Transcription
Madam, sir. Um, yeah. Minister to Fore! Foreign! Foreign! Fore speech. Question. Um, maybe Hindus. Um, foring Indones. English. And how with your hands. You there, you go. Never true. I wonder what say. Fore! Foreign! Foreign! Fore hands.
Today we gather again in remembrance to everyone present and watching online. Thank you for joining us on this important day. We deeply appreciate the friends who join us every year in person or in spirit without fail. I thank this survivor who has just spoken. These testimonies keep memory alive for all of us and for those who will for us.
Quivoka carries profound meaning for our nation. It is how we confront and overcome the divisions that nearly destroyed us. This day empowers us all. We draw on the strength of survivors who provide the reservoir of humanity that feeds our nation's soul. To all survivors, know that you are not alone. We stand with you always.
Everything we have achieved was only possible because all Rwans decided to join hands in common purpose. We honor the role played by every Rwanda in our country's rebirth. The reality of, uh, the genocide is clear for all to see. The ring leaders were convicted international courts with rigorous evidence. The gacha process documented the course of the genocide in every single village and neighborhood in Rwanda. Over 50 million handwritten pages were produced during the 10 years of gacha. Right here where we are standing, a quarter of a million victims of the genocide are laid to rest. And in 2018, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that called the genocide against the toothy by its proper name, with the support of every member state but one. The truth is undeniable.
And yet, we still find people sowing doubt and twisting the facts up to today. This is not just a matter of ignorance but something much deeper. It means that the risk of seeing history repeat itself is a constant danger. If we allow ourselves and our friends to become indifferent, genocide denial begins long before the genocide itself is committed. There is a pattern of looking away from the warning signs or taking them lightly. Hate speech turns into hate acts dismissed as expressions of popular discontent. Behavior that should be immediately condemned is rationalized and minimized. The preparations are masked by narratives of popular grievance and fear. In the process, a moral equivalence is created between the targets of the genocide and the planners of it. All of these elements were present in our own story.
There are some who pretend that the genocide against the truth was a spontaneous event. That's not true. It was carefully prepared and carried out in a plain sight. Regrettably, some who spoke in the truth, who spoke the truth at the time, and who were even eyewitnesses, later became peddlers of distortion, mainly for political reasons. Militias were openly trained and indoctrinated in hate. Weapons were imported in large quantities and Rwans who opposed it were threatened or killed before 1994. Communities were subjected to waves of smaller massacres meant to normalize the killing and also to measure the reaction of the wider world. And with only a few heroic exceptions, the world was unconcerned until it was too late.
In the early 1960s, after countless tootses were killed or forced into exile, international voices such as Beltra Russeller, to name just one, described it as systematic extermination. The pattern continued in the late, in the late 1980s and early 1990s when truths communities such as the Buguay in the northwest were targeted in organized attacks. In 1993, a commission led by Jean Krabunar investigated these atrocities. After documenting mass graves and the involvement of state authorities, they concluded that the genocide was being prepared. In the same year, the UN special reporter Bakre Welli warned that organized propaganda portraying the Tutis as enemies was spreading openly, helping prepare the population for mass violence. In January 1994, the command of United Nations mission in Rwanda sent a fox back to headquarters in New York with detailed intelligence that ine stockpiling weapons and compiling lists of tootsis to be killed. He was then ordered to share the information with the very government which was preparing the genocide and to take no further action. And sadly, the reaction today is no different here in our region, and we can see it right before our eyes.
When the genocide began, the nature of the crime was made it obvious. All tootsis, all tootssi were targeted because of their identity. Nowhere was safe, including churches and schools. That horrific reality only underscores the humanity and courage of the Rwans who took risk to provide hiding places for their fellow citizens. The reaction of the international community was to evacuate foreigners and withdraw most peacekeepers at Kichiro. When the peacekeepers withdrew, thousands of desperate truth were left to die. Such scins were repeated across the country. If these forces had instead been supported to protect Rwans, the killers could have been deterred and many people would still be alive. The lives saved by the United Nations peacekeepers who were allowed to remain makes clear how much more could have been done with political will.
