Refusing To Call It Genocide

Declassified U.S. documents show the Clinton administration refused to label the 1994 mass killings in Rwanda as a genocide. One State Department document read: "Be careful … Genocide finding could commit U.S.G. to actually 'do something.'" 

At a press briefing in 1994, Reuters correspondent Alan Elsner asked: "How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?" 

State Department spokesperson Christine Shelly responded, "Alan, that’s just not a question that I’m in a position to answer." 

Samantha Power, who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, described the U.S. inaction in her 2001 article, "Bystanders to Genocide." She wrote, 

"The United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements." 

We speak to Emily Willard of the National Security Archive, and University of Wisconsin, Madison, Professor Scott Straus, author of "The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda."

EMILY WILLARD:  There’s a Department of Defense memo sent to the National Security Council. It’s a one-page, three-paragraph memo, clearly saying that there’s an idea that the United States could jam the radios, the national radio program in Rwanda that were inciting the massacres. And this document clearly says that a decision was made that it would be ineffective and too expensive to jam the radios, and that it would be cheaper for the United States and more efficient to follow up after the violence had ended with aid support. So this clearly shows U.S. apprehension in getting militarily involved and, you know, going for the after-the-fact relief. However, key documents—

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, the key—the key point here, for people who aren’t familiar with this, is the role of the radio in the genocide, the incitement to kill Tutsis, calling them, most famously, "cockroaches."

EMILY WILLARD: Yes, yes. And while this document is certainly key—and we’ve had this one for a while—the remaining key documents that really will tell the behind-the-scenes about how some of these key decisions were made are still classified. And they’re bogged down in the declassification process. So, unfortunately, some of the very key documents that we really need as an international community to understand how these key decisions were made are still not available to the public. And we’re in the process of working with the government to get them declassified, but, unfortunately, those key behind-the-scenes conversations are not available to the public.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to some of the clips of U.S. officials. The United States government carefully avoided using the word "genocide" to describe what was happening in Rwanda. This is a clip from the PBS Frontline documentary Ghosts of Rwanda. It begins a State Department briefing, April 28th, 1994.

REPORTER 1: —comment on that, or a view as to whether or not what is happening could be genocide?

CHRISTINE SHELLY: Well, as I think you know, the use of the term "genocide" has a very precise legal meaning, although it’s not strictly a legal determination. There are—there are other factors in there, as well. When—in looking at a situation to make a determination about that, before we begin to use that term, we have to know as much as possible about the facts of the situation.

REPORTER 2: Just out of curiosity, given that so many people say that there is genocide underway, or something that strongly resembles it, why wouldn’t this convention be invoked?

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Well, I think, as you know, this becomes a legal definitional thing, unfortunately, in terms of—as horrendous as all these things are, there becomes a definitional question.

AMY GOODMAN: Madeleine Albright, then-secretary of state, speaking in ’94. Seven weeks into the genocide, then-President Bill Clinton restated U.S. policy on intervening in foreign conflicts.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: The end of the superpower standoff lifted the lid from a cauldron of long-simmering hatreds. Now the entire global terrain is bloody with such conflicts, from Rwanda to Georgia. Whether we get involved in any of the world’s ethnic conflicts, in the end, must depend on the cumulative weight of the American interests at stake.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Clinton. During a press conference in June ’94, Reuters correspondent Alan Elsner questioned State Department spokesperson Christine Shelly on how she would describe the events taking place in Rwanda.

CHRISTINE SHELLY: Hence, we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred.

ALAN ELSNER: How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?

CHRISTINE SHELLY: Alan, that’s just not a question that I’m in a position to answer.

ALAN ELSNER: Is it true that the—that you have specific guidance not use the word "genocide" in isolation, but always to preface it with this—this word, "acts of"?

