Where is the UN? Where is Obama? Where is Hillary?

The US stood by and watched as Hutu military forces nearly exterminated an entire 'ethnic' group, the Tutsi, in 1994.  We knew, the evidence is clear today, that the Clinton administration knew and did nothing.  In truth, it did do something - it pretended the attempted genocide was not happening.  Years later, Bill would enlist his acting skills when he visited Rwanda and cried, saying he would have done something had he known.  Liar.

One person who watched all this and wrote a book, Samantha Power, pointed out these issues in A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.   Samantha Power would go on to be an advisor to then candidate Obama and she would make a nasty comment about Hillary - no doubt influenced in a small part by what she learned of the Clinton refusal to involve itself in one of the greatest tragedies of the last 50 years.  She quickly quit / was let go, by the campaign and disappeared for all of ... I can't count miliseconds - Obama won and Power went to the White House to work.  In fact, it was Power and Rice who had Obama's ear on foreign issues - not Hillary.  She was window dressing for the Clintonistas.  Hillary was living proof that you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer - no one said he listened to Hillary.

One would think given Power and her background, this admionistration would be particularly in tune with anything remotely bordering on genocide, lest Power have to write another book.

The answer - no.  This administration has no direction.  No moral compass.  It is acting to satisfy Obama's social reconstruction program, nothing more.  They have failed, and worse, they have known better and still failed (unlike the Clinton's who were driven by power and identity - Obama was presented as a man who was driven by ideals and with the advice of great people like Power, he would act to stop evil acts like ... well, like what happened on July 30th from happening again - and he didn't, and worse ... nothing.).

Now the government in Rwanda will take action and groups loosely affiliated with the government will strike back and many Hutu innocents will be murdered, and the process gains steam, and hate.



Rwandan Rebels Raped at Least 150 Women in Congo, Humanitarian Officials Say

By JOSH KRON

August 22, 2010
New York Times



GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — A mob of Rwandan rebels gang-raped at least 150 women last month during a weekend raid on a community of villages in eastern Congo, United Nations and other humanitarian officials said Sunday.

The United Nations blamed the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or F.D.L.R., for the attack. The F.D.L.R. is an ethnic Hutu rebel group that has been terrorizing the hills of eastern Congo for years, preying on villages in a quest for the natural resources beneath them.

The raided villages are near the mining center of Walikale, known to be a rebel stronghold, and are “very insecure,” said Stefania Trassari, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “Rape is something we get quite often.”

But she and other United Nations and humanitarian officials said that this attack was unusual because of the large number of victims and the fact that they were raped by more than one attacker simultaneously.

On the evening of July 30, armed men entered the village of Ruvungi, in North Kivu Province.

“They told the population that they were just there for food and rest and that they shouldn’t worry,” said Will F. Cragin, the International Medical Corps’ program coordinator for North Kivu, who visited the village a week after their arrival.

“Then after dark another group came,” said Mr. Cragin, referring to between 200 and 400 armed men who witnesses described as spending days and nights looting Ruvungi and nearby villages.

“They began to systematically rape the population,” he said, adding, “Most women were raped by two to six men at a time.”

The attackers often took the victims into the bush or into their homes, raping them “in front of their children and their families,” Mr. Cragin said. “If a car passed, they would hide.”

The rebels left on Aug. 3, he said, the same day the chief of the area traveled through the villages and reported horrific cases of sexual violence. “We thought at first he was exaggerating,” Mr. Cragin said, “but then we saw the scale of the attacks.”

Miel Hendrickson, a regional director for the International Medical Corps, which has been documenting the rape cases, said, “We had heard first 24 rapes, then 56, then 78, then 96, then 156.”

“The numbers keep rising,” she said. The United Nations maintains a military base approximately 20 miles from the villages, but United Nations officials said they did not know if the peacekeepers there were aware of the attack as it occurred. A United Nations military spokesman, Madnoje Mounoubai, said information was still being gathered.

The F.D.L.R., which began as a gathering of fugitives of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, has grown into a resilient and savage killing machine and an economic engine in the region.

