LIES IN LIEU OF AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY : MEDIATED CONVERSATION WITH FREDERIC NZEYIMANA*

By Emmanuel Nkurunziza,
Toronto, Ontario.
July 28th, 2018
 
On Saturday, July 21st, 2018; Kabaza Web TV hosted a live debate between Frédéric Nzeyimana and me [Emmanuel Nkurunziza]. The show was a sequel to another one that Kabaza WebTV had hosted a couple weeks ago, which was itself a reaction to a similar interview that this online TV had had with me. The first interesting revelation from the debate is that for so long, cooperation has existed between the “Collectif Hutu de 1972” and Burundi incumbent regime led by the genocidal and terrorist organization CNDD-FDD.
The question that most viewers of the show must have asked themselves is, “how can anyone claim to be an intellectual and, at the same time, deny the existence of cooperation between the Burundi Government and the Collectif de 1972, even when evidence of that cooperation is presented live in front of him?". Nothing in the world can indeed explain this contradiction, except Frederic Nzeyimana's extreme hatred against the Tutsi-Hima. Equally flabbergasting is how he unashamedly tries to justify this in so-called anthropological theories. 
The beginning of the program transpired an inexplicable effort on the part of the journalist to get the guests to declare that they are trading mutual accusations. As I stated it from the onset, my intervention was not to accuse anybody. My aim was to redress the wrongs caused by the lies that Frederic Nzeyimana had been spreading both in his statements on this television show and in his writings. It is for this sole purpose that I had requested a live confrontation with him, so that I can expose and deconstruct his lies.
The other strange revelation from the show is the attempt to establish a certain common ground between me and Frederic Nzeyimana. Unbeknownst to the host in his declared aim of uncovering the truth, the journalist's move to search for agreement between contraries and establish equation where there may never be any, has the potential of relaying the hollow accusations that Frederic Nzeyimana repeats whenever he is behind the microphone. To the most serious and most trustworthy analysts, the only point of convergence between me and Frederic was on the referred, that is, the very subject from which the whole discussion arose: the unjust detention of Clement Nkurunziza, the innocent victim of the Collectif de 1972's lies.
One more important revelation from the show is that it provided an opportunity to ask Frederic Nzeyimana whether he is acting on a personal mandate, or if he has one from Burundi ruling party CNDDFDD. As well, the program contributed in shedding light on how, driven by his visceral hatred against the Tutsi, particularly the Hima subgroup, Frederic Nzeyimana has been supplying two organizations with baseless lies. Highly significant a fact indeed is how both the Canadian Center for International Justice (CCIJ) and the California-based Center for Justice and Accountability did not respond to Kabaza WebTV's quest for elucidation on their respective role in their alleged relay of the propaganda purported by Frederic Nzeyimana and the Collectif de 1972. None of the two centers in question responded to Kabaza Web TV's email or phone calls. For the most serious and most reliable analysts, this is an unmistakable sign that the two organizations have come to realize that they had been involved in wrongful, baseless accusations of innocent people who are pursued following Frederic Nzeyimana's relentless efforts to tarnish the Tutsi group, with the main focus on the Hima subgroup. 
The host journalist stated for his TV viewers that a few days earlier, he had submitted questions related to Clement Nkurunziza's unjust detention, to the panel of spokespersons of the Burundi Government ahead of their last joint press conference. They had agreed to address them; yet, without any explanation or apology to the journalist, they chose later to totally ignore them. It is highly probable that the spokespersons in question have preferred the unexplained silence to the more hardly manageable embarrassment of acknowledging publicly that they had been relying on, and, in some ways, relaying, the ethnic hatred propaganda that Frederic Nzeyimana and the Collectif de 1972 disseminates in their campaign against the Tutsi. One possible explanation is that the refusal was initiated, or at least encouraged by, the Ministry of Justice, among others, since it is its spokesperson who would have had to explain how they hold someone in detention for months without ever being able to settle on which charges to lay against him. May it be noted here for the record, that ever since Clement Nkurunziza's arrival in Burundi and subsequent arbitrary arrest on March 19, 2018,  the Burundi Government has changed its accusations at least three times.
