Johan Swinnen (diplomat)

Johan Swinnen (* 1947 ) is a Belgian diplomat .

Life

Swinnen received his doctorate in law from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven , and obtained a certificate of advanced studies from the Geneva University Institute for International Studies in 1973. He represented the Belgian government at the UN headquarters in New York City .

From 1992 to 2004 Swinnen was ambassador to the former Belgian colony of Rwanda . With French funding, Juvénal Habyarimana enlarged the Rwandan army from 5,000 to 28,000 soldiers, set up a militia with 30,000 as the presidential guard and had Tutsis murdered from 1990 to 1994 . In 1992 around 7,000 Tutsi were murdered in a massacre. He had close ties with Mobutu Sese Seko . Swinnen quoted from a letter from the Rwandan Ministry of Defense in which the Tutsi were described as the first enemy.

In spring 1992 Swinnen learned that the Akazu were planning to exterminate the Tutsi in Rwanda. Swinnen telegraphed to Brussels that Interahamwe had taken part in the carefully planned killings in the Bugesera district .

In March 1993 a report was published of a massacre of several thousand unarmed Tutsi civilians, whereupon Swinnen was withdrawn from Kigali for two weeks in protest. Swinnen warned of the increasing destabilization of Rwanda by radio broadcasts from Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines RTLM and advocated a translation of the contributions from the Kinyarwanda . On January 15, 1994, Swinnen told the government in Brussels that as long as the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda did not intervene, weapons would be distributed to the Interahamwe.

About Radio RTLM and hatred were stoked on Belgians, after the launch of the Dassault Falcon 50 of Juvénal Habyarimana Belgians were suspected of being behind the attack and Belgian blue helmets of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda , the protection of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana on April 7 Murdered in 1994.

Enoch Ruhigira, 1992 Finance Minister 1994, Head of the Presidential Office of Juvénal Habyarimana , was waiting for the arrival of the Dassault Falcon 50 on April 6, 1994 , when he discovered that it had been shot down, he informed Jean-Michel Marlaud by telephone and received the Embassy of Swinnen political asylum.

The French ambassador in Kigali, Jean-Michel Marlaud , informed Swinnen in April 1994 of the cabinet list of the new government in Rwanda. Swinnen noted that they were dedicated Hutu, whereupon Marlaud said the cabinet would prevent a coup.

In The Hague , chemical weapons were his area of ​​responsibility from 1999 onwards. In 2003 he was ambassador to Kinshasa ( Democratic Republic of the Congo ).

Johan Swinnen also served as the Belgian Ambassador in The Hague, Kinshasa and Madrid.

Individual evidence

1. ^ WR Smyser, The humanitarian conscience: caring for others in the age of terror , p. 188
2. ↑ Jared Cohen, One-hundred days of silence: America and the Rwanda genocide , p. 29
3. ↑ Linda Melvern, Conspiracy to murder: the Rwandan genocide , p. 28
4. ^ Mark Phythian, Under the counter and over the border: Aspects of the contemporary trade in Illicit Arms
5. ^ Rwanda Documents Project
6. ↑ Kathrin Ahlbrecht, Reinhard Meyers, Conflict Regulation and Peacekeeping in the International System , p. 51
7. ↑ Linda Melvern, A people betrayed: the role of the West in Rwanda's genocide , p. 94
8. ↑ Helmut Strizek: Clinton on Lake Kivu. The story of an African catastrophe . Peter Lang, Frankfurt aMu a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-60563-9 , pp. 114 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - footnote 317).
9. ↑ Linda Melvern, Conspiracy to murder: the Rwandan genocide , 2004 - History - 358 pp.
10. ↑ koninklijk besluit van 11 October 1999: de heer Johan Swinnen, Permanent Vertegenwoordiger bij de Organizatie voor het verbod van chemical wapens te Den Haag  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ [1]
12. ↑ - koninklijk besluit van October 29, 1997: de heer J. Swinnen, Ambassadeur te 's-Gravenhage  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ Bij koninklijk besluit van 28 September 2008 was awarded the heer Johan Swinnen accredited as Ambassadeur en Consul-Generaal van België in het Prinsdom Andorra, met standplaats te Madrid  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken . Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
14. ↑ [2] [3]

predecessor	Office	successor
Guy Logiest Félix Standaert	Belgian Ambassador in Kigali 1992-22 November 1994	Frank De Coninck
1955–1966: François-Xavier van der Straten-Waillet	Belgian Ambassador in The Hague October 29, 1997 - 2002
Renier Nijskens	Belgian ambassador in Kinshasa 2003–2008	Dominique Struye de Swielande
Claude Rijmenans	Belgian Ambassador in Madrid January 2009–