The United Nations, Congo and Rwanda began a military offensive against the group in early 2009, but since then, humanitarian organizations say, cases of rape have risen drastically.

“It’s awful,” Ms. Trassari said. “The numbers are quite worrying.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited eastern Congo in 2009 to raise awareness about widespread rape in the region, calling it “evil in its basest form,” and the United States pledged $17 million to the Congolese government to fight sexual violence.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rwanda

Rwanda: Genocide News Update (Hint: US butts in)

I find it difficult to read or listen to people (Americans) argue issues on which they are so uninformed.  The State Department arguing anything, and I mean, anything in regard to genocide makes me want to laugh, cry, and throw up all over them.  Rwanda should hand down indictments against a few Americans (now retired from their previous positions) and slap a few morons around who are now holding positions.  I cannot believe Samantha Power would sit still while the State Department made such a fool of the United States.

It was not the US that lost nearly one million people to a genocide the US pretended wasn't happening and ignored at every opportunity.  It was Rwanda, and Rwandan justice has taken all these years to catch some guilty parties - let them continue and stay out of their internal affairs lest they cast their net wider and scoop up a few retired Americans.

The US is so busy condemning events everywhere.  I am amazed we get much done with all the condemnations going around.



Rwanda: US genocide lawyer 'attempted suicide'


Thursday, 3 June 2010 19:30 UK

A US lawyer arrested on allegations of genocide denial tried to commit suicide in his cell, Rwandan officials said.

Peter Erlinder arrived in Rwanda last week to help defend opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who has been charged with promoting genocide ideology last month.

Police spokesman Eric Kayiranga said Mr Erlinder has "admitted" that he tried to kill himself.

His daughter told the BBC shes does not believe he would try to take his life.

Rwanda's 1994 genocide claimed the lives of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

'Concern'

According to the spokesman, Mr Erlinder swallowed a cocktail of drugs after realising the "gravity of the charges against him".

Mr Erlinder's daughter told the BBC that her father was not the type of person who would consider committing suicide.

"We are now concerned that this is really laying the groundwork for something else to happen to him and for it to be blamed on suicide," Sarah Erlinder said.

Earlier the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson had accused the Kigali government of restricting freedom ahead of the 9 August presidential election, in which Ms Ingabire wanted to be a challenger.

Mr Erlinder is the lead defence counsel for top genocide suspects at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania.

He had been planning to help Ms Ingabire's defence team but chief prosecutor Martin Ngoga said he had been arrested for remarks made in publications and statements.

The Rwandan opposition leader, an ethnic Hutu, was arrested for allegedly propagating genocide ideology after she called for action to be taken against those responsible for killing Hutus during the 1994 conflict.

She was freed on bail but her passport was seized and she was banned from leaving the capital, Kigali. She could be sentenced to more than two decades in prison if convicted.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
rwanda

Congo: Proof the UN Does Not Work and Obama's Policies are Disasters

Congo soldiers fleeing Goma along with refugees

Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008.
By MICHELLE FAUL, The Associated Press

GOMA, Congo - Firing wildly, Congolese soldiers commandeered cars, taxis and motorbikes Wednesday in a retreat from advancing rebel fighters, joining tens of thousands of terrified refugees struggling to stay ahead of the violence.

As gunfire crackled in this eastern provincial capital, the Tutsi rebels said they had reached the outskirts of Goma and declared a unilateral cease-fire to prevent panic as the army retreats and residents flee.

Congo said Rwandan troops had crossed the border and attacked its soldiers - raising the specter that neighboring nations will again be drawn into Congo's war. Rwanda's Tutsi-led government immediately denied the charge, but Congo turned to Angola for help defending its territory.

As the chaos mounted, the U.S. announced its officials were leaving Goma and urged all American citizens to do the same. The State Department said Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer was heading to the capital, Kinshasa, and would arrive Thursday.

"There is a lot of violence," said spokesman Sean McCormack. "This is of deep concern to us."
Thousands of panicked refugees clogged the dirt roads out of Goma, struggling to reach safety.

