Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4860
A prominent http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4762 writer, Pierre Pean, is on trial in Paris accused of inciting racial hatred in a book on the Rwandan genocide.
Mr Pean wrote that the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4784 had a culture of lies and deceit, and this had somehow spread to the Hutus.
He said it made investigating Rwanda “an almost impossible task”. Some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 1994.
A French rights group, SOS Racisme, filed the lawsuit against Mr Pean.
The case against him is backed by the public prosecutor. It centres on four pages in Mr Pean’s book Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs (Black furies, white liars), published in 2005.
In remarks broadcast on French radio on Wednesday, Mr Pean said he “wrote a book on lies, misinformation, which were, I believe, conducted through extremely elaborate methods, whereby a dictatorial http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3439 wanted people to believe in lies”.
An investigative journalist, Mr Pean wrote a bestseller about former French President Francois Mitterrand, among other works.Historians, other experts and politicians, including former foreign minister Hubert Vedrine, are due to testify this week. The verdict is expected at a later date.
SOS Racisme president Dominique Sopo said that “when you are aware what cliches can trigger in terms of killings, racism and confrontation, especially in that country, it seems to me that this particular issue greatly disturbs those who went through such drama and who prefer not to go through it again”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7633449.stm
From a reader: What is interesting is how the article states that Pean’s argument about how a supposed Tutsi “culture of lies and deceit…had somehow spread to the Hutus” is thrown in, as if to ameliorate the facts about this travesty: a Frenchman is facing prosecution from a special interest group which will profit from the case, for stating an opinion. This prosecution is an absolutely outrageous human rights abuse, especially coming from a nation which prides itself on Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. As Orwell said, the French even put that slogan above their police stations. What a grim farce.