In an emotional plea titled 'An Appeal to President Trump: Help My Mother's Fight for Freedom in Rwanda', Rémy, the self-described son of 'opposition leader' Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, begged the U.S. president to pressure Rwanda's president into freeing his mother, a convicted promoter of genocide ideology.
Pause for effect: An American newspaper, located in a country still grappling with the legacy of slavery and systemic racism, gives its prestigious platform to the son of a woman who leads a political movement founded by genocidaires, people who, in 1994, tried to exterminate an entire population.
It's as if The Hill had decided to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day by publishing an essay from the grandson of Joseph Goebbels asking President Trump to 'help neo-Nazis fight for freedom.' And the editors thought: Yes, this looks good. Let's run it.
Rémy's essay drips with emotional appeal. He writes about his mother as a saintly figure, 'a courageous opposition leader,' a 'champion of dialogue,' and a 'symbol of peace.' He paints a picture of family heartbreak: missed birthdays, absent hugs, and a confused 10-year-old American granddaughter asking, 'Why can't Grandma come visit me?' It is so touching, until you remember who Grandma really is.
Victoire Ingabire isn't a Rwanda's Nelson Mandela. She's the former head of the Rassemblement Républicain pour la Démocratie au Rwanda (RDR), a group created in the refugee camps of eastern Zaire by the very architects of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. The RDR, and later FDU-Inkingi, were political fronts for the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), the armed militia composed of former Interahamwe and ex-FAR soldiers who fled Rwanda after murdering over a million people.
Ingabire's home with an address, Postbus 3124, 2280 GC, Rijswijk, Netherlandsâ€"served as headquarters for these organizations. It means, the living room where Rémy grew up â€" running around, doing homework, eating Dutch cookies, was also a center for genocidaires maneuvering the revival of their ideology. A cradle of denial, a nursery for moral desensitization. Imagine it: bedtime stories about democracy being read to the son of a woman coordinating strategy sessions for people who had butchered over a million innocent civilians.
Growing up in such an environment, surrounded by adults defending Tutsi massacre as 'political action' and arguing that genocide is subject to 'debate' , one cannot help but be shaped by it. Empathy was evidently optional in Rémy's moral curriculum. The American citizen child he presents so sentimentally, Nehea, has no clue that she is being used as a prop in a narrative that whitewashes her grandmother's crimes. Meanwhile, Rémy frames his own emotional blindness as a heartfelt plea.
It's tempting to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but the consequences are serious and deadly. When a major American outlet like The Hill amplifies such narratives, it isn't just a simple moral misstep or bad journalism, it's complicity.
This is how denial begins its second life. Not in the shadows, hate blogs or obscure websites, but on refined media platforms that mistake propaganda for 'balance' and moral relativism for 'free speech.'
Herbert Hirsch, in his profound book Genocide and the Politics of Memory, warns that 'whoever controls the narrative of the past controls the moral judgment of the present.' Hirsch's insight captures exactly what's happening here. By giving space to Amahirwa's appeal, The Hill effectively gave legitimacy to a movement that has spent years trying to control the narrative of Rwanda's past.
To the uninformed reader in Philadelphia or Boston, Rémy's article reads like a human-interest story: with a loving son, a suffering mother, a faraway African regime silencing dissent. But to anyone who knows Rwanda's history, it's a wolf in empathy's clothing.
The politics of tears and genocide equalization
One of the most effective tools of genocide deniers is emotional manipulation. Genocide denial has never needed truth; it needs tears. It survives on misdirected empathy â€" the kind that confuses accountability with cruelty, and consequence with persecution.
When Amahirwa writes about his mother missing weddings and births, he's not wrong to feel pain. Family separation is hard. But what he never mentions, what The Hill never asked, is whose families were destroyed forever because of the ideology his mother supports.
How many survivors of the genocide have no mother, no father, no siblings, no graves to visit? How many children were born into trauma so deep that the smell of rain reminds them of blood-soaked earth? Those families didn't 'miss weddings.' They missed existence itself.
To equate the temporary imprisonment of one ideologue with the permanent erasure of a million souls is not just unpleasant or offensive; it is obscene.
As Deborah Lipstadt, the renowned scholar of Holocaust denial, once said: 'Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide, it seeks to ensure that the victims are killed twice: first in the flesh, then in memory.' The Hill, perhaps unknowingly, handed the second machete to the deniers.
The most insidious form of denial isn't outright rejection, it's equalization, the false claim that 'all sides committed genocide.'
This is the rhetorical weapon Victoire Ingabire has wielded for years. In 2010, she returned to Rwanda and demanded that Rwanda commemorate 'Hutu victims' of what she called 'crimes of the RPF.' That's not an innocent plea for inclusivity, it's a deliberate distortion meant to dilute the moral clarity of the 1994 genocide.