Women carrying huge bundles on their heads and babies in their arms trudged alongside men pushing crude wooden carts crammed with clothing, food and cooking utensils. Bewildered children walked alongside. Young boys led goats and pigs on tethers as men on bicycles weaved in and out.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said about 45,000 people fled the nearby village of Kibati, where they had been sleeping in a makeshift camp in the open air, in a matter of hours on Wednesday.

"It was very chaotic," said agency spokesman Ron Redmond, speaking from Geneva. Most of the refugees had arrived only the day before after fleeing fighting farther north.

"They suddenly became very agitated and people began leaving the camp in a panic," Redmond said. They first headed toward Goma to the south, then changed direction and headed back out as it became clear the city was about to fall.

Goma's governor, Julien Mpaluku, acknowledged that panic was spreading, but stressed that U.N. peacekeepers were still in charge and rebels had not yet entered the city. U.N. spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai said peacekeepers were deployed at the airport and at other strategic points.

A rebel statement said their fighters were just outside Goma.

"We are not far from Goma," rebel leader Laurent Nkunda was quoted as saying on the BBC's Web site. "But because there is a state of destabilization in the town we decided ... unilaterally to proclaim a cease-fire."

Nkunda, who has ignored calls by the Security Council to respect a U.N.-brokered truce signed in January, called on government forces to follow suit.

The U.N. says its biggest peacekeeping mission - a 17,000-strong force - is now stretched to the limit with the surge in fighting and needs more troops quickly. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uruguay and South Africa are the main contributors to the existing force.

But hopes for immediate backup from the European Union dimmed. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Wednesday the EU had considered sending troops to reinforce the peacekeepers in Congo but some countries refused.

(Senator Obama - read the above sentence VERY carefully. I apologize that you have a resistance to reality - let me explain - THE allies you think we have offended, the ones we should lower ourselves to, in order that we are equal with them - DO NOT CARE ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING. THIS is what becomes of your silly idea of working with these states mulitlaterally. THEY DO NOT CARE. Weakening the US would prevent us from ever acting in these cases. Whether we should or not.)


Fears have grown of a wider war that could drag in Congo's neighbors. Congo suffered back-to-back wars from 1996 to 2002 that embroiled eight African nations and became a rush at the country's vast mineral wealth.

The unrest in eastern Congo has been fueled by festering hatreds left over from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which half a million Tutsis were slaughtered. More than a million Hutu extremists fled to Congo where they regrouped in a brutal militia that helps fuel the continuing conflict in Congo.

Rebel leader Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi and former general, quit the army several years ago, claiming the government of President Joseph Kabila was not doing enough to protect minority Tutsis from the Hutu extremists.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Congo's government to control its troops and help the U.N. peacekeepers protect civilians, blaming a "collapse in discipline" among soldiers for the escalating looting and attacks on U.N.

The U.N. Security Council later unanimously condemned the rebel offensive and demanded an end to the operation. The 15-nation council said any attack on civilians is "totally unacceptable" and called on Congo and Rwanda to restore stability in the region.

On Wednesday, retreating government soldiers entered Goma along with the fleeing refugees, grabbing cars, taxis and motorbikes to help in their escape.

About 15 soldiers briefly commandeered a car carrying an AP cameraman and photographer and demanded to be driven about 50 miles to the town of Saki.

"I'll kill you! I'll kill you!" yelled one soldier in front of an airfield near downtown Goma.

The soldiers grabbed boxes that looked like ammunition from the U.N. compound at the airport, piled them into the SUV and took off. Some of the soldiers piled onto the roof, others hung from open doors. The journalists finally managed to get away, jumping out of the moving vehicle at a military police checkpoint.

On another battlefront further north, government soldiers abandoned the town of Rutshuru and tens of thousands or refugees fled, according to U.N. officials and aid workers.

"It's incredibly dangerous," said Alice Gilbert, a project officer for the British medical agency Merlin. "Complete chaos broke out and everyone fled into the bush."







UN

Congo: Rwanda all over again?