It is worth noting that according to the lies spread by Frederic Nzeyimana during this program, the US Government had asked to, and obtained from, the Government of Burundi, that Clement Nkurunziza be jailed upon arrival. The truth, however, is that what Frederic Nzeyimana and his Collectif de 1972 hold as hard evidence of Clement's alleged involvement in the killings of Hutu students in Burundi in 1995 and which led the US to expel him, consists of hearsay  from unnamed, unreliable witnesses retain. This lets anyone guess that the US Immigration Court did not find any reliable evidence relating him to the killing of Hutu students at the University of Burundi. This can be ascertained through the institution. Thus, though the spokespersons of the different Ministries of the Burundi Government avoided Kabaza Web TV's potentially embarrassing questions, there is one person, most probably the originator of the very lies, who will have to. And the questions he will face will not be necessarily from friendly journalists, but most probably by some representative institution desirous of saving its face and showing to the world that while it can unknowingly be trapped in ethnically motivated lies, it cannot rely on them deliberately. My prognosis is that both governments, or at least one of them, will finally be coaxed to acknowledge that at a given moment in time, they were supplied lies by the likes of Frederic Nzeyimana for whom anything is is allowed, provided it tarnishes the Tutsi-Hima and absolves the CNDDFDD of its past and current crimes. 
One other major question that one can ask oneself is whether those governments will stand by this liar when he ultimately gets toasted. The answer may not be obvious; what is as clear as crystal instead is that he has been courting the Burundi incumbent government. For instance, during this very program on Kabaza Web TV, he declared that even the USA know that there is a democratic regime in Burundi, that it is for this reason that the US sent Clement Nkurunziza to Burundi and expressly request the Burundi Government to arrest and imprison him upon his arrival! He says [translation of the sequence running from 49:13 to 50:13 in Reference (1)]: 
“What I can say in connection with the arrest, it is true, the collective played a role in this arrest. First of all, there are two States that are involved. First, Clement was in the USA. it is them who refused him the citizenship--, who sent her back to Burundi and who demanded that he be imprisoned on his arrival. Then comes the fact that he was arrested by another government / state, that of Burundi / Burundi has - the US has judicial bodies able to explain very well everything that is related to the referral of clement to Burundi or it has been handed over to another democratic state - the one in place in Burundi for him to look into his case. It's beyond our competence, Emmanuel and me.” [Ico no- ivyo nokwishura kw'ico kibazo c'ifatwa rya Clément; n'ivyo Collectif- n'uruhara Collectif yoba ifise kw'ifatwa ryiwe, inyishu yanje ni ntoyi. Ubwambere, harimwo ama Reta abiri. Clement yari muri, mu gihugu ca reta Zunze Ubumwe za Amerika; ni zo za -mwankiye ubwenegihugu, zimusubiza mu Burundi, kandi zisaba ko yoshika afungwa. Hagaca hinjiramwo ko yaciye ashika afatwa n'iyindi Reta y'Uburundi. Uburundi bukaba bufise- Etats Unis zikaba zifise inzego z'Ubucamanza canke z'Ubutungane zishobora usigura neza ivo vy'ifatwa rya Clement Nkurunziza ku rugero ategerezwa kujanwa mu Burundi, kandi agahabwa iyindi reta, democratique, iri mu Burundi kugirango bige ikibazo ciwe.]
O Ethnic hatred, how you blind us! Has Frederic Nzeyimana suddenly become oblivious of the US denunciation of the fake elections that re-conducted him to office, or how many times they have condemned the executions and abductions that had marred the very regime that this Collectif's propagandist calls democratic? 