There is no such thing as 'equal genocide.' There was one, the systematic extermination of the Tutsi population, meticulously planned and executed by a government, its army, and its citizens.
Hirsch warns: 'The redefinition of perpetrators as victims, and victims as aggressors, is not merely a distortion of history; it is an invitation to repeat it.'
When the world fails to challenge that inversion, it licenses future atrocities under the cover of moral confusion.
The Fable of the Silenced Dissident
Rémy calls his mother a 'peaceful opposition leader silenced behind bars.' Let's examine that mythology.
In 2013, Rwanda's Supreme Court found Victoire Ingabire guilty of minimizing the genocide and conspiring to form an armed group. She wasn't convicted for 'speech' â€" she was imprisoned for promoting hate speech that had already killed a million people, and for collaborating with known genocidaires. That's not political persecution; that's justice.
It's beyond belief how Western media continue to romanticize such figures. If a German politician today started a party dedicated to 'giving voice to the forgotten Nazis,' would The Hill publish her son's plea for freedom? Apparently, in Africa, the standards are different.
One of the most perilous features of denial is how it seduces the uninformed. It doesn't need to convince everyone, just enough ignorant people to make doubt fashionable.
As sociologist Stanley Cohen observed in States of Denial, 'The essence of denial is not ignorance but the refusal to acknowledge what one knows.' Denial isn't born from lack of evidence; it thrives on moral laziness and emotional convenience.
For an American reader who's never been to Rwanda, the country becomes a distant stage on which the familiar drama of 'dictator vs. dissident' plays out. The nuances vanish, and the story fits effortlessly into a Western script about freedom and oppression. That's how genocide denial rebrands itself: as a human rights crusade.
Taking advantage of the emotional illiteracy
Probably, Rémy Amahirwa lives in the United States, far from the mass graves his grandmother, Thérèse Dusabe helped fill. He speaks the language of democracy, advances symbols of freedom, and appeals to American ideals, all while defending a woman whose political movement sheltered those who preached extermination.
And then there's the 'American citizen', the innocent 10-year-old granddaughter named Nehea. She's the emotional focus of his essay, the teary-eyed punctuation meant to melt Washington's heart.
But, honestly: this poor child has no idea that her 'beloved Grandma' was the face of an organization whose members dreamed of finishing what 1994 started. She doesn't know that her great-grandmother, Dusabe, is a fugitive genocidaire accused of disemboweling pregnant women and killing infants.
You can almost picture the future family get-together: the granddaughter flies to Kigali, expecting balloons and birthday cake, only to be greeted by the ghosts of a million murdered Tutsi whispering, 'Ask Grandma what she really did in 1994.'
Rémy parades his daughter's innocence as a moral credential, as if American citizenship could wash away inherited complicity. But citizenship doesn't sanctify ignorance. It merely changes the address of denial.
The Trump Card of Manipulation
Then there's the pièce de résistance, Rémy's belief that Donald Trump could be persuaded to champion his mother's cause. You almost have to admire the confidence. He imagines the man who once confused the Kurds with the Kardashians suddenly becoming a passionate advocate for a convicted genocide ideologue.
Rémy writes: 'President Trump has proven himself a champion of fighting for the freedom of those held unjustly.' One wonders if he's confusing Trump with someone else, perhaps a Marvel character.
It's as if Amahirwa thought Trump could be emotionally manipulated by the image of a crying 'American granddaughter', the kind of sentimental bait that populists can't resist.
Try to imagine the sight: Trump in the Oval Office, leaning back with that famous squint, saying, 'Victoire who? Sounds like a nice lady. Maybe we can get her on The Apprentice: Kigali Edition.'
Amahirwa underestimated one thing: Trump may be easily manipulated, but mostly by flattery, not by genocide revisionism. If Amahirwa's goal was to appeal to vanity, he missed the script.
And yet, the very act of believing Trump could be tricked into defending a promoter of genocide ideology exposes something deep, the self-importance of those who think Western power is a tool for their propaganda.
It's the old colonial habit in new packaging: the belief that white validation can launder any narrative, even one built on bones.
The most laughable element is the underlying racist imagination: that an American president could 'dictate' anything to an African leader, in this case, President Paul Kagame, whose legitimacy rests on preventing the recurrence of genocide and reconstructing a nation from the ashes. Amahirwa seems to believe that Rwanda is just another Washington outskirt, ready to bend under the weight of American tweets. The fantasy is exemplary colonial paternalism dressed up as a plea for justice.