Listening to the 'debate' a few nights ago, you would think Obama would call for intervention in cases of genocide or ethic cleansing (Iraq is a good example of this). He would never sit by while another Rwanda occurs. McCain said basically the same, but added that the US cannot be everywhere all the time, and fix all the problems. Obama would work with our allies - you know the ones, that Bush alienated.

These same allies, apparently alienated, or not, worked very hard to put together a peace treaty in the Congo. It has collapsed. In twelve years, 3 million people dead. THAT should constitute crimes against humanity, and quite possibly acts of genocide. It is going on as you read this, as the debate was occurring, and Obama never raised it - because it would qualify as a cause to intervene in, based on his criteria - militarily.

Rwanda may be over, but Rwanda is involved in the Congo, and the massacres involve Tutsi and Hutu.

Obama's 'never again', is "never again, when I am elected, but whatever happens until then is Bush's fault and I won't say anything and hope I don't have to deal with it because the Europeans sat down as did the UN and created a peace treaty by negotiating and compromising and talking, and it has fallen apart and hundreds are dying each day and no one is acting to prevent further deaths or punish those responsible, and I really don't like making decisions or taking decisive action so I would rather I spend time uniting the world to take action and maybe in the meantime the problem will get sorted."

Bush should be addressing this issue. The bloody world should be intervening, TODAY. Money can be recovered, stock markets will rise again - a million dead, will not.

(I assume Ms. Power has or will be speaking out about this and will get Obama interested sooner than later.)




Congo blames Rwanda for fresh fighting
Clashes between government forces and Tutsi rebels could force 30,000 people from their homes in eastern Congo.
By Scott Baldauf Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 11, 2008 edition

GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - Renewed fighting between Congolese rebels and government forces has worsened one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, sending thousands of villagers from their homes, while Congo's government accuses the Rwandan government of intervening on its soil.

Fighters from the rebel faction of Gen. Laurent Nkunda – an ethnic Tutsi thought to be backed by the Tutsi-led government in neighboring Rwanda – took the strategic town of Rumangabo and a military base from the Congolese Army during heated battle this week, but have since withdrawn. Casualty numbers were not known, but internal refugees told the Monitor that the fighting was fierce and that they were urged to leave their homes by government soldiers.

"Soldiers told us to leave because they were going to fight strongly against the Tutsis," says Appoline Nyiranza Bimana, a mother of three children, speaking on the morning of her arrival this week at Kibumba camp 25 miles north of the regional capital of Goma. "There was so much shooting, I couldn't stay at home anymore."

The fresh wave of fighting comes just 10 months after the signing of a peace deal between most of the major armed factions in the troubled eastern region of Congo. Nearly 3 million Congolese have died since 1996, when a rebel army – backed by a number of neighboring foreign countries, including Rwanda – forced the government of President Mobutu Sese Seko out of power. The January peace deal, brokered by the European Union and the United Nations, was seen by many as Congo's best chance for finally sending rebel armies home, but now political experts and peacekeepers say that it is clear the deal itself was never given a chance to work.

"One of the parties did this deliberately to derail the peace process, we're just not sure which one did it," says Lt. Col. Charles McKnight, a senior peacekeeping official within the UN peacekeeping force, MONUC. MONUC is the UN's largest peacekeeping operation in the world. "As of August, I was actually optimistic that this would all work."

[What an inspiring person - his judgment is brilliant. He believed it would work - may i ask based upon what precedent? And now he doesn't know who it was that derailed it. Amazing.]


The problems in Congo – one of the richest countries in the world, in terms of natural resources, but among the poorest in terms of human development – are rooted in a tangled mess of bloody ethnic rivalries, foreign interventions, and the violent sparring for control of lucrative mining resources. Congo's government, elected in the fall of 2006, has proved incapable of controlling its own vast territory and relies heavily on UN troops to keep the peace in the eastern provinces, where much of the mineral resources lie, and also, where much of the ethnic fighting has continued for more than a decade.

Nearly 100,000 Congolese have been displaced in the last three months alone, and given the population in the areas attacked in the past few days, as many as 30,000 additional people could be forced from their homes.

