The passing of a Head of State is like losing a father. That is why I write this letter of adieu and thank a great Prime Minister for what he did for our country.
In the country where I lived – Burundi – at the passing of an individual, a member of the family or a delegate asks people who are mourning if there is any dispute or debt to settle so that the deceased may rest in peace and those who survive him continue to live in harmony.
Let us borrow from that good culture that survived in Burundi, in order to address what went wrong during the administration of our Prime Minister and his predecessor and even during the current administration. I have to share my experience in order for my adoptive compatriots to understand what goes on in this country.
My first steps in Canada
Soon after I set foot in Canada, I found that Burundi diplomats who had disavowed the culture, had already infiltrated the political system in order to try to force me to return to Burundi where my husband Martin Ndayahoze –who was a government minister (before “the power vacuum’’ which was created by individuals who prepared genocide in Burundi) – was assassinated with more than 300 000 people of his ethnic group. The ones who organised that pogrom invoked my husband’s name in order to set people against each other so that they could attain their diabolical goals. I doubt the culprits who committed the deed ever thought that they were setting fire to neighboring countries.
In order to cover up that horrible crime, they killed all the witnesses to the crime whom they could find. I was the only one who escaped with documents that prove that the crime had been planned and set in motion. The Burundi ambassador came from Ottawa to Montreal to terrorise me at my place of work and asked me to go back to Burundi. The diplomats continued to harass me as well as people who supported me. Or they bribed them. The Member of Parliament for Outremont – my representative as an Outremont resident – Jean-Pierre Hogue was promised a ticket to go to Burundi. McGill law professor John Humphrey and his wife traveled to Burundi at the invitation of the Burundi ambassador in Ottawa. When they returned from Burundi, I was shocked to find out that they had turned against me. Yet they had been among my supporters.
When I first arrived in Canada, I began working for Mr. Ogumbi at the Nigeria Delegation to the ICAO. He sent me to ask for advice from to Dr Kotaite who was the President of ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation). He advised me to contact External Affairs in Ottawa, which I did, but the advice he gave me went for nought. I met with a bureaucratic ‘wall.’
Then I wrote to Prime Minister Mulroney, with a copy to the leaders of all political parties sitting in the Parliament of Canada, asking them to form a Parliamentary committee composed of all political parties in order to study the case of Burundi so that the government might see to working toward the prevention of future genocides. The case was known since I had written to all leaders of the parties but I was directed to the External Affairs Canada and the staff there were either intimidated by the Burundi diplomats or were siding with them.
When I met the Director of the Liberal Party of Canada – Charles Bouchard – I explained what had happened and told him that they should use the convention for the prevention of genocide as a binding measure because all the time that the killing went on in Rwanda and Burundi, the UN stepped in when people were already dead and only went to feed people in the refugee camp. I said that the UN was created to prevent genocides and not to simply be ‘fire extinguishers.
Notebook and pen in hand
Mr. Bouchard said to me, “If there were 500 people like you, the world would be a better place.”. He said that the Liberal Party would mobilise other Liberal parties in the world to support the case. But I was in desperate need of a lawyer. I was referred Irwin Cotler. When I mentioned to Cotler what I had been told by the Liberal Party, he said he had worked with John Turner and thought that he could mobilise the politicians. Instead of following through, Cotler grabbed the case, using my documents I had accumulated over some years, and used them as his own in order to raise his own profile without any acknowledgement of the fact that the documents were mine to begin with. I call that dishonourable.
“If there were 500 people like you, the world would be a better place
Mr. Bouchard
At one point, I was told that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was holding a press conference at Montreal City Hall. I was advised to go there and shout out loud my frustration. I did not do that. I took a note book and a pen and went there. They thought that I was a journalist and let me in. After the press conference, I went to the reception which was organized for the PM. I approached him and told him that I had written to him, that I was asking to him to create a committee to deal with the problem of genocide, a problem which had followed me all the way to Canada. I said that the bureaucracy was stifling, that I was asking for a committee to study the case and find a solution. He called one of his assistants and said that he would help me. The man told me that he would send the dossier to External Affairs and said that they would deal with it.
If committees are formed to increase the salaries of MPs, why not invest that money in the prevention of genocide.
I also met PM Brian Mulroney’s brother-in-law, Mr. Elliot who was very helpful. Then a civil servant called me and told me to ask my lawyer to tell them what to do. The lawyer was Irwin Cotler, in principle (though as time would prove not very ‘principled’) specialised in the matter of genocide and human rights. Everyone told me that he was the best lawyer in Canada.
A new Burundi ambassador arrived in Canada to replace the previous ambassador whose mandate had ended. That new ambassador created havoc in Canada even though he brought me a letter from the President of Burundi asking me to work with him to promote justice and peace. The new ambassador went to almost all of my contacts with the objective of turning them against me by smearing my reputation.
The year 1989 was a crucial time when the genocide in Africa (Burundi, Rwanda) could have been prevented. Everyone expected that my lawyer (now ex-lawyer) would do what he was expected to do as a lawyer specialized in genocide, but all he did was exploit the information I gave him to get publicity for himself. He says one thing in public on justice and human rights but in reality, he is no humanitarian.
