RWANDA: Peace prize for Belgian priest accused of genocide
IRIN/Reuters ^ | 16 Feb 2006
GHENT, 16 February (IRIN) - Belgian Roman Catholic missionary Guy Theunis, who has been accused by the Rwandan authorities of taking part in the 1994 genocide, has been awarded a peace prize.
The prize was granted on Wednesday in the Belgian city of Ghent by the Flemish weekly church newspaper Kerk en Leven (Church and Life). The bishop of Ghent, Luc Van Looy, presented a cheque for 3,000 euros (US $3,560) and a work of art to Theunis on behalf of the jury.
Van Looy said Theunis, 60, who worked in Rwanda as a member of the White Fathers order from 1970 until 1994, "was mainly active in the fields of human rights, peace and justice". Theunis co-founded a Rwandan association for human rights and was also active in the Rwandan media. After the genocide, he trained church workers in South Africa.
"He strongly favoured the option for non-violence, which attracted on him many death threats," Van Looy said.
It was Theunis's first public appearance since he arrived in Belgium on 21 November 2005 from Rwanda.
Rwandan police arrested him on 6 September 2005 while he was in transit to Belgium from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He was charged in Rwanda with "incitation to genocide", for reprinting - in a press review mainly intended for diplomats - articles from an extremist publication that incited the country's majority Hutus to kill its minority Tutsi population. |