The peace deal, hailed for its inclusiveness of all Congolese armed groups, fell apart after fighting erupted Aug. 28, north of Goma. Nkunda complains that the government was never serious about peace, because it never attempted to shut down the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), a group made up of Hutu rebels blamed for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. But government peace brokers say it was Nkunda who wasn't serious about peace, and that the violent clashes of the past few weeks show he is trying to provoke a regional conflict.

"It wasn't a realistic deal in the first place," says Gregory Mthembu-Salter, an analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit in Johannesburg, and expert on Congo. Too many armed factions profit from their control of mineral resources, and worry about facing possible war crimes if they come out of the bush, he says. "They just haven't gotten beyond the zero-sum game."

The Congolese government says the current troubles are the instigation of Rwanda and the government of Paul Kagame. On Wednesday, the Congolese government announced plans to ask the UN Security Council to meet to discuss what they called the invasion of Rwandan soldiers on Congolese soil. Congolese Foreign Minister Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi told Reuters news agency that he had "hard evidence," including captured Rwandan soldiers, to prove that Rwanda was intervening in Congo.

"The Rwandans are indeed there. They now want to take Goma [capital of North Kivu province]," Nyamwisi told Reuters. Rwandan officials deny the charges.

On the day of the attack on Rumangabo, it was clear that the conflict had escalated. Government tanks lined the road in the front line village of Rugare, pointing their turrets toward the hills where Nkunda's troops make their home. Even a day later, when Nkunda's troops retreated from Rumangabo and the military camp had returned to government control, local villagers continued to pack up their belongings and head for crowded displacement camps.

"We never thought that the camp could be taken, that's why we are forced to leave our village," says Sekibibi Sibomana, a farmer who left during the fighting on Wednesday and has returned to collect food for his family in the displacement camp at Kibumba. "We were sure that the army was very strong, and they could protect us, but they didn't."

Most of the refugees in this area blame the recent fighting on Nkunda, a former Congolese army general who took up arms against the government because of its inability or unwillingness to protect his ethnic Tutsi group against the Hutu-led FDLR.

Gen. Nkunda recently announced his plans to widen his rebellion to liberate the whole of Congo from the control of the government in Kinshasa.

Col. Delphin Kahimbi, commander of the Congolese army effort to retake Rumangabo, pulls out Rwandan Army backpacks and Rwandan Army ID cards as evidence that the recent takeover of his military camp at Rumangabo was a direct intervention by Rwanda.

"This was the Rwandan army with a small group of CNDP [Nkunda's rebel group]," says Col. Kahimbi. "We know that CNDP does not have the capacity. It is the Rwandan Army that has the capacity to come here."

One MONUC official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says he still holds out hope that the January peace agreement can be patched up. He also says that it is unlikely at this stage that the conflict will draw in neighboring countries, even if Congo pushes the UN Security Council to act.
"Kagame has too much to lose [than to enter Congo]," the MONUC official says. "He wants Rwanda to join the Commonwealth. The only way he gets involved here is if there is a massacre of Tutsis. Then he has the humanitarian justification to intervene."






genocide

What utter nonsense - British excuse the French in Rwanda

Why does the world hold such animus toward the West?

The answer is simple - it is not because we are wealthy, nor because we remove a dictator who threatened a world, rather, because we refuse to accept our role/responsibility in oppressing or subjugating a people (whoever they might be) - from Vietnam (Indo-China), Algeria, Ivory Coast, to Cambodia, or Rwanda.

The following report, from the BBC, rationalizes, and nearly ignores the atrocities the French commit, instead, focusing attention on Paul Kagame.

This article (BBC article) written by Martin Plaut, was directed by the French. Plaut did not conceive of and devise this article out of the blue. It was dictated to him by someone at the BBC who wished to defend French actions against those people, or directed by French political figures using Plaut as a tool to discredit and draw attention away from the blood dripping from their hands.

It is enough to wish Martin Plaut would fall into a crevice and vanish from our midst. He is a silly man with no idea.

