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| International-UN-NGOs |
| West ’guilty’ over Rwanda genocide |
| 2004-04-06 |
| Tuesday, April 6, 2004 Posted: 7:42 AM EDT (1142 GMT) KIGALI, Rwanda -- Western powers bear "criminal responsibility" for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide because they did not attempt to stop it, the commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country at the time has said. Oh, so Kofi Annan doesn’t "accept blame" in this after all? Wasn’t he recently quoted as saying: "I realised after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support." "The international community didn’t give one damn for Rwandans because Rwanda was a country of no strategic importance," General Romeo Dallaire told a conference in Kigali marking the 10th anniversary of the slaughter. "It’s up to Rwanda not to let others forget they are criminally responsible for the genocide," he said, singling out France, Britain and the United States. "The genocide was brutal, criminal and disgusting and continued for 100 days under the eyes of the international community." Hey, it’s not like Africa doesn’t have one of these every fifteen stinking minutes. America, Britain and France all support the UN specifically so it can respond to these sorts of crimes against humanity. Rwanda’s genocide began on the night of April 6, 1994, after the shooting down of a plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, who both died in the crash near Kigali. And the finger points directly at current Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, for ordering the shootdown. More African on African violence, anyone? Nearly one million Tutsis and Hutu moderates were butchered by Hutu extremists in 100 days of brutal and unrestrained violence. The 57-year-old Canadian Dallaire was commander of a small U.N. peacekeeping force already in Rwanda when the genocide began. Months earlier he had raised the alarm in an SOS to the United Nations. He suffered He told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: "Rwanda was tribalism. They simplified it. Let black Africans do that and when they are finished we’ll pick up some of the pieces. "I don’t think there’s any justification for what happened, it was a shameful episode for collective shame." Good luck in trying to see if I’ll bleed all over this one. Dallaire battled for a more robust U.N. peacekeeping mission with a mandate to stop the killings, but Security Council members voted instead to cut his force from 2,500 troops to 450 poorly trained and ill-equipped men. Dallaire said on Tuesday events in Somalia in 1993, when 18 U.S. troops supporting a U.N. peace mission were killed and one of their bodies was dragged through the streets, had created a "fear of casualties" in the West. Maybe it wasn’t a "fear of casualties," you rotter. It might have something to do with a consistent pattern of corrupt and ungrateful responses to international peacekeeping efforts. Can you say, "Warlords in Mogadishu?" Rwandan President Paul Isn’t this a classic example of "one hand washing the other?" Excuse me, I need to puke. The irony’s a bit more than I can stand right now. Kagame led the rebel army which ousted the extremist Hutu government that planned and carried out the three months of mass killings initially ignored by world leaders. This sort of Western apologist crap merely legitimizes the acts of butchers like Kagame. No one forced the Hutus to perform mass amputations and gang rapes. They elected to make an abattoir of their own country and they alone carry the blame. Until sub-Saharan Africa comes to its senses and realizes that genocide, cannibalism and mass rape are not valid wartime strategies, they will not have the least moral claim upon any Western assistance. Northern Nigerian Islamists are spawning a new polio epidemic even as I type this. Try and blame me for that one, Dallaire! |
| Posted by:Zenster |
| #7 Steve, there is another more central issue surrounding this. It extends all the way from America, directly to the desk of Paul Kagame. Dallaire's attempt to validate Kagame's role is something that needs to be dealt with immediately. While many Americans do not feel as though the UN represents them correctly, many around the world still view the UN as a fairly direct extension of the United States. We are confronted in Rwanda by the same specter that haunts us in Libya today. Should America come to restore all relations with Kadafi, we will be seen as merely propping up another outmoded autocrat in the cast of Marcos or Suharto. Cynicism on the Arab street will be the result. As with Kadafi, Kagame too must be rejected as a vile remnant of previous regimes. Kagame's participation in genocide (45,000 civilians is most definitely genocide), makes any further support given him appear as old-era Western entrenchment of corrupt figureheads. Due to such implicit connections linking America with the UN, a lot of care should be given before allocating any credibility to either Kadafi or Kagame. Neither are leaders we really want at the helms of their respective nations and the United States will face certain (and potentially justified) condemnation should they be permitted to remain in power. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-07 10:28:41 PM |
