was forced to swallow a version of events concocted and served up by RPF following the media embargo that was imposed on those persons that RPF had named “genocidaires”. The absence of a juxtaposition of views did not allow the international community to consider the Rwandan tragedy in a calm and objective manner.”
The RAF appeal is that “The truth on the Rwandan tragedy must be established without melodrama and emotiveness. Those who are responsible for the Hutu genocide must be prosecuted without leniency, or fear of ruffling RPF’s allies or the manifestly biased UN Security Council.” It adds that, “The truth of the matter is the President’s assassination was planned and executed by RPF with the help of its sponsors and accomplices.”
In June 1996, the same group of genocidaires comprising the RDR’s Cameroon branch published another document titled, “United Nations Security Council Misled About the Presumed ‘Tutsi genocide’ in Rwanda”. This band of criminals contend “there was neither “Tutsi genocide” nor any “genocide” at all in Rwanda.”
The intellectuals in Cameroon were none other than genocidaires Col. Theoneste BAGOSORA, his younger brother Pasteur MUSABE, Dr Ferdinand NAHIMANA, Jean Bosco BARAYAGWIZA, Anatole NSENGIYUMVA, Laurent SEMANZA, Telesphore BIZIMUNGU, Andre NTAGERURA, Jean-Baptiste BUTERA, Augustin RUZINDANA, Michel BAKUZAKUNDI and Col. Felicien MUBERUKA. According to the ICTR archives, in July 1994, after the defeat of the Rwandan army (RAF), Col. Bagosora who can be compared to Nazi Himmler, was appointed “chair of the political and external relations committee of the newly reorganised Rwandan Armed Forces High Command.”
The narrative in the above quote is unabashedly criminal communication meant to convey a nasty message in a seemingly benign way. Whatever is said is a lie. There is no democracy in Rwanda because the RPF is supposed to restore the monarchy in Rwanda. And, there was no genocide but rather an inter-tribal war, which is the narrative so beloved by the genocidaires like Leon Mugesera and their supporters such as Judi Rever, Jane Corbin, Barrie Collins alias Barry Crawford, Catholic Priest Serge Desouter, Charles Onana, Pierre Péan, etc.
The established narrative by all genocidaires and their disciples, without exception, is that Rwanda under the RPF leadership is a dictatorship which loathes democracy. It is repeated by their dupes without knowing that it was set by Leon Mugesera in 1991 in his “Whole Truth …” whatever.
Mugesera and AFAPADEM accuse the RPF of using “lies and slander”; denies that Juvenal Habyarimana’s government never cared about the problem of its refugees and that the TUTSI who had remained in the country were ever mistreated. Mugesera’s “whole truth” is a pack of mirror accusations because what he was accusing the RPF were exactly what genocidaires would subsequently do. The only difference was that the supposed victims-to-be would be the future perpetrators.
Among other things, typical mirror accusations, Mugesera blamed the RPF of being a bunch of “extremists who, from 1962 to 1967, repeatedly shed the blood of the Rwandan people for the fanciful dream of restoring the feudal system and the monarchy.” He asserted the RPF belongs to “bloodthirsty people” with plans to commit “genocide of the Hutu ethnic majority, massacre the political and administrative authorities, and massacre Tutsi refusing to cooperate with the attacker”.
He impugned the RPF with using “illicit methods”, among them “manoeuvres to divide the Rwandan people and provoke civil war.” All of these are key ingredients in Judi Rever’s ‘In Praise of blood” published 27 years after Mugesera provided the template for denial of the genocide at the time yet to be perpetrated against Rwanda’s Tutsi.
The 1995 RAF document was one one—if not the most comprehensive genocide denial scheme, at least until Pierre Péan’s ‘Black furies, White liars’ (2005) and the subsequent Judi Rever book by Penguin Random House, Canada (2018). A close scrutiny of both writers’ work, show very clearly, they plagiarise heavily from the genocidaire inspirers’ publications, simply clothing the genocidaires’ original fictional material or accusations in a mirror in a pseudo scholarly style and fake investigative journalism.
There is nothing original about this group of genocide deniers. Whenever a genocide has been committed or is planned, perpetrators always invoke “the whole truth” as a denialist cover-up. This is exactly the script Judi Rever and her fellow disciples of Rwanda’s genocidaires’ are adhering to.
In her book, Rever claims that for the RPF “Eliminating the maximum number of Hutu intellectuals was a priority because these people posed an immediate and future threat of exposing the truth regarding RPF activities. And the death of these intellectuals would weaken the potential for political parties in the short or long term” (p.126).
Rever claims to be convinced Hutu-Power intellectuals are the custodians of truth, notwithstanding their genocidal ideology and mentality. These are the same ‘cognoscente’ quoted above, as assigned by the leaders of the genocidaires and their army in exile to dupe the unwary.
Some of her statements in the book were supposed to be quotes from genocidaires, but she doesn’t have them in quotations—not because of inattentiveness, academic or professional dishonesty, but due to her firm belief in their ideology which she has unapologetically adopted as fully her own.
Judi Rever, like her genocidaire heroes and her foreign genocidaire fellow travellers, is a fully committed disciple on a “sacred mission” to spread the gospel of the Hutu-Power genocidal ideology.
On Twitter: @TomNdahiro