As far as truth-knowledge and truth-telling are concerned, however, the greatest contribution from this show by Kabaza Web TV is that it provided the opportunity to reveal to the world that there is formal cooperation between the Government of Burundi and the Collectif de 1972; that the latter has pledged to implement some programs jointly with the Burundi Interior Ministry. This is incontrovertible evidence. People have been stating (without necessarily being always taken seriously) that Frederic Nzeyimana and his Collectif de 1972 are external agents of the Burundi Government who carry on with the persecution against Burundian exiled opponents at large and the Tutsi in particular.
Having initially denied the existence of any cooperation between the Collectif de 1972 and the Burundi Government, during the program, Frederic Nzeyimana powerlessly assisted the shattering down of his lies as I mentioned the letter that the Burundi Minister of Foreign Affairs and Internal Cooperation addressed to the very “Collectif” in September 2017, which referred in unequivocal terms to an already existing cooperation agreement between the Government of Burundi and the Collectif de 1972. I promised to share it with Kabaza WebTV followers, which I did minutes only after the program (3).
Finally, the show permitted two major revelations about the lies that lie at the heart of the unjust detention against Clement Nkurunziza. On one hand, since the start of the whole fabrication, till his first appearance before a Burundi magistrate (just another agent of the CNDDFDD genocidal regime who simply happens to be performing the duties of public prosecutor), it has been repeated that in June 1995, Clement Nkurunziza was still President of the Executive Committee of the Student Union of the University of Burundi (ASSER).The journalist hosting the program put to Frederic and to me the question of whether or not Clement Nkurunziza was still President in June 1995. After which, quoting two sources, one of them being the Los Angeles Times in its March 31st, 1995 issue, the journalist showed that as early as March 1995, Clement Nkurunziza had handed over to his successors the leadership of the Student Union. And so, gone was the ill-devised and ill-learned song according to which Clement Nkurunziza is to be held responsible for the murders because they occurred under his mandate! On the other hand, thanks to his awkward arguments, Frederic Nzeyimana allowed the program viewers to ascertained his globalizing, unjust and unfounded attacks against the Tutsi-Hima: “Emmanuel is a liar like all Hima,” he declares. It is important to note according to his Frederic Nzeyimana's statements, the evidence that establishes my "being liar like my Hima kinsmen” is my embarassaing revelation that I had just made, namely, that cooperation agreement had existed for long between the Collectif de 1972 and the Government of Burundi. One more time, he is publicly displaying how in his hatred against the Hima, he does not hesitate to resort to globalization.
Overall, the program has revealed in his relentless attack against the Tutsi social group, Frederic Nzeyimana's favorite technique is the use the Hima metonymy with which he kills two birds with just one stone: on one hand, by sorting out that archenemy, he rallies easily the Hutu against the declared archenemy. On the other hand, he reinforces the genocide deniers' propaganda: there is no such a thing as a Tutsi social group in Burundi, which is a malicious way to deny the genocide that was perpetrated by CNDD-FDD's founding father (FRODEBU) given that since we cannot commit genocide against a non-existing group. So goes Frederic Nzeyimana's anthropological theory of genocide. 

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* About Frédéric Nzeyimana and Burundians, see http://burundi-information.net/diaspora-burundaise-de-toronto-exemple-a-suivre.html and in the sub-region, see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64T_cKUMSMw 

REFERENCES
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1. Impari kw'Ipfungwa rya Clement Nkurunziza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46VSoY6H4EM
2. Inyishu ku Kiganiro c'Abanyeshure Biciwe kuri Kaminuza n'Ipfungwa rya Clément Nkurunziza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3dYaFhZHsk
3. Abanyeshure b'Abahutu Bishwe kuri Kaminuza – CVR n'izindi Nzego Bavyifatamwo Gute? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8JbQ4-34vI
4. Letter of the Burundi Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Collectif de 1972 http://burundi-information.net/lettre-du-ministre-au-collectif-negationniste-04-oct-2017.html