Going by the current record of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda it is not a stretch to imagine that this court would acquit Herman Goering or any other person like that of crimes of genocide and other atrocities against Jews were it (ICTR) to find itself with the responsibility of trying big Nazis.

But of course it would take some convincing to make the European and American judges who have just acquitted and ordered the release of Protais Zigiranyirazo and another genocidaire called Hormisdas Nsengimana to realize that crimes of genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994 are just as bad as those committed against human beings elsewhere.

The ICTR Appeals Chamber last Monday reversed a 20 year sentence that Zigiranyirazo received in December 2008 and found him not guilty of any crimes during the Genocide.

Zigiranyirazo is the brother in law of the late Habyarimana and was a notorious member of the Akazu network responsible for unspeakable crimes against humanity.

But the president of the Appeals Chamber, an American judge called Theodor Meron, basing on some outrageous technicalities has ordered the immediate release of this butcher. And on Tuesday of the same week, as if to make sure no one should miss the fact they were pissing on the graves of a million genocide victims, the ICTR Lower Court ordered the immediate release of Hormisdas Nsengimana.

A Norwegian judge called Erik Mose said that he had “assessed all the evidence of the prosecution and that they do not establish Nsengimana’s criminal responsibility or impact the Chamber’s findings.”

What a tragic farce! At this stage only perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide and genocide deniers everywhere can call the ICTR a court of justice. Indeed it wouldn’t come as a surprise if it turned out the tribunal is infested with genocide deniers.

What do we do then?

Ibuka is doing the right thing by cutting off cooperation with the Arusha-based tribunal.

Other right thinking Rwandans elsewhere have to carry on the fight with the truth. Confront the Theodor Merons and Erik Moses and others like them everywhere with the truth.

Their lips can drip with phrases of technicalities but that will never erase the guilt of the butchers they champion.

The truth is there for all to see. Those people whose skulls are to be found everywhere did not suddenly decide to commit unspeakable acts of violence upon themselves. They were victims of state-organized violence on a massive scale.

The apologists of genocide perpetrators and the deniers can talk about a “double genocide” and spout other similar propaganda all they can. But the lessons of history clearly indicate the origins of the Rwandan Genocide in the pogroms against Tutsis that began in 1959, on through the 60s and early 70s.

The RPF are not responsible for that. The founders of Hutu Ideology are responsible for that. The founders of Hutu Ideology, the likes of Gregoire Kayibanda, Dominic Mbonyumutwa, Anastase Makuza and their cohort are the forebears of Habyarimana, Kambanda, Sindikubwabo and other mass murderers like that of whom the likes of Zigiranyirazo were part and parcel of.

No amount of propaganda will ever alter the truth that Habyarimana’s regime was ready to kill an entire ethnicity in the country to perpetuate themselves and their kind in power.