Even as the killings accelerated, the language used to describe what was happening itself became a matter of calculation. Genocide is defined in international law precisely to create an obligation to act. To witness such a crime and deliberately refuse to use the term is ineffect. Genocide denial, perhaps even a form of aiding and abetting. The technology existed to disrupt the radio broadcast that directed the killings. The planes capable of jamming those signals were available. Officials even calculated the hourly cost of the mission. In the end, the operation was deemed to be too expensive and potentially also a violation of Rwanda's sovereignty. So the cost was more. It became too expensive. It was more expensive. Especially when you, in their minds, those lives are really worthless. So our lives, we are worth nothing. That's fine.
For Rwans, the lessons have been brutal, and those lessons have not been forgotten. If our lives do not happen to align with someone else's interests, they are not worth saving. That's fine. And so it had to be the Rwanda Patriotic Army that led the campaign against the genocide and ended it. Our deepest source of grief was always that we could not arrive earlier. This is a simple truth of history which many today still have reservations about acknowledging for reasons we do not, and maybe we'll never understand. The culture and character of today's Rwanda Defense Forces, RADF, was forged in those dramatic moments. It guides the conduct of our forces who serve abroad, excuse me, in peace building missions, earning universal respect. Indeed, no sanctions or insult from outside can ever tarnish the honor and integrity of Rwanda's defense and security forces who are among the finest that can be found anywhere. I look forward to raising this matter of sanctions at the highest level to understand the basis for such an injustice.
Rwans understand the cost of tolerating extremism, and our central, our central security principle is to put the protection of civilians first. After the genocide, Rwans chose to rebuild our country together. With that came a promise to never let the politics of genocide take root ever again. I tell you, genocide cannot happen here again. It won't happen. Um, even with those noises you hear in the region of people gathering from Europe, from wherever, and meeting in Kinshasa and bringing the son of Ayariman and relatives and others from wherever gathering. All that is just noise. It cannot amount to anything that will happen here of that kind again. It cannot happen. And I'm saying this not just as a person, and I'm saying I'm just saying it because, uh, I know everyone, and young and old, is as determined and is saying so like I'm saying now to you along the way.
Rwanda faced constant criticism and many attempts to twist our history. But the power we will always have is to use our mind, our minds to see the truth and our voices to speak up. When something is not right, you can never silence us in whatever form. We must be clear about the dangers that remain. When the genocidal government collapsed in July 1994, the soldiers and the militia fled across the border into DRC, forcing millions of civilians along with them. Inside the camps, they organized into what is now known as Fder Dere and launched a sustained crossborder insurgency against Rwanda, claiming tens of thousands more lives. This was the period known as the aenes insurgency, and the western border was only fully secured by the end of the 1990s through the combined efforts of our army and the brave residents of those areas. And since then, our defensive measures have been aimed at ensuring that such attacks can never again be made across our borders.
This is not a problem that should be left through alone. Doing so only rewards those behind the threats while Rwanda is penalized for standing up for itself. Imagine a farmer whose field catches fire. At first, the flames are small. A few neighbors think it does not concern them. Others say the wind will change and the fire will die out on its own. So they watch and wait, but the wind does not change. Meanwhile, a pyromaniac is secretly adding fuel to the fire. So the fire spreads from one field to another, and then into the forest, and the towns, and beyond. Only then do people run with the buckets of water and call for the establishment of a fire department.
Africans, more than most, should understand that the danger of moral pacivity in the face of hatred and violent extremists. We should understand that danger, especially in the face of hatred and violent extremism. Africans, more than most. We must, uh, be reminded by all this history. Today, our continent accounts for the majority of the world's active conflicts. In 1994, Africa's collective institutions also failed to respond. I say this because the call for African sovereignty, legitimate and necessary as it is, must also mean that African institutions act decisively when Africans are at risk. Bad actors must not be allowed to hide behind the principle of sovereignty to evade responsibility for abuses or deny citizens their rights. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Genocide ideology is still spreading in our region. Left unchecked, it has the power to take us all backwards again. There are those who claim that Rwanda exaggerates, that Rwanda exaggerates these concerns, or that we have ulterior motives. This is not only force. It exposes the deep cynicism that led to the tragedy we commemorate today. What sustains Rwanda today is the unity of Rwans and the convictions that like all people, we have the right to live in safety and dignity and at peace with all our neighbors. What we ask is for partners to join with us to fight extremism rather than punishing Rwanda for defending itself. We owe future generations of Randans more than survive. They deserve to inherit a secure, united, and bold country and an integrated and confident Africa. We invite you to stand with us in remembrance and also in action. I thank you for your patience and kind attention.