"Sonofabitchism", Netherlands-style. What is the true nature of the Dutch government's relationship with Palipehutu-FNL?
Agnes Van Ardenne: Thought FNL were just loveable rogues until August last year
Speaking after August 2004's Gatumba massacre by the Burundian Hutu-extremist group Palipehutu-FNL (commonly known as FNL), Dutch Development Minister Agnes van Ardenne said:
"What they did now is totally different from all the attacks in the past. In Gatumba women, children, babies were murdered in a most cruel way, with machetes, guns, and some were burnt alive. They didn't do that before. They attacked the Burundian armed forces until now, and are still doing, but they don't attack vulnerable people - women, children etc., so it's totally new."
http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/rnw/hotspots/bur040824.rm
Yet human rights groups had been recording a grim litany of FNL killings, largely directed against the Tutsi minority, since the mid-1990s. Claiming that the FNL never attacked civilians before August 2004 is like saying that the Nazis were firm followers of the Geneva Convention until 1943.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burundi/Burn004-02.htm#P57_4897
More worrying still is that Agnes Van Ardenne doesn't seem to have learned her lesson. Prior to Gatumba, the Dutch government was the Hutu-extremist's best friend in Europe, playing host to the FNL leader Agathon Rwasa in January 2004. Now that the fuss over Gatumba has died down, the Dutch appear to have gone back on their promise to get the massacre referred to the International Criminal Court. To do so, it is claimed, would "damage the Burundian peace process". Any move to hold the FNL leadership to account, it seems, is a threat to "peace". No matter that the group shares the ideology of the militia who carried out the Rwandan genocide, and continues to kill civilians - 300 in the last two months, according to Burundian sources:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/320083.html
What's the true nature of the Dutch relationship with Palipehutu-FNL?
"What they did now is totally different from all the attacks in the past. In Gatumba women, children, babies were murdered in a most cruel way, with machetes, guns, and some were burnt alive. They didn't do that before. They attacked the Burundian armed forces until now, and are still doing, but they don't attack vulnerable people - women, children etc., so it's totally new."
http://cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/rnw/hotspots/bur040824.rm Yet human rights groups had been recording a grim litany of FNL killings, largely directed against the Tutsi minority, since the mid-1990s. Claiming that the FNL never attacked civilians before August 2004 is like saying that the Nazis were firm followers of the Geneva Convention until 1943.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/burundi/Burn004-02.htm#P57_4897 More worrying still is that Agnes Van Ardenne doesn't seem to have learned her lesson. Prior to Gatumba, the Dutch government was the Hutu-extremist's best friend in Europe, playing host to the FNL leader Agathon Rwasa in January 2004. Now that the fuss over Gatumba has died down, the Dutch appear to have gone back on their promise to get the massacre referred to the International Criminal Court. To do so, it is claimed, would "damage the Burundian peace process". Any move to hold the FNL leadership to account, it seems, is a threat to "peace". No matter that the group shares the ideology of the militia who carried out the Rwandan genocide, and continues to kill civilians - 300 in the last two months, according to Burundian sources:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/320083.html What's the true nature of the Dutch relationship with Palipehutu-FNL?
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