The Survivors' Silence and the Western Hypocrisy
For survivors of the genocide, every instance of genocide denial is an earthquake. It shakes the foundations of memory and insults the dead.
Imagine surviving an extermination campaign, busy rebuilding your life, and then watching the world hand microphones to the children of those who justified your annihilation â€" all in the name of 'balance.'
Many survivors don't speak up, not because they agree, but because silence is their last refuge from pain. As one survivor told a journalist years ago: 'You can rebuild your house after the fire, but not your heart.'
The Hill's editors, comfortably distant from that pain, probably thought they were being 'open-minded.' But open-mindedness toward denial isn't virtue; it's moral decay disguised as tolerance.
Let's call this what it is: a double standard dressed as journalism. In the West, Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in several countries. You can't stand on a German street corner and declare that 'both sides killed' in the Holocaust â€" you'll be handcuffed before you finish the sentence.
But when it comes to Africa, denial suddenly becomes 'freedom of expression.' The very people who would recoil at a neo-Nazi op-ed see no problem platforming genocide revisionists from Rwanda. Which is why organized deniers like Jambo Asbl get subsidies from the Belgian government. Apparently, some genocides are worth remembering, while others are up for debate. That hypocrisy is the unspoken racism of memory politics.
The Heritage of Hate
It's not just Victoire Ingabire. The rot runs deeper. Her mother, Thérèse Dusabe, a nurse by profession, is a woman who, according to witness testimonies, participated in the brutal killing of Tutsi women and children. Rémy Amahirwa, in his article, conveniently omits that his 'innocent' grandmother's hands are soaked in blood.
He writes of a family 'paying the price' â€" but never mentions the families that paid the ultimate one because of his grandmother.
This intergenerational narrative â€" from grandmother Dusabe to mother Ingabire to son Amahirwa â€" is a textbook example of how genocide ideology mutates rather than dies. It adapts to modern times, swapping machetes for microphones, hate radio for op-eds, and denial for discourse.
Forgetfulness is treacherous. Herbert Hirsch reminds us that 'genocide cannot exist without the social and political structures that make forgetting possible.' Denial, therefore, is not a postscript to genocide â€" it is its continuation.
By forgetting, by allowing distortion to seep into public discourse, societies lay the groundwork for the next atrocity.
When The Hill legitimizes a storyline that whitewashes the past, it becomes part of that structure of forgetting. It converts genocide from a fact into an opinion â€" something to be 'debated' rather than condemned. That's not just journalism gone wrong but moral vandalism.
And now, people like Ingabire exploit that indifference by recasting themselves as victims of the same Rwanda they once tried to destroy.
It's a clever trick: weaponize Western shame to earn Western sympathy. When Rémy appeals to Donald Trump â€" of all people â€" he's not just asking for his mother's release. He's invoking America's ego as the 'defender of freedom,' hoping to cloak a toxic ideology in the language of liberty.
But freedom, stripped of responsibility, becomes license â€" and in this case, license for lies. The people who call for 'dialogue' from exile are rarely the ones who've faced justice or loss. They speak of 'freedom' but mean impunity; they preach 'democracy' but mean amnesia.
As Hirsch wrote: 'Without collective memory, moral responsibility disintegrates.'
Educating the Unaware
To those unfamiliar with genocide denial, here's what you need to understand: Deniers rarely deny outright. They distort, they contextualize, they 'ask questions,' they appeal to fairness. They wrap hate in civility.
They say: 'Let's hear both sides.' And then say: 'She is a peaceful dissident; why punish her?' Followed by: 'America should intervene â€" after all, we invented democracy, didn't we?'
And they say all of this while conveniently ignoring the million voices silenced forever.
This is the textbook strategy of genocide denialists: cloak murder in moral ambiguity, frame historical facts as debatable, and transform criminal acts into political persecution. Scholars like Herbert Hirsch have repeatedly warned that 'the manipulation of memory is the weaponization of forgetting.' In plain English: the past is being rewritten, and the future is being endangered, all while we clap politely for a well-turned op-ed.
Let's return to Rémy's central fantasy: that Donald Trump, seated in the Oval Office, could somehow 'demand' or even 'persuade' Rwanda to release a convicted promoter of genocide ideology.
It's absurd â€" amusingly so. One can almost see the scene as a political cartoon: a young man in Pittsburg grabbing his iPhone, whispering sweet moral nothings across the ocean, while the leader of a sovereign African nation politely nods and thinks: 'Which part of international law is he confused about this time?'
This is where humor meets horror. Rémy's confidence in Western manipulation is less an appeal for justice than a reflection of a mindset steeped in inherited denial. Growing up in the house of genocide ideology, surrounded by operatives of the RDR and FDU-Inkingi, and having a grandmother who directly participated in mass murder, it is no surprise that his moral imagination is… let's say, underdeveloped.