Paul Kagame is NOT a good friend of Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton may think he is a friend of Kagame, but I do not believe for one moment that Rwanda thinks of Bill Clinton without throwing up.

And Mr. Plaut, if you did not realize you were used - you were!

How do you combat liars when they all (complicit parties) are in on it, they defend each other in order to prevent each other from facing responsibility, to prevent the house of lies from collapse. Why not admit your governments were so concerned about diamonds, oil, and other minerals that a genocide was preferable to chaos in your client states. Just admit it. You will feel better.








Rwanda report raises issue of motive

By Martin Plaut BBC News

A Rwandan report naming 33 senior French military and political figures for their alleged role in the 1994 genocide raises a number of issues.

For the French there is the problem of how to deal with the commission's detailed allegations against eminent figures.

Late President Francois Mitterrand, former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, as well as two men who went on to become prime minister - Alain Juppe, foreign minister at the time, and his then chief aide, Dominique de Villepin - are all accused of having had a hand in such terrible events.

Allegations of this kind have been made before.

The French military were certainly involved in advising the Rwandan army prior to the genocide and their precise role during the genocide is far from clear.

Yet the fact that Rwanda has decided to publish such a damning report, making such detailed allegations against another country, makes the report extremely unusual.

Diversion tactic?

It certainly raises questions about Rwanda's motivation in taking this step.

The public reason given is a search for justice.

As Rwanda's Minister of Justice Tharcisse Karugarama put it to the BBC, those responsible for the Jewish Holocaust are still being hunted down decades after World War II, so why should we rest while the people behind the genocide are still at large?

But other reasons have spurred Rwanda to take this step.

Chief among them has been an iron determination to keep the world's attention focused on the genocide, rather than on the role of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the force that took power in 1994, bringing President Paul Kagame to power.

In recent years uncomfortable questions have been raised about the war crimes the RPF are alleged to have committed during and after 1994.

While stressing there can be no equation between genocide and war crimes, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch says RPF leaders do have a case to answer.

"Their victims also deserve justice," she says.

The case against the RPF:
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was mandated to look at all crimes committed in 1994, yet with their mandate supposed to run out by the end of this year they have so far failed to indict any members of the RPF.

In 2006 a French judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, issued arrest warrants against nine of President Paul Kagame's senior officials, alleging their complicity in the murder of the late Rwandan President, Juvenal Habyarimana, in April 1994 - the event that sparked off the genocide.

And in February 2008 a Spanish judge, Fernando Andreu, issued international arrest warrants against 40 senior Rwandan officials for crimes allegedly committed in the 1990s.

Painful questions

There is also a political dimension.

Since the RPF took power, relations with France have been distinctly cool.

President Kagame and his closest associates come from a group of English-speaking Tutsi refugees who grew up in Uganda.

The country has moved away from the French sphere of influence in Africa and towards the Anglophone bloc.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now an adviser of President Kagame, and former American President Bill Clinton is a close friend.

Rwanda believes it does not need France and feels free to raise painful questions about Paris's role in the genocide.

*******************************************

Law recognizes various levels and forms of illegal activity. Doing the act, aiding those who do the act, supporting those who aid those who do the act, not aiding those who were acted upon, not trying to stop those who did the act ... various levels ...

In March 2004, Koffi 'Responsible Party for the Genocide" Annan, said that "the international community is guilty of sins of omission."

Mr. Annan, SINS are moral - God judges sins, what you have admitted to is NOT JUST SINS, but to being an accomplice to the genocide during, and after the fact. Don't weigh it down in morality Annan, that diminishes the illegal, and unconscionable actions, of the UN member states, AND of you more directly.

I hope you believe in a forgiving God Mr. Annan.

damn

the

euros

for

their

role

The French - Hands Dripping With Blood

Yet they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge their role, while every sane person who knows anything about the genocide, knows France was intimately and inextricably linked to the genocide in Rwanda.


BBC News
August 6, 2008

France denounces genocide claims

France has rejected Rwandan claims accusing French officials of playing an active role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 as "unacceptable".