CHRISTINE SHELLY: I have guidance, which—to which I—which I try to use as best as I can. I’m not—I have—there are formulations that we are using that we are trying to be consistent in our use of.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the State Department spokesperson, Christine Shelly, being questioned by the Reuters correspondent, Alan Elsner. Scott Straus is also with us now, in addition to Emily Willard. Scott Straus is professor of political science and international studies at UW-Madison. He has written several books on Rwanda, including The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Professor Straus, the significance of the U.S. response at the time, not willing to call what was happening a genocide?

SCOTT STRAUS: Well, the U.S. was one of the key actors at the time. And, you know, the policy was clearly not to get involved in Rwanda. But the U.S.—and as the leading actor on the international stage at that time, the U.S.'s actions were critical. But the U.S. wasn't acting alone. I mean, Britain and Belgium at that time and within the bureaucracy of the United Nations, there was a real reluctance to get involved.

AMY GOODMAN: And France, as well, of course, leading to the fight that’s happening today with the delegation, the high-level delegation, pulling out of the genocide commemorations because of Kagame saying that the French were responsible.

SCOTT STRAUS: Yeah, the French had a much more controversial history with Rwanda, both before the genocide and even during the genocide. France was the leading ally of the regime in Rwanda, the regime that ultimately orchestrated the genocide. So the controversy is really: How much did they know? When did they know? Were they—some people accuse them of being involved in the preparations for genocide. I think that goes too far. But nonetheless, they were—they were the main ally of the regime that orchestrated genocide, and so that’s one of the reasons why their role has been so controversial in this particular history.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2001, Samantha Power, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote an article in The Atlantic magazine called "Bystanders to Genocide." In it, she wrote, quote, "the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. ... The United States in fact did virtually nothing 'to try to limit what occurred.' ... In order not to appreciate that genocide or something close to it was under way, U.S. officials had to ignore public reports and internal intelligence and debate," she wrote. At the time, she was founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, now, of course, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and she is leading the U.S. delegation at the Rwandan commemorations. Emily Willard, the significance of this and the documents that you have that are the underlying documents to the kind of statements you were hearing from President Clinton to Madeleine Albright, then the secretary of state?

EMILY WILLARD: Yes, the debate around whether or not the genocide had actually occurred was very clear right after the plane was shot down and the violence started. There was a debate going on with the Department of State. And at the end of—it wasn’t until the end of April that it was declared publicly that acts of genocide had occurred, and then not until the beginning of May that the secretary of state came out and said that a genocide had occurred. And you see in the documents, the reporting within the State Department, a very clear hesitation to not overestimate the number of people who were being killed. And actually, very interestingly, as the process of getting the documents declassified, there are examples where the United States, in the documents, says, "We’re not sure if, you know, 500,000, it is an exaggeration." And in the first release of the document that—that sentence was redacted, because even after the genocide happened, there’s still a hesitation to be clear and open about what the intelligence was and how those—that analysis of the intelligence was handled.

AMY GOODMAN: And the Dallaire fax, the significance of this, Professor Straus, if you could comment on this, the head of the U.N. peacekeepers writing to the United Nations that a genocide was about to take place?

SCOTT STRAUS: So I think that, you know, people have gone back and looked, and there have been clear warnings that something really terrible was happening, including the possibility of genocide or extermination. And the significance of the January memo that Dallaire wrote was a clear warning to United Nations headquarters in New York that there were efforts to train militia, that there was stockpiling of weapons, there was a clear warning that there was going to be significant violence against Tutsi civilians, even possibility of extermination. And Dallaire was essentially requesting some type of authorization to be aggressive in uncovering those stockpiles of weapons and so forth. And the U.N. headquarters was essentially risk-averse, said, "Don’t do it. You know, don’t get involved." And so, this was a real early warning, a chance that something could have happened before the genocide started in April, and the decision was not to do something. So I think the significance is a refusal to act on early warning and really ignoring the possibility that something really awful could happen in Rwanda.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Emily Willard, how unusual it is that you cannot get these documents declassified from 20 years ago?

EMILY WILLARD: That’s definitely a concern, because, especially with presidential records, 12 years after the president leaves office, there should be an increased access to the information. And those 20 years expired last January. So we’re still—it is very concerning that we’re still having a hard time getting especially the behind-the-scenes—

AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about President Clinton.

