The trial against Charles Onana opened up yesterday, Oct. 7th, in Paris, France, and he is being accused of complicity in contesting the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Under French law, it is an offence to deny or “minimize” the fact of any genocide that is officially recognized by France. Mr Onana’s trial will be “historic, since there is not yet any case law strictly speaking related to Rwanda” on questions of Holocaust denial, as Camille Lesaffre, campaign manager for NGO Survie, one of the organizations which brought the case forward, told AFP.

Friends, please rise in support of the Franco-Cameroonian author and journalist Charles Onana. Onana has been among those who have questioned the narrative of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 (NOT whether it happened or not) and by extension the Congolese genocide which has been ongoing for almost 3 decades and been swept under the rug. Thanks to his constant hammering, and his books, many now know that there is an ongoing genocide in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and more importantly that, these massacres have been going on for the past 30 years, and above all that Congo’s destabilization is coming from Rwanda, which serves as a pawn for foreign powers who want a part in the enormous resources of the DRC.

I have listened to Onana on several occasions and have read several of his books: nowhere does he question the Rwanda genocide or its happening; he is not a negationist. As his lawyer, Emmanuel Pire, told the AFP news agency, his book published 5 years ago, was  “the work of a political scientist based on 10 years of research to understand the mechanisms of the genocide before, during and after”. Over the past 25 years, Onana has meticulously documented and questioned first the narrative about the place of France in the Rwandan genocide via its Operation Turquoise (Rwanda, la vérité sur l’opération Turquoise : Quand les archives parlent enfin). On April 6, 1994, the airplane transporting 2 sitting presidents, presidents Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi was shot in mid-air; to date, it has not brought an uproar as to how or why the plane of 2 presidents had been shot down. This is what really triggered Onana’s interest in the region: if it were anywhere in the world, this would have produced an uproar and multitudes of investigations, but somehow, in the case of Africa, it has been total silence. In 2006, a French investigation concluded that Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda, was responsible for the killing, to which Kagame responded that the French were only trying to cover up their part in the genocide. We know that since Sarkozy, France has been playing the kissing game with Rwanda.

In his works, Charles Onana simply demonstrates that since 1994, the world has been witnessing the masked invasion of Congo by militias and troops of Paul Kagame, sponsored by the West. His latest book, “Holocaust in Congo, the International Community’s Omerta” is a true gem. Onana has even brought a case, on October 4, against the president of Rwanda, after receiving death threats.

Over the years, Onana has detailed and stood for the Congolese, and now, thanks to his work, and those of others, people now know that there is a silent genocide in the east of Congo which has been going on for almost 3 decades and whose victims approximate over 10 millions deaths, 500,000 raped women, and yet the world has been silent, even though some like Dr. Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Laureate, are being recognized for their work helping the victims of those attacks.

The questions should be: why is there a silence on the genocide of the Congolese people? Why is there a silence on the aggression of troops supported by Rwanda on Congo? How can there be a systematic killing of millions of people in a country, and total silence? Who benefits from this? Then people will talk of the international community as a group which represents the world… NO… the international community only serves the interests of the few who benefit from Congo, the geological scandal that it is, being brought to its knees. Let’s all come out in support of Charles Onana.