REVISING GENOCIDE’S TRUTH, IN GOD’S NAME One of the world’s great under appreciated scandals is the role of Catholic Church officials in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, its bloody aftermath in Congo, and the continuing campaign to popularize a revisionist history of the genocide that would advance the malign agenda of those who actively believe that the ‘job is not complete.’ In this latter category of genocide revisionist is Father Philippe de Dorlodot who is a Belgian Catholic priest, and a member of a Congregation of Missionaries of Africa or White fathers. Officially, he should stand for justice and peace, and be opposed to hateful extremists. But this is far from the case in his work in present day Congo. Philippe de Dorlodot lived in the country since 1970. He spent time in Kinshasa from 1988 to 1993, before being transferred to Bukavu in 1994. There, de Dorlodot became a member and coordinator of the Jeremie group, a Christian group whose mission is, allegedly, to carry the message of peace and social justice. As would be expected, from 1994 onward, this group became concerned with the problems of Rwandan refugees fleeing the genocide’s consequences either as perpetrators or as victims. In 1996, de Dorlodot collected and published a book, prefaced by Jesuit priest Rigobert Bihuzo Minani, entitled: “Les réfugiés rwandais à Bukavu au Zaire: De nouveaux Palestiniens?” (Rwandan refugees at Bukavu in Zaire: The New Palestinians?). Here is where his role as a Catholic priest becomes aligned with the ongoing mission of the genocidaires who had murdered almost a million Rwandans. The publication was a compilation of various declarations made by extremist Hutu churchmen, human rights groups, NGOs and several other associations with the aim of “making known the problem of Rwandan refugees in Kivu”[1]. The well known academic, Filip Reyntjens penned a post-script to the book. Reyntjens concurred with de Dorlodot’s opinion that forced repatriation was unacceptable and voluntary repatriation was unthinkable, given the situation prevailing in Rwanda: supposedly with prisons resembling concentration camps, disappearances, and massacres that could easily be qualified as genocide. Reyntjens echoed this, and identified only one remaining option: armed repatriation. These “new refugees”, he said, could not be kept in “eternal exile.” His opinion was topped off with a warning that if the international community did not listen to the “cries of alarm” coming out of South Kivu, “the tragic events of the past year will have been merely a prelude, with the worst still to come”. This was an idea he shared with at least one of the genocidaire ideologues and leaders, Stanislas Mbonampeka. Mbonampeka is a Hutu extremist who served as Minister of Justice in 1992 and 1994 after the genocide. In the camps in Zaire, he declared in an interview with an NGO-sponsored magazine that refugees could not return to Rwanda because they saw the RPF as “incarnated devils” who “eliminate people discreetly, hiddenly.”[2] Mbonampeka threatened that if the RPF did not negotiate the only alternative would be “to prepare ourselves to fight.”[3] Like most proponents of this position, de Dorlodot was convinced that neither Zaire nor the new authorities in Kigali were interested in the refugees. He wondered — and this was also the title of his compendium — whether Rwandan refugees who were rejected by everybody would not become the “new Palestinians”. He divided his book in three more or less equal parts. The first was devoted to various testimonies from individuals who had managed to flee Rwanda at the beginning of the massacres, most of them foreign expatriates or Hutu who told stories of “horrors committed from April to July 1994”. The second was about the influx of “Rwandan survivors” who went to Zaire, and the difficulties they experienced in settling down. This was the “emergency” period. The people he called survivors were Hutus who were in a French protected zone, many of whom were core genocidaires from the former prefectures of Gikongoro, Kibuye and Cyangugu. As far as Philippe de Dorlodot was concerned, the biggest problem of Hutu refugees was that they were hurt by the image they were given in international media, especially on radio broadcasts. They felt despised everywhere. As long this situation continued, de Dorlodot saw “the prospects of their peaceful return home [] receding.” He quoted the Archbishop of Bukavu’s line, “there are things one sees better with eyes that have shed tears”, to illuminate what he saw as the “tragedy that has befallen the refugees.”. De Dorlodot explained: They lost everything: their country, their land, their diplomas, their jobs, their income, their future….They feel abandoned, they are humiliated. But they keep their dignity. They want to live. This second part therefore told of “this distress, this emergency of the needs coupled with the slowness of aid”. It talked also of “the positions taken by the Civil Society on the dramatic situations, the conditions for the return”.[4] The third part, dominated by the speeches of Bishop Christopher Munzihirwa (six out of thirteen messages of the whole book) was called “Le temps de l’inquiétude, janvier-octobre 1995” (Times of anxiety, January-October 1995). The messages were addressed to either refugees or the international community.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 08:16:26 +0000
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