United States Department of State (Washington, DC)
Bruce Greenberg
26 April 2004
Washington, DC — Panelists cite similarities between Rwanda, Sudan to Congress
Two weeks after the world came together in Kigali, Rwanda, to observe the 10th anniversary of the genocide that tore Rwanda apart in April 1994, a congressional committee was told that the tragedy could have been prevented if the international community had acted on the advance warning it received by sending an unequivocal warning to the Rwandan government that violence would not be tolerated.
According to Louise Mushikiwabo, a young Tutsi woman now living in the United States, who lost her mother, brother, sister-in-law, niece and two nephews to rampaging Hutu militias, those who planned the genocide were intelligent and world-savvy and would have taken heed of the international community's words, even if action was not immediately forthcoming.
Mushikiwabo, who is international coordinator of Remembering Rwanda, a worldwide movement to sustain both the memory and the lessons of the Rwandan genocide, joined humanitarian activists Alison Des Forges of the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch and Samantha Power of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in testifying at an April 22 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Africa.
Chairman Edward R. Royce (Republican of California) opened the hearing on the Rwandan genocide and possible lessons learned by stating: "The pressing issue today is whether the world is better prepared to respond to genocidal killing in Africa, or elsewhere. Ten years ago, the system failed miserably in responding to the decimation of the Rwandan people."
Samantha Power voiced her fear that "in 10 years we'll be sitting on a similar panel discussing Sudan's genocide" and drew parallels between the international and U.S. responses to what happened in Rwanda 10 years ago and what is happening now in response to the atrocities being committed in Sudan.
"The U.S. response then and now was not forthcoming," according to Power. "With regard to Rwanda, the U.S. was recovering from a failed mission in Somalia; today we are being distracted by the war on terrorism. ... We [the United States] just don't want to do what is required to suppress atrocities.
"In the case of Sudan," she said, "the U.S. is reluctant to jeopardize a peace settlement by directly intervening in the Darfur region [where ethnic cleansing of black African Christians and animists is being waged by Muslim militias], just as we didn't destroy the Rwandan hate radio stations [that were calling for Tutsi deaths] because of fears of violating so-called national sovereignty."
Today, Power insisted, we can prevent Sudan from turning into another Rwanda by marshalling the international community into action: The United Nations needs to deploy its crisis intervention forces rather than mere fact-finders, and the International War Crimes Tribunal must examine now what is happening in Darfur.
The U.S. Congress, she declared, can be a major contributor by holding public hearings, allocating funding for U.N. peacekeeping and influencing the foreign affairs community to focus on this issue. That such actions put pressure on Khartoum was evident earlier this month, she said, when the Sudanese government announced a humanitarian cease-fire within 24 hours of President Bush's denunciation of the government's support of the militias in Darfur.
For Alison Des Forges, the Rwandan genocide was more than an "eruption of enormous violence." It was a crime that sprang from an internal history of ethnic disparity, inequality and jealousy in which the Hutu majority finally reacted to its years as victims of subjugation and discrimination by the ruling Tutsi minority.
According to Des Forges, the United States and the international community share responsibility for failing to prevent the bloodbath, principally in not silencing the hate radio in Kigali, which gave the Hutu government a tacit green light to continue the genocide campaign.
Even though national and international leaders have acknowledged their shame at having failed to stop the slaughter, Des Forges said, it is time to "renew our commitment to halting future genocides. ... We must stop genocides before they become such.
"We must react promptly and firmly to preparations for the mass slaughter of civilians. We must be prepared to silence these media if that will forestall or prevent the deaths of innocents through incitement of the population at large. We can impose arms embargoes and other forms of restrictive containment on genocidal governments. And, lastly, we should be prepared to intervene with armed force. In Rwanda, intervention would have required greater force than was initially deployed, and would have saved more lives. And intervention at any point ultimately limits the number killed."
For these witnesses, the effects of the Rwandan genocide are present today in the form of guilt, retribution and the need for justice and closure. Of great concern is the current lack of AIDS anti-viral medications to treat those women who were raped during the genocide.
Mushikiwabo stated that the Rwandan government today simply does not have such resources. "What is outrageous," she said, "is that detainees suspected of perpetrating these monstrous atrocities 10 years ago have access to the latest retroviral treatments, while their surviving rape victims are getting very little medical attention. This is a question of fairness and urgency. These women need our help, and I urge this congressional panel to send the proper signal at this time."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov.)
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