Rwanda’s anti-genocide Commission calls for legal action against the BBC

{Dr. John Rutayisire, the Chairman of the National Commission for the fight Against Genocide (CNLG) said BBC documentary “Rwanda’s Untold Story” is a tool used to deny and rewrite the genocide against Tutsis for political interests.}

Dr. Rutayisire made the accusations this Monday while appearing before the Inquiry Committee on the BBC’s controversial documentary.

Flanked by CNLG’s officials, including among others, the Commission’s Executive Secretary Jean de Dieu Mucyo and Commissioner Prof. Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu, Dr. Rutayisire categorically called for legal action against the BBC saying the documentary is “aimed at destabilizing Rwanda’s development achievements and there is no way they can disassociate this from President Paul Kagame and RPF.”

He requested the probe committee to dig deeper and discover the force behind the production and airing of the contemptuous documentary by a reputable media house like the British public broadcaster.

On his part, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide, Jean de Dieu Mucyo said “the documentary categorically denies and minimizes the genocide against Tutsis and spreads the genocide ideology.” Mr. Mucyo said the documentary “intentionally revises the history of the genocide since it turns liberators who stopped the genocide into killers.”

Prof. Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu, a commissioner at CNLG and the President of IBUKA, an umbrella organization for genocide survivors’ Associations on his part said ” BBC’s documentary is an abuse of the rights of genocide survivors and the memory of genocide victims, therefore legal action must be taken against the BBC to defend genocide survivors’ rights.”

He criticized the BBC for being unbalanced in the documentary since it relied on one sided sources and never gave a voice to genocide survivors to tell their own story, yet the major theme in the documentary is about the genocide which they lived through.

The documentary aired on BBC2 on 1st October has so far sparked outrage among many people including ordinary Rwandans, international scholars, researchers and journalists.