Annan Regrets Rwanda Genocide

Well, no kidding.

As the head of the UN Peacekeeping mission, he should be indicted, not given the Secretaryship of the entire UN. Kosovo required NATO intervention, and the UN was nowhere to be found during Cambodia.

The UN has degenerated into a bickering squabbling petty organization, and Annan has only perpetuated the chaos. Saddam kills hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, evidence is collected that would fill rooms of atrocities, yet no indictment. The UN is unable to operate in anything but the most permissive security situations. East Timor may be the limit to their ability to rebuild nations. The oil-for-palaces program was frought with corruption, and the humanitarian programs, are sometimes effective, but are anything but a model of efficiency.

Never mind the brave Belgians who stood by as people encamped nearby for their safety were slaughtered while the Belgians sood by and watched. Won’t see any Belgians indicted in their own Human Rights Court for that one…

Dissolve the UN, and form the “League of Democratic Nations”.

UN chief’s Rwanda genocide regret

Annan headed UN peacekeepers at the time of 1994 genocide
The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said he could and should have done more to stop the genocide in Rwanda 10 years ago.
At a memorial conference at the UN, Mr Annan said he realised he personally could have done more to rally support for international efforts to stop it.

“The international community is guilty of sins of omission,” Mr Annan said.

The genocide - in which some 800,000 people died - occurred when Mr Annan was head of UN peacekeeping forces.

Kofi Annan
The UN Security Council failed to reinforce the small UN peacekeeping force in the country.

“The international community failed Rwanda and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret,” Mr Annan said.

He said the painful memory had influenced many of his later decisions as secretary general.

“I believed at that time that I was doing my best,” he said.

“But I realised after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support.”

No protection

Rwandans have accused the peacekeepers who were there at the time of failing to protect them.

One survivor, Specios Kenya Bugoi, described how 4,000 Tutsis took shelter close to Belgian troops hoping to be safe.

I lost my husband, members of my family, all of my friends, neighbour

Genocide survivor

Genocide planning revealed
Speaking through an interpreter she described how the troops left and the killings began.

“During that massacre I lost my husband, members of my family, all of my friends, neighbours,” she said.

“I slept among the cadavers for the whole night.”

In April 2000 the UN Security Council admitted responsibility for failing to stop the genocide.

The Canadian Foreign Minister, Bill Graham, told the conference that 10 years after the genocide the international community had still not learned how to stop such killings from happening again.

“We lack the political will to achieve the necessary agreement on how to put in place the type of measures that will prevent a future Rwanda from happening,” he said.

Lessions learned?

The head of the small UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda at the time, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire, told the conference that no-one was interested in saving Rwandans and the bulk of his force was ordered to leave.

He suggested that attitudes now had not changed.

“I still believe that if an organisation decided to wipe out the 320 mountain gorillas there would be still more of a reaction by the international community to curtail or to stop that than there would be still today in attempting to protect thousands of human beings being slaughtered in the same country.”

The UN has designated 7 April as international day of reflection on the genocide.

Mr Annan announced he was backing a call from the Rwandan government for the world to observe a minute of silence to remember the victims and resolve to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.

“Let us be united in a way we were not 10 years ago,” he said.

:(

Why did the massacre take place?

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by little human: *
:(

Why did the massacre take place?
[/QUOTE]
There are evil people in this world.

LH, Because those who perpetrated it knew that the world would close their eyes to it.

Annan is responsible. The member states of the UN are responsible. We all failed Rwanda. The "genocide", and remember what the cliched "G" word actually means - people were slaughtered, children saw their mothers and sisters raped right infront of them, carcasses strewn on the roads like dead bodies of cattle - occurred at a time when Tonya Harding's news was frontpage centre in most media outlets. The world was more concerned about the knife attack on one figure skater, than the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans.

