Rwandan book on Genocide

Rwanda author to launch book about popular participation in 1994 Genocide

BY GEORGE Kagame

Yet another book that explains the events leading to and during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda is due to be launched next week in Kigali at place and date yet to be announced.

The book titled, “Rwanda; The Popular Genocide” was written by Dr Jean Paul Kimonyo a Rwandan Canadian researcher and was published in France, where it was released last week. The book is among a handful that Kimonyo has published about Rwanda; among his collections include Revue Critique des interpretations du conflit Rwandais 2000.

Speaking to the press about the forthcoming launch of the book Kiminyo said; “I carried out personal inquisition while the genocide was happening here in 1994 and I was concerned with the swiftness with which the entire population of a country was consumed by the killings, this motivated me to write the book”

Kimonyo explained the title of his book as thus; “Rwanda is a small country, it was possible that when the Tutsi were targeted for murder they could have escaped to neighbouring but the entire population was incited to kill, there were death camps, gas chambers and no infrastructure to control physically the targeted population this is because the whole population was mobilized to prevent victims from escaping.”
He said the purpose of the book to answer why so many people participated in the 1994 Genocide despite the absence of infrastructure mechanism to organize the victims.

Kimonyo is a PhD in Political Science from the University of Quebec Montreal in Canada and was also a member of the National Independent Commission Probing the role of France in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and is currently Director of Cogito Consult, a private that offers consulting services

Commenting on the arrest warrants from France and Spain against some 40 senior officials of the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front, Kimonyo said his book does not directly respond to the warrants but he added that the book answers the motivation behind the warrants.

Said Kimonyo; “the warrants are opportunistic and show that judges are taking sides, they are trying as much as possible that the genocide was caused by external, in reality the genocide was caused by extreme factors that combined together at a certain time and place but the ideology began as far back as 1959.”
He added that the ideological factors are largely responsible for causing the genocide.

The government has since outlawed genocide ideology among Rwandans and recently formed a commission to control genocide ideology in the country after 2007 parliamentary commission reported that the ideology was still prevalent among school going children.