-------- Original Message --------
Subject: France, US, Catholic Church Blasted for Role in Rwanda Genocide
Date: Sat, 8 Jul 2000 23:34:21 -0500 (CDT)
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Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.
*** 07-Jul-0* ***
Title: POLITICS: France, US, Catholic Church Blasted for Role in Rwanda
Genocide
By Jim Wurst
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 (IPS) - A new investigation into the 1994
genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath is sharply critical of the
United States, France and the Catholic Church for not exercising
their powers to prevent or halt the murders of some 800,000 people.
"Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide," commissioned by the Organisation
of African Unity (OAU), says, "A small number of major actors could
directly have prevented, halted, or reduced the slaughter." The
report was also critical of the OAU and the United Nations.
The seven-member International Panel of Eminent Personalities,
chaired by the former president of Botswana Ketumile Masire, was
established by the OAU ministers in November 1997. Masire presented
the report to the OAU Summit in Lome simultaneously with the release
in New York.
Stephen Lewis, a member of the panel, released the report at the
UN. He said, "We were dumbfounded by the involvement of France from
the beginning to the end."
French officials "were closer in every way to the Habyrimana regime
than any other government; they could have stopped the genocide
before it began. They knew exactly what was happening," Lewis said.
"Worse ... they facilitated the exodus of a huge number of
genocidaires, thereby ushering in the larger Great Lakes catastrophe."
Juvenal Habyrimana was the president of Rwanda for 15 years until
he was killed when his plane was shot down on Apr. 6, 1994 - the
event that sparked the genocide.
"There is almost no redemptive feature to the conduct of the
government of France," added Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador
and former UNICEF official.
While France is blamed for not preventing the massacres, the United
States is singled out for doing nothing to stop the genocide once
it started. "The role of the US at the Security Council, in
determinedly blocking a more effective UN intervention force
throughout the entire genocide, is an almost incomprehensible scar
of shame on American foreign policy," Lewis said.
"The United States has in large measure already admitted its
responsibility," Lewis noted. "The difference between our report
and the United States' admission is that the president of the United
States says the American behaviour during the genocide flowed from
ignorance, we say absolutely not, you knew everything that was
going on ... it flowed from public policy."
The failure to intervene in halting the genocide was "a dreadful
piece of public policy."
The Rwanda genocide was launched in April 1994 by Hutu extremists
in the government and the army against the country's Tutsi population
and moderate Hutus. Approximately 800,000 people were slaughtered
in 100 days. The OAU report is the latest to show that the genocide
had been planned years in advance.
Lewis also said the panel was "shocked" by the role of the Catholic
Church. He said, "We specifically name the Catholic Church because
its involvement with Habyrimana before the genocide, and the
involvement of some of its leaders during the genocide, was entirely
unforgivable."
While some clerics died trying to stop the genocide, "there were
also numbers of leaders of the Church who did not speak out strongly
and did not take stands," he said.
Belgium was also criticised. "Its panic in the face of the death
of their 10 peacekeepers [on the second day of the genocide] turned
into an inglorious effort to throttle United Nations involvement,"
Lewis said.
As critical of the United States and France as the report is, it
singles out Canadian General Romero Dallaire for praise. Lewis
called him the "one exemplary human being in all of this."
Dallaire, as the head of the UN peacekeepers in Rwanda, warned the
United Nations of the coming genocide and pleaded for additional
troops to stop the slaughter once it began. Instead, the Security
Council decreased the mission's troop strength.
In November of last year, a panel commissioned by the UN and chaired
by the former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, issued its
report on the genocide. While critical of the United States, France
and Belgium, the Carlsson panel focused more on the failures of
the secretariat and the Security Council as a whole.
Lewis said the OAU panel endorses the Carlsson report, but as the
panel investigated "it became more and more vivid to the panel that
the role of France and the United States really had to be accentuated
... Both of them had it within their capacity to stop this genocide:
the French before it began, the United States while it was ongoing."
As to the OAU role in the tragedy, Lewis said, "The OAU tried very
hard to strike an agreement which would halt a catastrophe. But
everyone made the same mistake: they were trying to stop a civil
war and not a genocide."
But, "the OAU, like the UN, failed to call genocide by its rightful
name and refused to take sides," the report charged. "This panel
finds that the silence of the OAU and a large majority of African
heads of state constituted a shocking moral failure."
However, the panel credits African leaders with making "attempts
to end the massacres and settle the conflict as swiftly as possible."
The report was critical of the mass media for coverage of the
refugee crisis but not of the genocide that caused the refugees to
flee.
Lewis also criticised the NGOs working in Rwanda after the massacres
"because they behaved as though this wasn't a government that had
experienced a genocide. They, the NGOs, would effectively teach
the government how to run the country. There was a dimension of
arrogance which was frankly offensive."
The panel makes a number of recommendations on rebuilding the
Rwandan nation and on how the international community can help.
The need for reparations is "our major recommendation," Lewis said.
"There has to be some measure of international response to the
Rwandan predicament given the responsibility of the international
community at the time and maybe this is one of the ways to do it."
He added, "It is remarkable how well Rwanda is doing despite a
genocide just six years ago. It deserves massive assistance from
the rest of the world, particularly from those countries who betrayed
Rwanda when it needed the world most." (END/IPS/IP/HD/jw/da/00)
Origin: Rome/POLITICS/
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