We're all responsible... not just the UN, but the countries that pledged to uphold the UN Charter. At the time when this occurred, no one wanted to say the "G" word - that was official policy for some countries' governments. Don't mention the word 'genocide' and maybe we can sweep the murders of 800,000 civilians under the rug.

We never learn from history. i will be very surprised if something like this doesn't occur again in less than fifty years' time.

I mean who was behind it and why did they do it? And is the person who lead this genocide being held accountable?

I read a little about this long ago.

what happened in rwanda was far worse than what happened to the jews
in world war 2 yet because it was africa none of the people in power were interested. if you guys just watch bbc programme panorama on this genocide it will give you sleepless nights. i think the rwanda genocide was a bit like parition riots of 1947 and more recent gujrat massacares.

**

Sorry. i should have been more specific in my last reply :flower1: Let’s see if i can get this straight:

  • In Rwanda, historically there have been two predominant ethnic groups: Hutus and Tutsis. The Hutus are in the majority (85%), the Tutsis are in the minority. Rwanda used to be under Belgian colonial rule. In 1916, the Belgian govt. implemented an ‘ethnic-based’ policy that required Hutus and Tutsis to carry ID cards based upon their ethnicity - sounds reminiscient of Germany’s policy against Jews, right. They also favoured the minority Tutsis over the majority Hutus, giving the Tutsis better positions, more access to education etc. This is all building up into a good recipe for ethnic tensions.

  • Belgians go out, Rwanda becomes officially decolonized. In 1962, majority Hutus came to power. There was conflict against the minority Tutsis (that used to be the elite class before during colonial times).

  • Tensions continued to simmer between Hutus and Tutsis. There was a group of Tutsi refugees (with some moderate Hutus) who formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Their goal was to topple Rwanda’s Hutu-majority government.

  • In 1994, the plane of the Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was shot down. This triggered off major crises: the “presidential guard” started slaughtering moderate Hutus, and ordinary Tutsi civilians.

  • In 100 days, 800,000 people were murdered. That means 8000 people were dying each day, for one hundred days consecutively. How many WTC bombings does that make. And the world stood by silently because these were black people whose lives are meaningless anyways occupying a country that has no strategic oil assets. :slight_smile:

i hope i didn’t make that sound too confusing. Sorry if i did. Please let me know if some parts of it don’t make sense (or if ALL of it doesn’t make sense :smiley: ).

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by kabir: *
what happened in rwanda was far worse than what happened to the jews
in world war 2

[/QUOTE]

Why do you say that?

Re: Annan Regrets Rwanda Genocide

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ohioguy: *
Well, no kidding.

As the head of the UN Peacekeeping mission, he should be indicted, not given the Secretaryship of the entire UN. Kosovo required NATO intervention, and the UN was nowhere to be found during Cambodia.

The UN has degenerated into a bickering squabbling petty organization, and Annan has only perpetuated the chaos. Saddam kills hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, evidence is collected that would fill rooms of atrocities, yet no indictment. The UN is unable to operate in anything but the most permissive security situations. East Timor may be the limit to their ability to rebuild nations. The oil-for-palaces program was frought with corruption, and the humanitarian programs, are sometimes effective, but are anything but a model of efficiency.

[/QUOTE]

I couldnt agree more, but dont you think that individually powerful countries have scuttled the UN one too many times to render it handicapped in a best case scenario, and dead in the worst? Annan has a million things on his agenda, and if he is pushed down on 99% of those issues, and then blamed and abused for the 1% issues that he was not able to deal with, its a tad bit unfair.

Saddams oil for palaces/anthrax/other-dollar-and-genocide-related-stuff was thriving for a long time before this recent post gulf war uproar. Before the '90 attack on Kuwait, Iraq's Saddam was just as big a criminal as he is today. But back then Rumsfeld was too busy shaking hands with him.

Anyway, point is, UN is useless, not because it has failed as an organization, but because it has been made to fail as an organization.

