Shock went through the Goucher community after news broke that Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, a professor of modern languages, had been accused of war crimes during the 1994 genocide in his native country of Rwanda. In an email to the Goucher Community, President Sanford Ungar brought forth news that a Rwandan prosecutor, accompanied by a NBC news team, had arrived at Goucher in December to present their case against Dr. Munyakazi.
Following the encounter with NBC, the college scrambled to address the situation. The college contacted Alison Des Forges, a senior advisor at Human Rights Watch to conduct an investigation into the validity of the Rwandan government's claims. In an interview with The New York Times, Miss Des Forges stated that she felt a foreign prosecutor traveling with a television crew was "highly unusual." This is some of the more moderate criticism that NBC has received for their conduct; a front-page story in the February 10th issue of The New York Times made frequent comparisons between this investigation and the controversial series "To Catch a Predator," a well-known NBC program which works with local law enforcement and private citizens to run "sting" operations on sexual predators.
While the investigation was being taken up by Goucher faculty and associates, Dr. Munyakazi was suspended from teaching and banned from campus. The professor and his family are currently staying in Goucher-sponsored off-campus housing. In an interview with The Quindecim, President Ungar stated that the Scholar Rescue Fund, the organization through which Goucher hired Dr. Munyakazi, is paying his salary as well as the cost of his housing. According to President Ungar, gaining membership in the Scholar Rescue Fund, an organization dedicated to helping academics at risk in their native countries find teaching jobs in the United States, had long been a goal that he hoped Goucher could achieve.
After being accepted by the Fund, Goucher was presented with a short list of candidates, all of whom had been thoroughly checked out by employees at the Fund. Goucher was made aware that the professor had made controversial statements regarding the Rwandan genocide, but that they hardly equated to war crimes allegations.
The statements in question were made at a conference at the University of Delaware in October of 2006. In a faculty forum, Dr. Munyakazi stated that, "there is a kind of international conspiracy to hide the truth about what happened." He also said that he does not conceive of it as genocide, but rather a civil war. According to Dr. Munyakazi, the genocide "was about political power." He went on to say that "ethnicity is not really understood about Rwanda; in Rwanda there are no tribes, there are social groups, they are one single people."
Only a few weeks after these statements, the Rwandan Prosecutor General petitioned the US government to arrest Dr. Munyakazi, stating that he was "a fugitive genocide suspect." No specific evidence was cited in the petition, nor has any been made available to the public since. It appears that the whole of the case against Dr. Munyakazi is contingent upon the eye-witness testimony of a single individual who came forward nearly twelve years after the 1994 genocide. The gap between the witness' alleged viewing of the crime and their testimony has led many experts to suggest that there is something unusual about this case. Moreover, it does not appear that the petition traveled through American diplomatic channels between the time it was made and arrival the Rwandan prosecutor at Goucher.
Further compounding the problematic details of the case is that Professor Munyakazi taught at a Rwandan college between 1999 and 2004, after he had been released from jail with no charges filed. These discrepancies in behavior toward the professor have led many at Goucher to question whether Dr. Munyakazi stands accused of war crimes or violating Rwanda's "Single Truth," which stipulates that the events of 1994 were a genocide. Any statement to the contrary earns one the label of "divisionist" a claim which is subject to criminal charges. Given how closely the petition for arrest followed the controversial speech at the University of Delaware, it would appear that the charges are highly political.
This was the opinion expressed by many students that attended a discussion held by the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom on the evening of Wednesday, February 11th. During the course of the meeting, club officers presented evidence that Dr. Munyakazi was facing continued political persecution through this indictment. Many students also expressed frustration and disbelief at how NBC had attached themselves to the story.
Two students, Laura Boris and Lucy Wild, claimed to have been videotaped by an NBC camera crew after exiting Dr. Munyakazi's French class on December 9th. This story seems to mesh with a report offered by The New York Times that, on the same day, Professor Munyakazi was accosted by a camera crew after dismissing his class. While nearly all of the students that attended Wednesday's discussion expressed support for Dr. Munyakazi, many also expressed feelings of frustration with Goucher. Some students felt that Goucher had not performed a thorough background check and had simply allowed Professor Munyakazi to slip in "under the radar." Others were concerned that students had simply "heard genocide and ran with it" and hoped to clarify some of the details regarding the case.
Dr. Munyakazi's son, Erve, was also present at the meeting to help clarify the details of his father's ordeal with the Rwandan government. Professor Munyakazi had been involved with an opposition political party and had been jailed without charges during the 1990's. The professor's son went on to state that he believes that the prosecution is highly motivated by political considerations, noting that the Rwandan government "are usually not happy when they find out the people they're after got jobs."
Be the first to comment on this article!