The AP reports that Goucher College professor Leopold Munyakazi was arrested for violating the conditions of his visa. [What, you were expecting someone else?] Munyakazi is accused of participating in the Rwandan genocide, charges he denies.
Munyakazi is charged with murder and several genocide-related counts, according to a copy of an indictment provided by Munyakazi. Goucher officials said they gave Munyakazi a copy of the indictment, which they received from a Rwandan prosecutor.
Alison Des Forges, senior adviser to Human Rights Watch's Africa division, reviewed the indictment and said it contained details that do not "fit historical facts of the time." For instance, it is unlikely that Munyakazi organized a militia associated with a party that was opposed to the party he was affiliated with, Des Forges said.
Goucher suspended Munyakazi because the allegations are so serious, college President Sanford Ungar said earlier in the week, adding the removal wasn't a judgment of the professor or the charges.
Did the charges fit the historical facts of another time, maybe?
Something's rotten in the state of
DenmarkRwanda. But we knew that.Shouldn't someone now allege President Ungar's participation in the same genocide? The 'fit' of such charges with 'the historical facts of the time' is, apparently, irrelevant.
Belgium had been the most recent colonialist power (Germany originally, c. WWI) and continued to have financial and other critical ties with Rwanda; the E.U. in general; Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Sec-Gen of the U.N.; the United Nations as a whole - all those actors should be subjected to legal/moral review on the basis of a conscious, premeditated unwillingness to act even though European and U.N. military units were in Rwanda at the time and members of those military units expressed their desire to actively get involved.
I.e. knowing, premeditated negligence in the face of mass murder.
I do have some sympathy for Sandy Ungar; the reputation of a small college is a precious commodity. And, after all, he suspended from teaching an untenurable visiting instructor. Not exactly an assault on academic freedom.
What does the teachers employment status have to do with whether his suspension is an assault on academic freedom?
Secondly, he was supsended from teaching, not officially fired.
As a related point - not to his status - he was not suspended for expressing unpopular views; he was suspended because he was under investigation for genocidal activity. In other words, the college suspended him because he might have been a criminal. If that amounts to an assault on academic freedom, I would say academic freedom should be reconceptualized.
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