On Tuesday, an independent Rwandan commission said France had been aware of preparations for the genocide and helped train the ethnic Hutu militia.

The report also accused French troops of direct involvement in the killings.

Paris has consistently denied any responsibility for the genocide, in which about 800,000 people were killed.

Among those named in the report were the late president Francois Mitterrand and the then prime minister Edouard Balladur.

Two men who went on to become prime minister were also named - Alain Juppe, the foreign minister at the time, and his then chief aide, Dominique de Villepin.

"This report contains unacceptable accusations made against French political and military officials," a French foreign ministry spokesman said.

But Rwandan Information Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said she hoped the French officials named would be indicted for war crimes.

"The government has asked the courts to use this report. We hope that legal proceedings will follow," she is quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militias in just 100 days in 1994.

Earlier this year, France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner denied French responsibility in connection with the genocide, but said political errors had been made.

The Rwandan report says France backed Rwanda's Hutu government with political, military, diplomatic and logistical support.

"French forces directly assassinated Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis... French forces committed several rapes on Tutsi survivors," said a statement from the justice ministry quoted by AFP.

"Considering the seriousness of the alleged crimes, the Rwandan government has urged the relevant authorities to bring the accused French politicians and military officials to justice," the statement said.

It further alleged that French forces did nothing to challenge checkpoints used by Hutu forces in the genocide.

The two countries have had a frosty relationship since 2006 when a French judge implicated Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the downing in 1994 of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane - an event widely seen as triggering the killings.

President Kagame has always denied the charge.

He says Mr Habyarimana, a Hutu, was killed by Hutu extremists who then blamed the incident on Tutsi rebels to provide the pretext for the genocide.


******************************

The French have so much blood on their hands, not on just one man's hands - not on Mitterand's dead cold hands, but across the board - the French government, complicit in a genocide of proportions still incomprehensible. 800,000 is a low figure, a million is more likely.

The evidence is clear, it exists, it is indisputable, and those who question would deny the genocide, for it could not happen but for the French and UN collusion (in no way do I imply that UN Lt General Romeo Dallaire and his brave, over-matched, small contingent did anything but save lives during the genocide).

There is no morality to actions by France. There is nothing but blood dripping from their hands.


Indict the living, and the dead, try them, and find them guilty and sentence the living to prison in Rwanda - Blair, Clinton, Annan, Alain Juppe, dig up Mitterand and drag his corpse over, Dominique de Villepin, and others - where they would be forced to face the victims, and their stories every day until they confess, and seek the apology of the dead.



The story, by the BBC, of the genocide.
If you do not know the story, find out, learn.

I am shamed each time I re-read the stories or think about the suffering. One day, we should all sit and face those who suffered and apologize, in Rwanda and in Sudan. Unfortunately, by that time, the world will have many places to visit.




Rwanda

Where are people from 2

I do, occasionally, look at sites of origin, and regardless of how people find the webpage or why they land on it - Rwanda is now the most impressive site of origin. Kenya, UAE, Nepal follow after, as impressive, but Rwanda sticks out. Why?

It reminds me, each time I see the name, of my role in what happened, of what I failed to care about in April, May, June, or July of 1994. It reminds me of what the world failed to do. It is a blistering abscess on all of our faces that will not go away, no matter how much we try to do - or feign doing.

It is an indictment of the West and all it stands for, or believes that it stands for. It is the indictment, judgment, and sentence of a UN that knew and failed to act.








So why do we not look at Sudan with knowing eyes and instead choose to pretend it is something else.







genocide

Sierra Leone - War Crimes and Genocide

Sierra Leoneans look for peace through full truth about war crime

By Jina Moore Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the July 8, 2008 edition


Bomaru, Sierra Leone - Little but its history distinguishes Bomaru from other villages scattered across Sierra Leone's countryside. A quiet place with mud houses the same color as the dust kicked up by the occasional passing vehicle, it would seem, on an ordinary day, impoverished and washed out.