EMILY WILLARD: —deliberative information. Yes, president—the presidential records from the National Security Council, where a lot of these decisions were likely made. So, it is concerning because, you know, 20 years after the fact, especially that the documents and the information is about a genocide—

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Emily Willard, thanks so much for being with us, and Professor Scott Straus of University of Wisconsin.

This Is Islam!

Hutu Muslims Saved Tutsi's During Rwandan Genocide

Rwanda has been marking the 15th anniversary of the country's genocide when according to the government 1.2 million people were killed, the UN says 800,000 died, most of those murdered were ethnic Tutsis. 

During that genocide, tens of thousands of Tutsis fled into Muslim mosques to escape from the machete-wielding Hutu mobs.

And their lives were spared because many Hutus believed Muslims were evil and were afriad to go into mosques. 

Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege tells the story of survivors who narrowly escaped death, and the Islamic resistance to the genocide.

The US' Role In The DR Congo Conflict

Washington's Patronage Of Rwanda and Uganda Ensuring Further Conflict and Death In DR Congo

The US has dispatched a state department official to the region but has been careful to spare its allies, Rwanda and Uganda, anything beyond symbolic sanction - even though a UN report, released last week, concluded that the rebels have been backed by both neighbouring countries. 

The report also says that Rwanda helped recruit soldiers for Bosco Ntaganda, the M23 leader who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes. UN investigators interviewed rebel soldiers who said they were Rwandans and had been sent across the border to participate in the fighting. 

It also says traders in Rwanda are funding the conflict, with the money from tin, tungsten and tantalum smuggled across the border from mines in the eastern DR Congo.

[Paul Kagame] has also been accused of supporting conflict in DR Congo since the late 1990s. And there are accusations of human rights abuses inside Rwanda. Amnesty International has released reports detailing crackdowns on both journalists and political dissent.

Similarly Yoweri Museveni's Ugandan government has received US support, even after a US state department report accused the country of gross human rights violations. It has also been accused of destabilising its resource-rich neighbour to the west, DR Congo.

Franve and The Last Genocide Of The 20th Century

French involvement in at least two genocides in Africa during the 20th century is still contested [EPA]


Unspoken History: Despite Evidence To The Contrary, France Still Completely Denies Involvement In Two Of Africa's 20th Century Genocides. 

By Julie Owono 
Julie Owono is a Cameroonian freelance journalist and international relations consultant based in Paris. 
Last Modified: 25 Jan 2012 18:41 
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Paris, France - The recent publication of French judge Trevidic's report on the assassination of President Habyarimana, which triggered the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and the deaths of moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, revives the debate on the possible role of France in the last genocide of the 20th century. Moreover, it rekindles questions related to the attitude of French authorities and intelligentsia whenever the country is directly involved in a genocide in Africa.

More worrying, these findings question the poison slowly instilled in the veins of the French nation's collective body: A recent poll shows that one third of French citizens share the views of an openly racist and anti-Semite political party, the National Front.

Unspoken history, attempts at denial, and historical smokescreens systematically orchestrated by those who own the means of propaganda challenge the capacity - for those in France who disagree with the far-right - to help a disturbing truth emerge.

In the light of this revelation, one can notice strange similarities in the attitude adopted by those authorities regarding the question of the lesser-known Bamileke genocide orchestrated by the French army at the beginning of the 1960s, which might have caused the death of up to 400,000 people.

'France aided Rwanda genocide'

Equivocation Surrounding Rwanda Genocide

On January 11, 2012, French Judge Marc Trevidic published a 400-page investigation on the circumstances of the shooting of "Presidential Falcon 50", in which President Juvenal Habyarimana and the President of Burundi, along with other officials and three French crew members, were assassinated. The report concludes that the missiles which hit the airplane were shot from Konembe hill which was at that time in the hands of the Presidential guard.

The elucidation of these events will give an explanation to the beginning of the last genocide of the 20th century: the plane crash triggered the systematic murder of 1 million Tutsis in 100 days by extremist Hutus.

