The Hirondelle News Agency reports that the Assize Court of Brussels unanimously sentenced Ephrem Nkezabera, dubbed the ‘genocide banker’, to 30 years in prison for war crimes including murder and rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The Toronto Star reports on how diplomat Robert Fowler’s memo on the Rwandan genocide was ignored by Ottawa bureaucrats during the killings. He and others are now calling on the federal government to overhaul the way it prepares for and responds to emerging humanitarian catastrophes and state-sponsored ethnic violence.
During a commemoration of the 15 years since the genocide, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda stated that it is an indisputable legal fact that genocide took place in Rwanda in 1994 and dismissed negationists who try to describe the tragic event otherwise.
In the days leading up to the 15 years since the Rwandan genocide, Anne-Marie, Sandra and Samer have participated in interviews in Canada and the Netherlands discussing the sexual violence during the genocide, and the ongoing impact it has had on the survivors.
Fifteen years after she was gang-raped, beaten and left for dead near a river in southern Rwanda, Pascasie Mukasakindi still struggles to put the pieces of her life together. The militia responsible for the genocide “killed what I would have become,” she told us in Kigali when we met while working on a project documenting sexual violence.
Gerald Caplan, author of The Betrayal of Africa and Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, writes about the Christian Church’s complicity during the Rwandan genocide. In his view, the “Catholic hierarchy in Rwanda, mostly Hutu by 1994, failed to condemn its Hutu extremist friends who were carrying out this African holocaust.”
A court in The Hague sentenced Joseph Mpambara, a former Interahamwe member, to 20 years imprisonment for his role in killing two Tutsi mothers and at least four children during the 1994 genocide. Mpambara was also convicted of torturing a German doctor, his Tutsi wife and their two-month-old son.
15 years after the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, there will be a commemorative launch of the book “The Men Who Killed Me” and exhibitions in Canada and the Netherlands featuring photos of survivors whose testimonials are featured in the book. During the commemoration, excerpts from testimonials featured in the book will be read.
Lucid Magazine’s inaugural issue features an article on survivors of sexual violence of the Rwandan genocide and interviews with Anne-Marie, Sandra and Samer.
It is with enormous sadness that Human Rights Watch announces the death of our beloved colleague Dr. Alison Des Forges, who was killed in the crash of Flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo on February 12, 2009. Des Forges, senior adviser to Human Rights Watch’s Africa division for almost two decades, dedicated her life to working on Rwanda and was the world’s leading expert on the 1994 Rwanda genocide and its aftermath.