Cotler, lawyer for Nelson Mandela, really?
During the time that Cotler was my lawyer, the late Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, sent a letter stating “I am delighted to join you in paying tribute to Irwin Cotler — a great Canadian and a world-class human rights lawyer”. Via that false reputation, Cotler became the unsung hero of the rule-of- law and justice and human rights as far as the media in Canada were concerned. Other lawyers whom I had asked for help told me that I had the best lawyer. Even a judge of the status of Rosalie Abella told me that I had the ‘best lawyer in Canada’ in the person of Irwin Cotler.
Cotler put in his CV that he had been President Mandela’s lawyer. There is no proof whatsoever of this. In fact, in Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom,” there is not one single mention of Irwin Cotler’s name either in the text itself or in the notes at the end of the book, nor is he seen in any of the photos which appear in the book. At one point, when Nelson Mandela came to Montreal in 2001, I asked Irwin Cotler to bring me to meet Nelson Mandela since he had been ‘Nelson Mandela’s lawyer.’ What followed was a lame excuse by Cotler explaining why he was unable to bring me to meet with Mandela. Nelson Mandela visited Canada three times. I am unaware of Cotler meeting with him on any one of those occasions, certainly an anomaly for someone who was ‘Mandela’s lawyer’! (In 1999 Mandela became the principal negotiator for the crisis in Burundi (https://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/mandela-work-burundi-ceasefire). A crisis I asked to be prevented.
Journalists avoid asking for clarification regarding Cotler’s claim to have been Mandela’s lawyer. It is but one of the myths which have been built up around Cotler and those myths have been so carefully threaded that no one deems to question them. After all, who would doubt the reputation of a former Canadian Minister of Justice, a darling of the media, ‘Nelson Mandela’s lawyer’?
My ex-lawyer will do anything to glorify himself while, in effect, he has done nothing accept using my case and getting his student to write to Joe Clark and didn’t do follow up to prevent genocide. When genocide happened in Rwanda Cotler blamed the international community for doing nothing to prevent the genocide while he pretended to work on the issue with his students at McGill University. Nothing more than the art of strategic communication in the case of Irwin Cotler. People who died in the genocide became marketing objects only. No accountability. When it comes to the marketing of his reputation as a ‘fighter for human rights,’ Irwin Cotler is a first-rate ‘marketing executive’!
Cotler and the genocide in Gaza
If, in effect, Cotler is the great humanitarian and fighter for human rights as he claims, how is it that he turns a blind eye to the genocide that is taking place in Gaza at the present time? Where is his great defense of the rule-of-law? Does Cotler’s rule –of-law exist everywhere except Israel? Raphael Lemkin- who coined the term ‘genocide’ and first set its parameters – must be turning in his grave because of what is happening in Gaza. Cotler essentially turned the same blind eye to the genocide in Rwanda despite that I told him that if there is no justice in Burundi there will be war which will affect Rwanda and Congo. All he did was paying lip-service to the Convention on Genocide and strutting like a rooster to glorify his own image. It is shocking that a man in the public venue has been able to build his career on falsities and get away with it with impunity. The truth of the matter is that Cotler has paid lip-service to the genocide convention while virtually ignoring it in substance.
Maybe we should borrow from Burundi culture to set specific cultural and political norms that dictate individual behaviour by setting expectations and standards for acceptable conduct within society. Then the law will emanate from a new society where lies have no place. Our leaders should earn the respect of citizens in order to govern the country. We want our leaders to have integrity and to be surrounded by honest people. That does not describe Irwin Cotler as per my experience of him. He has not earned my respect. What is more, I suffered abuse at his hands, the details of which I choose to leave aside at the present moment.
To the family of Brian Mulroney, and in particular to his widowed wife, Mila Mulroney, I wish to express my most sincere sympathy with a wish for happiness in the future. I know what it means to suffer the death of one’s husband.
See also:
https://www.amazon.ca/Cdt-Martin-Ndayahoze-Visionaire/dp/B08JD6VZNP
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/20/nyregion/un-action-in-barring-a-woman-is-protested.html
PAJU NOTE:
PAJU chose to publish this article written by Rose Karambizi Ndayahoze, survivor of the Burundian genocide, widow of the assassinated Burundian government minister, Martin Ndayahoze, killed during a coup d’état in Burundi.
Although PAJU cannot definitively confirm Rose Ndayahoze’s accusation that Irwin Cotler used documents that Madame Ndayahoze had collected over time to enhance his own reputation, Ms. Ndayahoze’s background and writings underline the credibility of her assertions. There are a certain number of documents that Ms. Ndayahoze gave us for study.
It is on this basis that PAJU requests that there be an investigation into Rose Ndayahoze’s claim that Irwin Cotler used her documents for his own purposes without ther authorization. Furthermore, Ms. Ndayahoze’s assertion that Irwin Cotler was not Nelson Mandela’s lawyer is corroborated by an article published on the PAJU website, originally published in the Canada Files, and written by Bruce Katz,
