I thought I would bring the 10 year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide to everyone’s attention so we can take a moment and pay respects to those that died.
If you pray, maybe also pray that others will find healing like this man:
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/stories/rwandacomic20040407
And what little use it is, I am sorry I did nothing
Thank you, Lark.
Thanks Lark. Now Rwanda has its own thread I’m going to re-post a comment I made on the political thread to mark this occasion. I had hoped that it would put some of our current talk of terror in perspective as well as remind people of what happens almost unnoticed in distant places of little strategic importance. Perhaps some people aren’t even aware of the enormity of the tragedy. My original post got drowned out in the screech of chatter about internal American affairs. Here it is.
It’s the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. In 12 weeks, 800,000 people were slaughtered.
The UN court in Arusha has tried some of the perpetrators. I don’t have reliable figures in front of me but I believe that about 15 people have been convicted by that court. Does that seem low? Well, people have actually sought to be tried by that court rather than face the medicine in Rwanda itself. I have no reliable figures for the number of people who faced summary justice in Rwanda and I have no idea how many of those executed there were actually guilty.
Did someone assure us the other day on this thread that we’re winning the ‘war against terror’ or was that just another of my nightmares?
PBS’s Frontline program did a mindboggling 2 hour show on it recently. It shows Clinton’s spokesperson at a press conference playing the quintessential bureaucrat when asked if genocide was happening. She kept dodging the issue, saying “Well, you know genocide has a strict legal definition,” etc, etc, as people died by the hundreds of thousands. And of course the bureaucrats denied that they knew it was happening, even though it was on our news every night in graphic detail.
French public radio did a long feature on the Int’l Court in Arusha.
There I heard:
The court made it a principle to sue the leaders, not the gofers.
This includes the top government figures including every province “prefect” (local governor), and of course the senior officers of police and army, but also priests, journalists, etc.
About 80 individual cases are investigated.
Of them, 66 had been arrested, or turned themselves in: they did prefer a regular court, with a right for defense, and where they face no death penalty than official lynching in Rwanda. Since the court should be dissolved next year, some more are expected to turn themselves in, or be arrested.
Of those already sentenced, there is the Prime Minister of Rwanda at the time of the massacre, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life enprisonment (without ways of reducing this duration). Hence Jean Kambanda gets to be the first government head ever convicted and sentenced for genocide.
Several ministers had the same sentence.
The Anglican bishop Samuel Musabyimana was arrested and faced the same charges but deceased in prison.
The court is slow, bureaucratic, but does get some job achieved.
Its work is complicated by the fact that 90% of the witnesses have to be kept anonymous under a witness protection plan.
It is also interesting to see what the Tribunal has to say, rather than rely only on second-hand reports newspapers, so prompt to diss its bureaucratism, expenses, etc. rather than what’s been effectively done. As we say “A train arrived in time is no news”.
You have all the cases, charges and sentences on the Tribunal site: http://www.ictr.org/
Don’t miss this sheet : http://www.ictr.org/ENGLISH/factsheets/detainee.htm
Zubivka, thanks for the more up-to-date figures and the references. I was aware of the details you mention as I relied on books by experts on international law—jurists who actually preside in cases like this—and not on news reports. I probably gave a false impression of my respect for the international trubunal but I was trying to give a picture of the enormity of the tragedy and the paucity of official response. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that, under the circumstances, the tribunal itself could and should have done better. Nevertheless, for that many people to die in such a short period of time, a great many people must have committed multiple murders. For my part, I think the major challenge for those of us who want to prevent future genocides is to figure out ways of preventing the leaders co-ordinating the masses of henchmen so quickly and effectively. There are some very good books written on the role and dynamics of crowd behaviour in ethno-nationalist violence. The frightening thing is that the people who are currently fighting the ‘war on terror’ don’t seem to have read them.
Blackhawk, the UN don’t come out of this smelling of roses either. They repeatedly ignored credible reports that the massacres were coming and they would not permit UN troops to intervene to restore some semblance of order even when news of the scale of the atrocities was getting out. At the time, they simply looked the other way too.
I missed the first hour of this broadcast (so it may not have the footage I’m about to mention), Wombat, but I saw another show Frontline did eight or nine years ago and they interviewed UN soldiers who were ordered to pull out. A camera man filmed a large crowd of refugees who begged them not to leave, but the orders were to pull out regardless. One woman then begged the soldier to shoot her so the guys with the machetes wouldn’t make their deaths hurt so much. According to the UN, their orders to pull out came from the U.S. The soldiers wanted to stay, and at the time they were between the bad guys and their victims. Pulling out allowed the killers to do their dirty work. The camera man went back the next day and the whole crowd was still right there, but they were all dead (the program showed the footage, several minutes of panning across all the hundreds of bodies).
You’re exactly right, the UN came out much like they usually do (Bosnia, Iraq, etc). But the US came out just as bad (not mentioning who was president thru all that).
You know, it’s bloody amazing just how often bullshit like this happens and the rest of the world turns its head. The holocaust was ignored by most other countries until Germany posed a threat to the rest of the world. Then of course you had Pol Pot in Cambodia, and the west turned its head there too…
Let Not Hatred
Words by Aaron Walden.
Tune: Liberty Hall, composer unknown (an old tune).
O let not hatred guide our way,
Nor arrogance and pride,
For ev’ry race you may survey,
Was made the same, inside.
Mankind has done some evil things,
Against his fellow man,
The knell of death, through hist’ry rings.
The blood of kith and clan.
Be not deceived, nor think that it
All happened “over there.”
Let’s be quite truthful and admit,
On earth it’s ev’rywhere.
But turn away from pride and lust,
Turn, turn, from hatred’s sway,
Let unjust slander fade to dust,
As night is turned to day.
© 2004 by Aaron Walden.
Thank you, Lark.
Thnx, Lark
This is the only political post I will ever make.
I have often thought of the situation in the world, the war on terror, the middle east, and so on, but always there comes to mind something said by a Bosnian on the CBC:
800,000 Bosnians were killed, and nothing happens,
3000 Americans are killed, and the world changes……why?
There is no answer to this that can be justified, and the solution will not come from words, money, or the muzzle of a gun. It would take no more then love. Love for our neighbour and honest concern for his or her welfare, but this, I fear, is beyond us.
800,000 Bosnians were killed, and nothing happens,
3000 Americans are killed, and the world changes……why?
Probably simply because the Americans had the means to react on a global scale.
And (this is personal commentary) the 11 September attacks were highly symbolic, and aimed at soliciting such a reaction, it seems.