TPNS – Linda Melvern

Dr J. Peter Greaves

To comprehend the devastation that was wrought by the génocidaires of Rwanda, few reports are as informative as that produced by UNICEF. Called “Starting from Zero”, it describes the consequences of the crime of genocide on the country’s children. In the aftermath, an estimated 100,000 children were lost — separated from their families, orphaned, abducted, or abandoned. Most of Rwanda’s children had witnessed extreme forms of brutality, and 90 per cent of them had at some point thought they would die. Most children felt they had no future and did not believe that they would live to become adults. An estimated 300,000 children were murdered and 300 children, some less than ten years old, were accused of genocide. The overall death toll in the genocide of the Tutsi, April-July 1994 is one million people.

The focus for UNICEF was the country’s children, and a team arriving in July found a country looted and destroyed, ransacked by the retreating genocidal forces of Hutu Power. In the capital Kigali, from a previous population of 300,000 people, some 50,000 people were left alive. Lacking adequate food and water, they were terrorized and traumatised. The schools and churches where victims sought shelter were massacre sites.

By James Karuhanga, The New Times

British journalist Linda Melvern who last April told The New Times that Genocide denial is everywhere and has to be challenged has published a new book on how masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and their supporters continue to deny the atrocities.

Speaking about her latest book, titled ‘Intent to Deceive: Denying the Rwandan Genocide’, Melvern told Sky News, a British television news channel, that 25 years after the Genocide, the core group of those who organised, paid for and perpetrated the killings remains determined to continue that crime.

“There is a considerable number of Hutu power ideologues who are determined to continue that crime and denial is part of genocide. So, the crime continues with that,” she said earlier this week.

She added: “They have mounted an information war against the current government. They have tried to persuade the world with their disinformation, fake news that the victims, the Tutsi, brought the catastrophe upon themselves.

“They’ve tried to persuade the world that we have a death toll that wasn’t actually a million and there is some research that claims that more Hutu died than Tutsi. This is pure denial.”

Asked if there was any evidence that Genocide deniers were succeeding, she said they are citing a 2014 BBC documentary “which produced figures from two American Genocide deniers.”

The BBC programme in question, Rwanda: The Untold Story, was broadcast on October 1, 2014 sparking outrage from survivors and scholars, including British author Andrew Wallis, who questioned the ethics of the BBC programme makers.

At the time, 38 international researchers and historians expressed grave concern at the content of the documentary Rwanda’s Untold Story, specifically its coverage of the 1994 Genocide.