But today, women dress in freshly laundered wrappers ablaze in color; men wear regal Muslim gowns or their best T-shirts. An anonymous few sweat beneath layers of straw and fabric, in costumes like something from Sesame Street: They are – or are dressed as, depending upon your belief system – the village's local devils, whose appearance signals celebration; their rapid footwork leads a dancing procession to the village center.


Nearly 800 people from Bomaru and nearby villages have gathered for Fambul Tok, a grass-roots reconciliation initiative John Caulker wants to bring to every Sierra Leonean village. The phrase is Krio (English-based creole) ­for "family talk," the old way of resolving disputes through conversations around bonfires.


Mr. Caulker, whose human rights organization, Forum of Conscience, developed Fambul Tok over the past three years in villages across Sierra Leone, wants the bonfire to be a space for confession and forgiveness for war crimes. Bomaru is the first test of whether the idea works –­ or whether anyone even cares.


Dozens of people have come to Bomaru 17 years to the day after the war began here in March 1991. They're here to recount crimes they committed after their abductions and forced conscriptions in the 1990s into the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group from neighboring Liberia infamous for chopping limbs off civilians. But by the time the bonfire is lit and the crowd settles in for storytelling, they've changed their minds.


Maybe it's coming face to face with the moment, maybe it's the half-dozen white people here to document it, but something has spooked the former war criminals.


"They are afraid that if they talk, they will be prosecuted," Caulker explains.


It's a legal impossibility; Sierra Leone negotiated its peace in part by offering fighters blanket amnesty. But here, legal promises can feel like borders – slippery when interests shift.


Caulker sends a film crew, print reporter, and intern – all white – away from the assembly briefly. He talks with the town chief and convinces them to proceed; the chief, a former RUF rebel, promises to offer the first testimony.


And so, the perpetrators talk one after another, until 2 in the morning. Mostly men speak, confessing atrocities they committed as unwilling soldiers forced to choose: kill, maim, rape, or be killed.


If any of the victims in these stories are present, they don't speak. Which is not what Caulker, whose career in human rights began with dangerous undercover research for Amnesty International during the war, had imagined. He'd thought he'd see perpetrators apologizing to victims, and victims reaching out in forgiving embrace.


"I don't want to make the mistake that this is reconciliation," he says. "This is not reconciliation. This is the beginning of the process."

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The idea of reconciliation forums became 'the thing to do' with the fall of apartheid in South Africa.

However noble and endearing it may be, it is naive, foolish, and dangerous. The events in South Africa are as far from events in Sierra Leone or Rwanda as you can get. The West ignored Rwanda, and now feel terribly guilty - they work very hard to absolve themselves, without realizing it is not the West that can absolve them, but Rwanda, and from my perspective - THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN ANYTIME SOON.

What we find is do-gooders, liberals from the West, want to develop social and cultural dynamics peculiar to Western culture onto the 'other' and they have no idea the consequences. Often are amazed it didn't work out as they thought it would (above quote).

When one tribe slaughters another, the remaining members of the tribe being slaughtered do not want to talk about it, hear apologies, or forgive. Not the next day, not ten years later, not twenty years later - maybe sixty years later. I am ashamed of what the US and the West did not do, for that matter - the bloody world did not do in April of 1994. Telling people to sit down and hear what their killers have to say ... does not bring people closer together - it takes the wound and pain, and forces you to rub salt in the wound. It is time that heals and time that allows one to begin the process for reconciliation. TIME NOT jawbone sessions.

It is odd that the left become apoplectic at the idea of 'installing democracy' in the Middle East, yet have no issue with reconciliation forums. First, the West is NOT creating democracy where none existed nor where no foundation exists to support it, yet reconciliation forums are trying to implement a procedure / dynamic that does not and has never existed. Sure tribes would sit around and settle disputes without war - that isn't the point. The war happened and millions were butchered - now they want to sit around and discuss and apologize and create reconciliation avenues for both sides.

IT DOES NOT WORK. IT HAS NEVER WORKED. It has created more animosity in Rwanda and Cambodia. It is a silly Western liberal idea.

Yet another reason why the left are out to lunch.











genocide




sierra leone






reconciliation