The idea that a Western president could dictate the moral or judicial choices of an African leader is not just wrong; it is the kind of naive arrogance that historically justified colonialism. This is the fantasy world of Amahirwa: a world where genocide ideology can be whitewashed by sentimentality and celebrity endorsements.
Nehea, the young 'American citizen' at the heart of this story, is innocent. Her tears are real. Her longing for her grandmother is sincere. And that innocence is being abused.
She is being positioned as a sign of moral clarity â€" a living exclamation mark to Amahirwa's argument. Yet she has no knowledge of the truth: that her grandmother is a convicted promoter of genocide ideology, that her great-grandmother was a fugitive genocidaire, and that an entire people's lives were obliterated so her family could plot political revenge.
The exploitation of her innocence is chillingly clever. It tugs at hearts, it blinds editors, and it momentarily distracts the public from the ugly truth. But innocence misused does not absolve wrongdoing. It is a potent example of how denial manipulates not just memory but emotion itself.
The Moral Reckoning
At the end of the day, what Rémy Amahirwa and his mother represent is not 'peaceful opposition' or 'freedom of expression.' They represent a multi-generational attempt to sanitize the unspeakable and to recast killers as victims.
The argument that 'her arrest is unjust' ignores the very definition of justice. Ingabire and the RDR/FDU-Inkingi network were not arrested for dissent â€" they were arrested for advancing a genocidal ideology, for collaborating with convicted killers, and for undermining the fragile post-genocide reconstruction of Rwanda.
There is a profound difference between a dissident challenging government policy and an ideologue defending mass murder. That difference is life or death, memory or amnesia, accountability or impunity.
As Hirsch notes, 'To deny genocide is to deny the victims the very humanity they died defending.' Every op-ed like Amahirwa's chips away at that humanity, even under the guise of heartfelt pleas.
This is not simply a Rwandan story. It is a global lesson in the dangers of denial, of sentimentality divorced from fact, and of media platforms failing to distinguish moral reality from narrative convenience.
Genocide denial thrives when audiences are uninformed, when emotions are manipulated, and when historical literacy is low. Platforms that give denialists a voice under the banner of 'opinion' or 'balance' are not neutral. They are complicit.
My plea to those who do not know what happened in Rwanda, educate yourselves. Ask questions. Look beyond tears, heartache, and American citizenship to the historical facts that matter. The difference between justice and impunity, memory and forgetting, life and death, is too great to be clouded by the trappings of sentimental prose.
And so, we come full circle, back to the irrational amusement that began this article. Imagine a world where American presidents could release genocidaires with a tweet, where childhood innocence could erase mass murder, where family reunions could reset moral history. Imagine the op-ed pages filled with pleas from the descendants of killers asking for absolution through sentiment.
It's humorous â€" almost. But the laughter is unpleasant. For behind the humor is real suffering. Behind the absurdity is real consequence. Over one million Tutsi silenced forever, and their memory at risk of being rewritten by the next op-ed, the next tweet, the next sentimental plea.
Let The Hill and Rémy Amahirwa be a lesson to all of us:
Sentiment without truth is dangerous. Sympathy without accountability is complicity. Innocence can be manipulated, but it cannot restore justice. Power can be courted, but it cannot rewrite history.
Nehea, the young American citizen, may one day learn the truth. Let it be taught not through op-eds that cleanse murder but through the undistorted, painful, and morally exacting history of Rwanda. Let her know that freedom, memory, and justice are not gifts granted by politicians or publications â€" they are obligations we owe to the dead, the living, and the future.
Genocide denial is not harmless rhetoric. It is a dangerous weapon. It thrives on emotional misdirection, inherited ideology, and Western gullibility. It must be met with ridicule, moral clarity, and a steadfast commitment to memory.
And to Amahirwa and others like him: no tears, no op-ed, no invocation of American presidents can rewrite history. Your narrative may jerk at hearts, but it cannot touch the facts. You may hope for influence, but power without justice is an illusion. And one day, the truth â€" the persevering, solid truth â€" will be all that remains.
Because at the end of the day, sentiment cannot resurrect the dead, fantasy cannot undo the horrors of history, and sympathy cannot replace accountability. Truth, remembrance, and moral courage â€" those are the legacies worth defending.
And for those still laughing at the absurdity of a world where genocide could be converted over Twitter and American heartstrings: joke, if you must. But never forget that history, memory, and morality are not punchlines.
Tom Ndahiro
Source : https://en.igihe.com/opinion/article/victoire-ingabire-s-family-and-the-new-face-of-genocide-denial
