Belgian police arrests Rwandan for genocide negation

Police in Brussels have arrested a Rwandan opposition politician, Boniface Rutayisire, who on Saturday April 07, tried to protest against the 1994 genocide against Tutsis in the middle of a busy suburb of Brussels, Belgium.

Rutayisire was taken in on charges of disturbing public order, on the same day when more than 700 people took part in events organized by the Rwandan embassy in Brussels to commemorate the slaughter of Tutsis.

Reports say that Brussels police arrested him but there is no clear information on whether he was charged in court, released or is still in custody.

The controversial exiled politician is said to have woke up in the morning and went to camp at Woluwe -Saint-Pierre stadium where he had planned to set up a parallel commemoration event apparently in honour of “all victims” of Rwanda’s conflicts.

Rutayisire is accused by genocide survivors and campaigners of being a leading member of a vocal negationist lobby which denies the 1994 genocide against Tutsis. He has a political grouping ‘Banyarwanda & Tubeho Twese’ which advances the notion that what happened in Rwanda was not genocide, but civil war.

Independent minds say that Rutayisire was out to commemorate the civil war and not the genocide against Tutsis.