Africa-Press – Rwanda. The Governor-General of New Zealand, Dame Cindy Kiro, will join members of the Rwandan community in the country for the 30th commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi – Kwibuka 30 – slated for April 21, in the city of Auckland.
This is according to a statement from Rwanda’s High Commission in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Dame Cindy will speak alongside Jean de Dieu Uwihanganye, the High Commissioner of Rwanda to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, and Andrew Bayly, New Zealand Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, representing Foreign Minister Winston Peters.
It is expected that the event, organised by the Rwandan community in New Zealand – an island country in the Pacific Ocean – will attract many attendees including diplomats, leaders of African communities in the country, and friends of Rwanda.
Other officials set to speak during the event include Amb. Colin Keating, a former Permanent Representative of New Zealand to the UN, who is expected to reflect on the response of the UN Security Council in the events leading up to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and right after it got underway.
Keating, who served as the president of the UN Security Council at the start of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and three other officials, consistently called for action to prevent the genocide but their voices were smothered by most veto-wielding permanent members.
He also disapproved of Operation Turquoise, a French military intervention deployed to Rwanda in June 1994, which was a ploy to create a safe corridor for the genocidal regime to retreat to Zaire (currently DR Congo), and an attempt to thwart the efforts of RPF-Inkotanyi to stop the Genocide.
In November 2010, Amb. Keating, who served as New Zealand’s Ambassador to the UN from 1993 to 1996, was awarded ‘Umurinzi,’ Rwanda’s campaign against Genocide Medal, by President Paul Kagame.
Speaking ahead of the event, High Commissioner Uwihangenye said that New Zealand’s role at the United Nations, in trying to marshal international action against the genocidal regime that tried to exterminate the Tutsi population has never been forgotten.
“While that effort, led by Colin Keating, ultimately did not succeed it showed moral courage and leadership in the face of silence and indifference from the major powers,” he observed.
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