| #6 Thank you for the advice, but it is not just Ms. del Ponte who holds such a low opinion of Kagame. The guy has a lot to answer for. Also, as head of UN forces in the area, Dallaire's current apologist stance and defense of Kagame taint his otherwise compelling position. Kagame bears share of genocide blame – Hutu rebels REUTERS9:08 a.m. April 7, 2004 NAIROBI, Kenya – Rwandan President Paul Kagame bears his share of blame for the 1994 genocide because he began a civil war that set Rwandans against each other, a rebel group that counts genocide suspects among its members said Wednesday. The accusation came from the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), which consists of exiled ethnic Hutus, many of whom were involved in the massacres before fleeing into lawless eastern Congo. "The current plight of the Rwandan people did not start on April 6, 1994, but was initiated by the RPF and its army, the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), when they invaded Rwanda from Uganda on October 1, 1990. The current instability in the Great Lakes region is a direct consequence of this attack." The central African country was plunged into a frenzy of ethnic butchery that saw 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus cut down by Hutu extremists after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994. The slaughter followed three years of civil war between Habyarimana's French-backed government and Kagame's Tutsi-led RPA, which operated from bases in neighboring Uganda and ended the genocide when it finally won the war in July 1994 ... The FDLR said Kagame bore additional blame for triggering the genocide because he had ordered the downing of Habyarimana's plane – a charge also made by a French judicial investigation. Kagame denies the charge, and no official inquiry has been held into the crash. "It is time Kagame and all high-ranking officers of the RPF/RPA were brought to Justice and held accountable before an independent and fair court system," the FDLR said. The group also suggested that Hutus inside Rwanda were being discouraged from publicly mourning their dead. "Numerous Rwandans are allowed neither to mourn, to bury their dead with dignity nor to express publicly the suffering of their friends and relatives," it said. "Grief, desolation, pain, and misery are not the monopoly of any ethnic or race groups." |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-07 5:07:56 PM |
| #5 Tip, Zenster: don't believe anything Ms. del Ponte says. You'll be right far more than you're wrong. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-04-06 11:46:04 PM |
| #4 Zenster, you can pick your favorite home team out of the death squads as you see fit - that seems to be where you choose to grind your ax. Leave the Cannuck out of your rant. Being left as the fall guy in a massacre will haunt him for a lifetime. It did for Bucher. I read an interview of a NASA engineer who tried to stop the Challenger launch because he believed that the o-rings couldn't take the low temp. Then he had to watch the launch ... in tears knowing that there was nothing that he could do. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-04-06 11:16:44 PM |
| #3 Phil B, while Kagame's numbers may have been smaller, he seems to have engaged in atrocities as well. --------------------------------- Led by Mr. Kagame, then a rebel, the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] is suspected of having killed at least 45,000 Rwandan civilians as it made its way to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, and end the genocide by snatching power. Although the number of deaths is just a fraction of the number killed on behalf of the Hutu-extremist government, international rights activists say all atrocities should receive attention from a court established to dispense justice fairly ... For some observers, Ms. Del Ponte's comments will cast a shadow over the aims of the tribunal, which is mandated to probe all war crimes in Rwanda in 1994, which left at least 500,000 people dead, mostly Tutsis. Ms. Del Ponte succeeded Canada's Louise Arbour as chief prosecutor for its ad hoc war crimes tribunals in 1999, and secretly launched what she called "Special Investigations" against the 1994 activities of the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) as it fought to overthrow the Hutu-led government that carried out the genocide. Led by Mr. Kagame, then a rebel, the RPF is suspected of having killed at least 45,000 Rwandan civilians as it made its way to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, and end the genocide by snatching power ... Though the Rwandan government has prevented ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda] investigators from interviewing anyone inside Rwanda about possible RPF atrocities, Ms. Del Ponte is believed to have had four cases ready to go. They have not been mentioned, however, by the new prosecutor. --------------------------------- The UN has not said much about RPF atrocities, and refused to release a report that sources said revealed RPF soldiers had slaughtered as many as 45,000 Hutus as they fought their way to Kigali, the Rwandan capital. The figure pales in comparison to the 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi civilians hacked, shot and stabbed to death by Hutus, encouraged by the country's politically extremist Hutu leaders during three months of genocide in 1994. --------------------------------- Kagame still had his own hand in the blood bath. Some 45,000 civilians is no small potatoes. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-06 9:38:35 PM |
| #2 Kagame wasn't the butcher. It was the Hutu government he overthrew. The Rwanda genocide to the extent it can be blamed on others was the UN's failure, and it disgusts me that no one is prepared to stand up and say so. |
| Posted by: Phil B 2004-04-06 8:32:39 PM |
| #1 Prediction: within a day, the Dems and the entire media establishment will be blaming Bush. No, I'm not kidding. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-04-06 8:23:50 PM |