KPFA Evening News Anchor Cameron Jones: Rwanda’s U.S. ambassador, Mathilde Mukantabana, is on her way to Sonoma State University to give a talk titled “Rwanda 20 Years After Genocide” this coming Tuesday, March 25, as part of the university’s Holocaust and Genocide Lecture Series. KPFA’a Ann Garrison was not free to work on today’s news but she asked KPFA to note that the official history that Rwanda’s ambassador will present is the “genocide against the Tutsi.” “Genocide against the Tutsi” is the constitutionally codified and legally enforced description in Rwanda, where it is a crime to say “Rwandan Genocide.”
Rwandan and Western newspapers commonly report that as many as a million Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed in the genocide; but the 1991 Rwandan census reported that fewer than 650,000 Tutsis lived in Rwanda at that time, and the Ibuka Tutsi survivors’ group claims that 300,000 Rwandan Tutsis survived. The Rwandan government has never disputed either figure, and if both are correct, then the majority of a million dead must have been members of Rwanda’s majority Hutu population.
Rwandan and Western newspapers commonly report that as many as a million Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed in the genocide; but the 1991 Rwandan census reported that fewer than 650,000 Tutsis lived in Rwanda at that time, and the Ibuka Tutsi survivors’ group claims that 300,000 Rwandan Tutsis survived. The Rwandan government has never disputed either figure, and if both are correct, then the majority of a million dead must have been members of Rwanda’s majority Hutu population.
The 1991 Rwandan census reported that fewer than 650,000 Tutsis lived in Rwanda at that time, and the Ibuka Tutsi survivors’ group claims that 300,000 Rwandan Tutsis survived. The Rwandan government has never disputed either figure, and if both are correct, then the majority of a million dead must have been members of Rwanda’s majority Hutu population.
In 2011, after a holocaust and genocide conference at Sacramento State University, KPFA’s Ann Garrison filed an assault complaint against the Rwandan contingent with the Sacramento State Campus Police. That complaint was later published by the U.K. Parliament’s International Development Committee after their reconsideration of budget support to the Kagame government in Rwanda. FULL STORY