Re: Re: Annan Regrets Rwanda Genocide

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Akif: *
Anyway, point is, UN is useless, not because it has failed as an organization, but because it has been **made to fail
* as an organization.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by underthedome: *

Why do you say that?
[/QUOTE]

IF YOU know the histry of rwanda and esp if you were watching new chanels when the genocide took place .or at least know of its aftermath you will get the answer

No it wasn’t confusing at all. I was 12 at that time so I guess I dont’ know much.

But I read an article back years ago about
Hutus and Tutsis where it said that some muslims provided refuge for those who were fleeing thus more and more people became muslims.

It’s unbelieveable that so many died and so little was done to stop it.

:frowning:

Anyway, point is, UN is useless, not because it has failed as an organization, but because it has been made to fail as an organization.<<<<<<

:k:

(sorry for late reply)

Very tragic, BBC has some good info on it, and a movie is going to be made about a man who sheltered many during that time. It’s going to be about hotelier Paul Rusesabagina, who sheltered more than 1,200 Tutsis from Hutu militias at the elite Hotel des Mille Collines.

little human,

this is what I read [edited] just the other day, in an article about the religion in Rwanda:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3561365.stm

Before the genocide more than 60% of Rwandans were Catholic.

And when the killings started, tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to churches for sanctuary. But they found little protection there.

Churches became sites of slaughter, carried out even at the altar.

He acknowledges that while some priests and nuns risked their lives trying to stop the slaughter, others were implicated in the killings.

This position that blame lies with individuals, rather the Church as an institution, is still highly controversial, as Rwanda marks the tenth anniversary of the genocide.

Many Rwandans have converted to Islam

The Church hierarchy in Rwanda supported the previous regime of President Juvenal Habyarimana. And they failed to denounce ethnic hatred then being disseminated.

Sheikh Saleh Habimana, the Mufti of Rwanda, is the representative of the country’s Muslims.

He says many turned to Islam because Muslims were seen to have acted differently.

“The roofs of Muslim houses were full of non-Muslims hiding…”

i am personally aquainted with achristian missionary who was in raawaaanduuuh when the pigs took to their craft.just goes to show you that beliefs are something you can wipe your a$$ with.wanna stop something you dont like?shoot the perpetrators. US policy.

thanks for this info. :slight_smile:

Very tragic indeed

Apart from the US, the UK, Canada, the United Nations, and others...

let's also remember that Muslim countries, based supposedly upon Islamic priniciples of humanity and justice, also stood by while Hutus slaughtered Tutsis. Blood is on everyone's hands, whether Muslim or nonMuslim. i don't remember Sheikh Zayed of the United Arab Emirates protesting about this in very audible terms (although, to be fair, Sheikh Zayed does do a great deal of humanitarian work). Was Hosni Mubarak up in arms about the rivers of blood in Rwanda? No he was not. Where was the upright, morally superior King Fahd; from his half a dozen palaces, he could have uttered a few measly words in protest. But i guess they were all too busy in their harems. Or perhaps, jet setting to their next vacation in Europe. Afterall, what's a few hundred thousand black people being hacked to death, when you've got oil conferences to attend, camel races to win, and the world's tallest glass skyscrapers to construct.

Rwanda is a very sad story and the saddest part is that most of the world still dont know about this horrific blot on human race.
indeed places of worship very innocent tutsis went to seek refugee turned into killing fields.
i think every person should know what happened in rwnada so that such a crime is prevented in future

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by kabir: *
Rwanda is a very sad story and the saddest part is that most of the world still dont know about this horrific blot on human race.
indeed places of worship very innocent tutsis went to seek refugee turned into killing fields.
i think every person should know what happened in rwnada so that such a crime is prevented in future
[/QUOTE]

agree :(

What happened in Rwanda is that the top 5 nations of the UNSC pressured the UN in to not recognizing the issue. The UNSC failed in its job to stop such problems from arising. The US can bully through a resolution for iraq. But they cant do it in rwanda. Pathetic isnt it?