Friday, March 29, 2024

Sudan Tribune

Plural news and views on Sudan

Hand over perpetrators of Darfur genocide

by Mahmoud A. Suleiman

The Arab and African countries that were receiving the perpetrator of genocide in the Darfur region in western Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir, a fugitive from international justice at The Hague, in the Netherlands, should apologize to the people of Sudan in general and in particular to the Sudanese citizens of Darfur, as the French President Emanuel Macron did yesterday in Kigali, the Capital of Rwanda during His visit and his meeting with the Rwandan President Paul Kagame. The Sudanese post-December 18, 2019 Revolution transitional government chaired by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Prime Minister Dr Abdalla Hamdock should also unreservedly apologize for delaying the handover of Omer Al-Bashir and his criminal entourage to the international justice instead of hosting them in Kober Prison and elsewhere. Any delay in the delivery of the fugitives from international justice of the criminal leaders of the former ruling regime and its ousted ex-president is considered a kind of concealment of these crimes committed at best and being complicit at the worst scenario.

French President Emmanuel Macron has asked Rwandans to forgive France for its role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57270099
Speaking at the genocide memorial in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, French President Emmanuel Macron said France had not heeded warnings of impending carnage and had for too long “valued silence over the examination of the truth”. But France had not been an accomplice in the killings, Mr Macron added. Rwanda’s leader praised his speech.

President Paul Kagame said, “His words were something more valuable than an apology. They were the truth.” He called it “an act of tremendous courage”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57270099
It seems that unrealistic self-esteem is still prevalent in the government of Doctor Hamdok; unfortunately, although one of the tasks of the great revolution is to hand over the ousted criminal Omar Al-Bashir and his entourage to The Hague. It is not required to wait forever for the outrageous prevalence situation in Sudan. The world has also known that the crimes committed by Omar al-Bashir in Darfur occurred ten years after the crimes committed in Rwanda as if Africa were destined to witness genocide against its population every decade.

Hutu elites ruled Rwanda when the genocide took place, in April-June 1994, but they were later ousted by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under Paul Kagame.
On the other hand, the former French President Mitterrand had close ties to former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, the killers who stalked the swamps, the hills, the churches, did not have the face of France. France was not an accomplice,” Mr Macron said, according to the BBC.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57270099

But the French President Macron said that in 1994 “France did not understand that by wanting to block a regional conflict or a civil war, it stood de facto by a genocidal regime”. The genocide was sparked by the downing on 6 April 1994 of a plane carrying Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira, a fellow Hutu. On 22 June the UN authorised the deployment of French forces in southwest Rwanda, in what was called Operation Turquoise. That mission was controversial: the French humanitarian zone saved some potential victims from the genocidal killers, but later there were accusations that the French help had come too late and that some killers had managed to hide in the zone.

However, the story goes further to the conclusion that: In 2015, then-President François Hollande announced that the Rwanda archives would be declassified but two years later, after a researcher sought permission to study them, France’s Constitutional Council ruled that they should remain secret.

At the close of his official visit, President Macron launched the new inquiry, allowing experts to study French official files from the time.

At this juncture, one would like to allow the reader to reflect on Rwanda’s 100 days of slaughter Concurrent with and in conjunction with the genocide that the Sudanese citizens were subjected to in the Darfur region 18 years ago.

Furthermore and as the proverb says: “as a thing is mentioned coincidence crops up; that is when Germany officially recognized that its Colonial Era of Killings in Namibia were crimes of Genocide and Officially Announced financial aid worth more than €1.1bn (£940m; $1.34bn to Namibia.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57279008

Thus the coincidence between the recognition of the two countries of France and Germany in their involvement in the Crime of Genocide and their provision of Moral and Material Recognition to the Victims in the two countries of Rwanda and Namibia.
Without doubt, the crime of Genocide is one of the great evils against humanity in every way; in time and place over the centuries; but the countries that admit to committing that heinous crime are very few and at this junction, we say admitting the misdemeanour is in itself a testimony and authenticity of the individual and the group. As they say, Confession is the Mother of the Evidence and a kind of a Virtue!
Mike Norton the American comic book artist and writer, known for his work on Battlepug has been quoted as saying: “It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/genocide
Dr Mahmoud A. Suleiman is an author, columnist and blogger. His blog is http://thussudan.wordpress.com/

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