Rwandan High Commissioner to Kenya, Martin Ngoga, has stressed the need to learn from his country’s 1994 genocide to end rising hate speech and intolerance across the world.
Ngoga made the clarion during the 30th commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi in Nairobi ahead of this year’s national 100-day remembrance set to begin on April 7.
During the meeting that brought together more than 500 people, Ngoga noted that genocides are not born overnight, but rather stem from deep-seated prejudices, discrimination, and systematic dehumanisation of a particular group, as was the case for Rwanda.
“As we renew our resolve to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again, we are seeing dangerous trends of rising hate speech and intolerance in many parts of the world. Particularly troubling is the current widespread proliferation of hate speech and incitement to violence, things that were very clearly present in Rwanda immediately before the genocide,” he said.
He said hate speech threatens human rights, social stability and peace.
PLO Lumumba, pan-Africanist and founder of PLO Lumumba Foundation echoed his sentiments, observing that “one thing that humans learn from history is that they learn nothing.”
He added that it was unfortunate that many decades after the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a genocide unfolded in Rwanda.
“We must never forget that eternal vigilance is critical that we may preserve dignity among men. If we are not eternally vigilant, then we are likely to repeat the things that harm us. We cannot afford the luxury of doing nothing when we know that the perpetrators of evil are always in the business of planning the next evil,” he noted.
Charity Kagwi-Ndungu, former Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said there was a possibility to prevent the death of a million people in Rwanda if the international community had the will to do so.
“The world community could have done better for Rwanda. During that time there was still a lot of help and sympathy going to Habyarimana's regime. Also, the UN Security Council refused to use the word genocide because it would have required a global response,” she explained.
Lonzen Rugira who participated in the panel discussion, said one of the remaining challenges following the genocide against the Tutsi is refusing to repatriate or try genocide suspects who are still roaming freely in many parts of the world.
