Rwandan genocide law used to silence opposition parties...

[Green_Lantern]

Just minutes after she returned to Rwanda after 16 years in exile in January, opposition leader Victoire Ingabire drove to the memorial honoring the victims of the country's 1994 genocide and delivered a speech calling for reconciliation between Tutsi and Hutu. Yes, she said, Rwanda must honor the Tutsi who were the main target of the genocide. It also must remember the Hutu who were victims of crimes against humanity at the same time.

To a Westerner's ear, the words of Ingabire, who has announced that she will run against President Paul Kagame in elections this August, may have seemed like standard political boilerplate for an aspiring politician. But Ingabire, a former accountant, has now been charged in court for those remarks. The government says she violated a genocide-ideology law that is meant to keep people from downplaying or denying the slaughter. Indeed, Martin Ngoga, the prosecutor in her case, says the speech was essentially a coded message meant to appeal to ethnic Hutu and diminish the genocide. Ngoga says the government has amassed enough evidence to prove that she collaborated with Rwandan rebels bent on overthrowing Kagame.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1986699,00.html


This story is a bit old but the Rwanda Presidential election is in a few weeks.

[bluestateguy]

1. Many European democracies have Holocaust denial laws

and yet their democracies have thrived anyway.

[Green_Lantern]

2. true but Paul Kagame's RPF govt. has a long list of human rights..

Abuses and crackdown on free speech and opposition.

[Orsino]

3. Nothing to see here, folks.

This has absolutely nothing to do with American right-wing race-bating in an election year.

[Green_Lantern]

4. what do you mean?

I'm not sure how this is a race issue.

[Orsino]

5. Well, as far as "downplaying or denying the slaughter" goes...

...I meant to draw a parallel to a lot of what we've heard this week on the subject of race.

[Green_Lantern]

7. yeah you're right...her words were also twisted to demonize here...

The Rwandan woman I mean.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

6. My oscilloscope detects nothing below 20 KHz, but plenty above.

And Rex started acting strangely. Odd.