You Are Never Safe: Even in Montreal

You Are Never Safe: Even in Montreal

Yesterday the long arm of the law finally caught up to Desire Munyaneza (photo above), the university-educated genocidal killer from Butare, Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide by the Hutu-led government killed about 850,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It was a brutal affair, which was prepared for nearly two years and undertaken with primitive efficiency by both the Rwandan state and their Interhamwe militia allies. If you can imagine, most of the killing was conducted using machetes, axes, and hoes. Very different from the Nazi use of advanced technological, scientific machineries of death such as concentration camps and movable gas vans. The result was the same: Death, genocide, and the attempt to annihilate an identifiable ethnic or religious group.

Munyaneza, who came from a prominent merchant family, immigrated to Canada in 1997. Yesterday Montreal judge Andre Denis convicted him under a new Canadian genocide law, which was enacted in 2000. He is charged with genocide, as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes. He directly helped organize genocide against Tutsis in conjunction with the blood-thirsty Interhamwe. Charges against him included systematic mass rapes against Tutsis. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general that witnessed the carnage and could do nothing but warn the world and a UN that turned its back on Tutsis, was a star witness in the case.

This was a historic day for Canada and Rwanda. It was a hopeful day in the world struggle against genocide. The simple message: You can run from committing the "crime of crimes," as anti-genocide activist Raphael Lemkin dubbed it, but you can't hide. You are never safe from the law, even in Montreal. Now it is time Canada go after other assorted war criminals, ultra-nationalist thugs, and Islamists that slip in under the radar screen because Canadians are too busy to care about politics. What a shame! Three cheers for Justice Denis for fighting against real genocide! The survivors, some of which are in Montreal, must live with the pain perpetually.

Tamir Bar-On