Filip Reyntjens is a genocide denier, a historical revisionist, a negrophobe, and a conspirator. He is an emeritus professor of law and politics at the Institute of Development Policy of the University of Antwerp. His work focuses on the Great Lakes region of Africa. Prior to the genocide, he was involved in the drafting of the Constitution of the Rwandan Republic in 1978, which effectively established an apartheid regime towards the Tutsi. In its preamble, the constitution portrays the anti-Tutsi pogroms of 1959-1963 as “the liberation work undertaken by the Revolution of 1959” and the coup d’état of the “memorable day of July 5, 1973” as the means to “safeguard the achievements of the Revolution of 1959.” Article 7 of the constitution establishes a one-party system: “The Rwandan people are politically organized with the National Revolutionary Movement for Development, the sole political formation under which no political activity can be carried out outside its framework.”
Reyntjens recounts his career journey in his book Les risques du métier, trois décennies comme chercheur-acteur au Rwanda et au Burundi (“The Risks of the Profession: Three Decades as a Researcher-actor in Rwanda and in Burundi”). The book is composed of a self-retrospective narrative and personal justifications. As a trained legal expert, his proximity to political power in the context of neo-colonization in Africa makes him appear more important than he actually is, considering that he was only 24 years old when he arrived in Rwanda as a trainee administrator. He admits enjoying the fact that his European status has granted him easy access to the highest levels of power. During that time, he transformed into a political advisor and played with the ethno-racial balancing in Rwanda like a sorcerer’s apprentice. He boasts about how he became a “small dignitary” capable of “meeting two or three ministers in a day.” Despite occupying this position during the pre-genocide period, he remained silent about the policy of ethnic quotas and the republished manifesto of the Hutu known as the “Ten Commandments of the Hutu,” despite his additional role as a correspondent for Amnesty International. The manifesto is the foundational text for the ethnic hatred against the Tutsi.
In 1990, he advised Habyarimana to reduce the mass arrests of Tutsi, as he stated it would have a negative impact on their image. In 1992, he drafted a report on death squads, agreeing with Habyarimana on mitigating the consequences of their existence and actions. In November 1990, he attended a conference in Geneva to counter what he called the “RPF propaganda” along with Ferdinand Nahimana, the founder of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines. He befriended Froduald Karamira, who during a meeting on October 23, 1993, launched the slogan “Hutu Power.” During the genocide, Karamira publicly called for the massacre of Tutsi. After the genocide, Reyntjens pretended to criticize the akazu (Hutu extremists) in order to distance himself from his former friends while continuing to occupy the intellectual landscape of experts on Rwanda.
In 1995, he published Rwanda, trois jours qui ont fait basculer l’histoire (Rwanda, three days that changed history), which, in the absence of a judicial investigation for several years, passed as the only comprehensive study on the April 6 attack. Most of the facts Reyntjens reports seem to point to Hutu extremists as the masterminds of the attack. However, in his conclusion, he puts the blame of the attack on the RPF, writing that “several indications tend to implicate the RPF as the perpetrator of the attack.” Since then, he strongly defends his theory, particularly on social media where he has a strong presence. Several omissions between the draft of his book (submitted to Judge Vandermeersch on August 2, 1995) and the printed version (late 1995) aim to conceal the role of France before, during, and after the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi.
The ICTR (International Criminal Court for Rwanda) has repeatedly called upon Reyntjens as an expert cited by the Prosecutor (in the case of Bagosora and Rutaganda), as well as once by the defense (in the case of Kanyabashi). In 2017, he published Le génocide des Tutsi au Rwanda (The Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda) in the “Que sais-je” series. The book distorts the significance of the event and borrows from the usual themes of denialism, downplaying the genocidal intent of Hutu extremists, attributing responsibility to the RPF for the genocide, and systematically balancing the actions of the genocide perpetrators with those of the RPF in the liberation war which ended the genocide. He exploits his position as an expert on the region and the naivety of journalists and judges to conceal and diminish the crimes of the genocide perpetrators. He juggles with truth and falsehood, but his main emphasis is on accusing the RPF.
Reyntjens recently said that the survivors’ association Ibuka was a “union of informants” and that Rwandans are “brilliant liars.” In March 2018, he wrote on Twitter: “Judi Rever’s book”, referring to In Praise of Blood (2018), “irrefutably shows that RPF committed genocide. So yes, a double genocide took place.”