The Trevidic Report puts an end to 18 years of uncertainty and attempt to revise history. In fact, a first investigation led by French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière showed that the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) - the army of the actual Tutsi President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame - was responsible for the attack, and thus responsible for the elimination of other Tutsis. This theory was embraced by numerous French politicians and intellectuals, such as journalist Pierre Péan, who in 2005 published Black Furies, White Liars. His book, along the same lines as the legal investigation, not only suggests that RPF was the perpetrator of the presidential assassination, but also upheld that only 280,000 Tutsis had been killed, compared with possibly one million Hutus exterminated in revenge by Kagame's RPF.

Nevertheless, these explanations left many questions unanswered.

In the first place, one can question the position of Agathe Habyarimana, widow of former Rwandan president: it is indubitable that the massacres were started and encouraged by Hutu extremists. This vague expression conceals the name of the informal organisation, recognised by the French National Assembly in 1994, which regrouped these "extremists": the Akazu. Their most influential members were close relatives of President Habyarimana, and might have been headed by Agathe Habyarimana, along with three of her brothers, according to several reports. 

The day following the assassination of her husband, she was exfiltrated to France with the help of the French army. Since then, she has been living in France. Despite an international arrest warrant issued against her in 2009, and a complaint lodged by a French association over her alleged role in the perpetration of the genocide, she hasn't yet been judged by a court.

Listening Post - Rwanda's media 17 years after the genocide

Another enigma surrounds the alleged suicide of François de Grossouvre, former shadow adviser on African Affairs to President François Mittérand, at Elysee Palace, the French president's official residence. He died on April 7, 1994, just a few hours after Habyarimana was assassinated. Voices have been raised to denounce a possible murder and a slapdash investigation.

The role of Paul Barril also raises interesting questions. Barril, the former commander-in-chief of the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention group), may have been introduced in Rwanda as the special adviser to Juvenal Habyarimana on military affairs after the launch of "Operation Noroit", which officially aimed to protect French interests in the country, but also served as a way to train the Rwandan army after the offensive by Paul Kagame's RPF in October 1990. This military help from France resulted in the increase of trained Rwandan soldiers: the army of the country went from 5,000 men in 1990 to 50,000 in 1994.

The aspects of these events obviously explain why French soldiers of "Operation Turquoise", which, in June 1994, was supposed to put an end to the massacres, were welcomed as liberators by the auxiliary of horror, those who were perpetrating the unspeakable crime against other human beings.

Denial Of The Bamileke Genocide

Going to the west of the continent and a few degrees of latitude north, arguably the first genocide in Africa of the 20th century was perpetrated nearly 40 years earlier in Cameroon. The death toll, still debated by many experts, ranges from 100,000 to 400,000 people killed between 1959 and 1964, with a reported 120,000 killed in 1960 alone - just in the country's western region, populated by an ethnic group named the Bamileke.

Training of cadets at the Joint Army School of Cameroon in 1960 [National Archives of Yaounde]

Much less about this is known however, since the archives detailing direct French involvement remain under the seal of secrecy by the French state. The recent publication of ajournalistic and historical thesis by two French journalists and a Cameroonian historian, recounts in detail the war by France on the edge of the independence of Cameroon to impose the first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, to a population which in a majority supported the Cameroonian Independence Party, testimony in support of survivors of the massacres and actors, as well as the paradoxically more accessible archives of the Cameroonian army, and has gradually begun to open the wall of silence in which the French authorities had sealed the question of this genocide.

The answer given by French Prime Minister François Fillon during his official visit in Yaounde in 2009 might therefore attest the same memoricide will: "I absolutely deny that the French forces were involved in anything related to murder in Cameroon. All this is pure invention."

However, the Cameroonian national archives reveals that the training of Cameroonian military loyalists included the French technique named "counter-revolution", which proved its efficiency in Algeria and Indochina a few months earlier; the sending of French troops, who, for months, directly plundered hundreds of villages and hamlets in the mountainous Bamileke area; and the direct implication of the highest French authorities.

