Lessons from Rwanda VI: Account of the genocide

A while back I wrote several accounts based on Shake hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda, an account of the Rwandan genocide by Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire. For some reason I never got round to posting this final extract.

In the previous five posts, I had only mentioned the horror in passing, partly because the true enormity of the horror was hard to describe. Instead I offer this extract as a microcosm.

The following is the account that Colonel Isoa Tikoca, the Fijian Chief Military Observer, gave of the situation in Gisenyi, a border town on lake Kivu opposite the Congolese town of Goma:

“…by noon on the 7th [the first day of the genocide] they were going from house
to house… they killed some people on the pot but carried others away to a mass
grave near the airport where they cut their arms and legs and finally massacred
them, as observed the by UNMOs [UN Military Observers]. The [Rwandan] Army and Gendarmerie did nothing to stop these killer-groups… they closed the border with Goma, Zaire. The UNMOs were threatened and they regrouped at the Meridien hotel where foreigners were massing for protection. Stories of massacres all over the
region were reported by these eyewitnesses. A priest assembled in the church with about 200 children for protection, after prayers the killers opened the doors and massacred all of them… another chapel was burned with hundreds of people inside. Children between the ages of 10 to 12 years old killed children. Mothers with babies on their backs killed mothers with babies on their backs. They threw babies into the air and mashed them on the ground. At Rsumbura, 3 Belgian teachers, 2 males and 1 female, and 3 local priests were killed. On the night of the 8th, an expatriate convoy was allowed passage to Goma. On the 10th, Madame Carr, famous because of the movie Gorillas in the Mist left her house for the first time. She has been in Rwanda for more than 45 years. The 85-year-old woman said that what she saw was terrible…
“Were able to conduct some patrols but the streets too littered with roadblocks and dead people. Ordered to evacuate on 13th, spent two nights between Rwandan and Zaire border posts. Finally made way to Mkumba and moved to Kigali. Communications very bad.” (Shake hands with the Devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda, Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, pp313-4)

The slaughter covered the whole country and lasted three months. The above describes one town over a single week.

Hurray for George Bush!

Tuesday’s announcement by President Bush that he is imposing stiffer sanctions on the Sudan for its genocide in Dafur is welcome news, and puts the rest of the world to shame.

“Too long the people of Dafur have suffered at the hands of a government that is
complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians,” President Bush
said at an 8am press conference. “My administration has called these actions by
their rightful name: genocide. The world has a responsibility to help put an end
to it.”

Too right. After the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the world’s leaders descended into miserable self-reflection which resulted in a collective agreement never to allow such a tragedy to recur. And yet ten years later it did recur, and now estimates of the death toll range between two and four hundred thousand. If between a quarter and a half as many have died as in Rwanda, then the difference is merely quantitative; in essence, the genocide has happened again, and every government that has stood by and allowed it to happen is stained by it.

This latest ratcheting up of the pressure remains fairly token; while 31 companies and four individuals have been targeted, the Sudanese government has long expected this action and has moved to protect its assets. Nonetheless, this sends a strong signal, and I hope the first of many. It is now beholden on the European Union and any country whose citizens believe in, and whose government claims to uphold, human rights to at least equal these sanctions, and to come together to discuss further efforts to force Sudan’s government to end the state sponsored killing.

Britain’s own government has been timorous in its response – when I confronted Kim Howells on this last year, he fudged the issue. Little of worth has so far come from the European Union. Meanwhile, China continues to invest in Sudan and prop up its murderous regime, and Russia is becoming more obstreperous. However, whether or not we can persuade China to change its ways, or dissuade them and the Russians from vetoing a UN Security Council resolution, we have a duty to do what we can to protect the innocent victims of Dafur.

Our leaders seem to have forgotten. It seems that it takes George W. Bush to put this back on the agenda.