The evils of history are alive. Regarding the Bamileke farming villages wiped out by pilots of the French army, terrifying and eloquent figures exist. A French military report counts "43,363 incendiary cartridges of 7.5mm used against the enemy" for the single month of March 1960. According to a witness, the planes flew over the villages in pairs: the first poured fuel and the second shot incendiary bullets. How many Bamileke farmers were killed in these raids?

How many villages were simply wiped off the map? On the use of napalm or other combustible fuel on the Bamileke by the French army. Pierre Messmer, who was defence minister under General de Gaulle for nine years, probably gained his appointment thanks to the success of this "pacification of Cameroon" operation. Then the prime minister answered in a television documentary on French television: "It's not important."

Riz Khan - Rwanda: An African success story?

General Max Briand, named to head the French Expeditionary Corps from December 1959, acknowledged in a report to his superiors 20,000 deaths for the year of 1960 alone. This figure is to be taken with great care; the assessment of the French military is a low figure, in terms of military resources deployed, the ammunition used and the demographics of the country. Unlike Prime Minister Francois Fillon, the soldier nowhere denies direct involvement of French troops in what can be called with no euphemism a mass killing, and even concedes that the "rebels" had almost no weapons: "It seems that the only weapons that were introduced in Cameroon are forty Czech guns..."

If today, General Semengue, a major actor in the Cameroonian forces and Auxiliary of the French army, who later became Chief of Staff of the Cameroonian army, can make jokes before cameras, smile at the corner of the lips, and explain away the decapitation of heads [FR], it is precisely because this memoricide work was conducted in an implacable way.

Contrary to what some will assume, this memory work should not and will not be a pretext for repentance or reparation demands, but will give the possibility to millions of French, Rwandan and Cameroonian citizens to imagine an appeased future. As Urugayan writer Eduardo Galeano writes: "We know that the loss of our memory mortgages the future. Those who cannot learn from their past are condemned to live without the possibility of imagining it."

Julie Owono is a freelance Cameroonian journalist and international relations consultant based in Paris. She blogs at Global Voices and is the Africa Desk Cordinator at Internet Sans Frontières, a French NGO which promotes online freedom of expression.

Follow her on Twitter: @JulieOwono

Rwandan Pastor Guilty Of Genocide

UPDATED ON: Friday, June 11, 2010
17:47 Mecca time, 14:47 GMT
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Bazaramba denied all the charges [Reuters] A Finnish court has sentenced Francois Bazaramba, a former Rwandan pastor, to life imprisonment for committing genocide against the Tutsi minority in his home country in 1994. The 59-year-old member of the Hutu tribe, who has lived in Finland since 2003, was found guilty of intending to "destroy in whole or part the Rwandan Tutsis as a group". The district court in Porvoo, located in the south of Finland, said Bazaramba had spread anti-Tutsi propaganda and incited Hutus "to killings through fomenting anger and contempt towards Tutsis". The 115-page ruling, which was delivered as a written statement, said Bazaramba, who denied all charges, had forced Tutsis to leave their homes and had ordered Hutus to burn down their homes. Ville Hoikkala, Bazaramba's lawyer, said: "Of course he [Bazaramba] was sad, he was disappointed. We are going to appeal, we consider this incorrect. "My client is not convicted of actually killing anyone, he is convicted of encouraging others to kill." First Genocide Trial Bazaramba was detained in April 2007 after the National Bureau of Investigation looked into his background. The trial, which begun last September in Porvoo, about 50km east of Helsinki, the capital, was Finland's first genocide trial. The justice ministry estimates the trial, which has heard dozens of witnesses in Finland, Rwanda and Tanzania, has cost around $1.2m. Rwanda asked Finland to extradite Bazaramba to Rwanda, but the Nordic country turned down the request, saying he might not get a fair trial there. The Finnish court heard the case under a "universal jurisdiction" principle, meaning a court in Finland can try people suspected of serious crimes such as war crimes or crimes against humanity regardless of where they took place.