Rwanda and genocide

[Ruinel]

A discussion started in the Temporary Vent Thread with (I think) Earniel's dismay at Belgium taking responsibility for the genocide which occured in Rwanda.

I'd like to start a discussion going on that.

Personally, I don't see why Belgium is taking responsibility for the genocides, since they did not participate in the killings, only attempted to stop the killings.

Where was the global community in all of this? Where was the UN?

[Jonathan]

Originally posted by Ruinel
Where was the UN?

Kofi Annan admitted that big mistakes were made in the UN security council. Apparently, the member states didn't want to use the word 'genocide' to describe the events in Rwanda, which is why the UN wasn't able act according to its genocide convention.
Annan said that even though the UN had the necessary means to stop and prevent the murdering of the Tutsi, the member states showed no will to take action.

[edit] Eventually, thanks to protests from Belgium, the UN intervened and sent troops to Rwanda, but it was a bit late.

[edit edit] Ok, I've updated myself about the genocide. Apparently, after some Belgian soldiers had been killed, Belgium decided to withdraw its troops and the UN reduced its peacekeeping forces to a minimum. Furthermore, the peacekeeping forces that where still there had orders not to do anything but uphold peace. But there was no peace to preserve. So the genocide could continue.

[Valandil]

Ruinel, in the 'Temp Vent' thread, you ask why the international community didn't step in to stop it. You know... they COULD have tried a bit harder, but I honestly doubt it would have done much good. Here's the situation as I recall it:

First - there was a long, LONG history of hatred and resentment between the two major ethnic groups; the Hutus (formerly 'Bantu' tribe I think) and Tutsis (formerly 'Watusi' tribe). The Hutus greatly outnumbered the Tutsis, but the Tutsis had been their 'over-lords' in pre-colonial times, got some preferential treatment in the colonial period - and still had a lot of the 'plum' jobs in the government at the time... or at least HAD enjoyed that... I believe there was already a Tutsi-rebel army in remote areas - while the main army was Hutu-dominated. (I think the population split was about 90-10, Hutu-Tutsi)

OK, so 10 years ago, the (new?) Hutu President went down in an airplane crash. His Hutu supporters immediately made an accusation of Tutsi sabotuege (SP?). It was incredible... almost overnight, the killing started. It sprang up EVERYWHERE... big cities, small villages, all around the countryside... it was just so shocking - and seemed to me so orchestrated. Mobs of Hutus went around killing all Tutsis (and any who tried to shield them) they could find... machetes and axes were most common weapons - I'm sure guns when available, fire (whole groups of people burned in buildings, like churches, etc) - whatever else.

If anyone had sent in troops... for one, no way they could cover the whole countryside... for another, I don't think most troops from Europe or America could have picked up on the racial differences quickly enough to know who was who - and develop and implement a workable plan of action. The killing was just so rampant... so widespread... so sudden!

The whole thing lasted no more than a month. Nobody knows the exact total of people killed - I-Rex's 600,000 is a good number - maybe a bit low. Meanwhile, a refugee camp sprouted up in Goma, Zairie and was just overwhelmed with fleeing Tutsis. Later - the Tutsi rebels began to gain ground, and there were reprisals on a smaller scale, there were trials (and denials).

It happened so FAST! The worst human tragedy I can think of in my own living memory - in the shortest amount of time, anyway.

Meanwhile, the US and Europe were already entangled in Bosnia... though the Hutus of Rwanda made the Serbs look like 'good fairies'...

[Insidious Rex]

I hope this doesnt simply break down into a blame game. I would have to say that EVERYONE dropped the ball on this one. The UN. Africans. Europeans. Americans. Everyone. And we ought to put that behind us and focus on what we need to do (what systems we need to have set up in advance) so that this kind of thing is less likely to ever happen again. Currently theres a small scale genocide going on in Sudan involving "sudanese arabs" trying to exterminate "black arabs" with the backing of the sudanese government who is in a war with the christian sudanese (yes it gets confusing which is half the problem). World attention needs to focus on that. We better not spend our time arguing at how many lives does something become "genocide" and then when we are done go out for tea. We need to change our way of thinking and serve humanity first and foremost in my opinion.

[The Gaffer]

Well, maybe it's a start that someone is prepared to admit to responsibility. Maybe then we might actually find out how to prevent it, because we sure as hell haven't learned the lessons (e.g. 3 million dead in the Congo since 1999

An inescapable dimension here is that these countries are in Africa. They have no oil, they are about as black as it's possible to be, hence the west doesn't give a damn.

Well, individuals do, and that's why NGOs like Oxfam get lots of money and do good work as far as they can.

However, government money and attention is political, as is evident if you look at how much they spend in proportion to what people's needs are:

Crude mortality rates, for instance, are the best simple indicator of humanitarian need, but they show that Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are very far from being the worst situations. The resources devoted to them, however, dwarf those deployed to deal with that in, for instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where millions may have died.

Martin Woolacott The Grauniad, 2nd April 2004.

Not content with that, they also insist that the NGOs get political, so that the recipients of aid know damn well who is helping them out. This nicely compromises the NGOs' independence, and therefore their ability to actually deliver the aid (our aid) to the people who need it in the most dangerous places in the world.

All of the words I have to describe these people are unprintable in this forum.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Valandil
The whole thing lasted no more than a month.

wasnt it 100 days? like over 3 months?

[Valandil]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
wasnt it 100 days? like over 3 months?

You could be right... my memory gets more and more foggy all the time. But it seems like the very worst of it went very quickly.

[Insidious Rex]

I only say that because theres been a few specials with titles like 100 DAYS OF HELL and such. So i just assumed. But it is very true it spread like fire. Whats really horrible to imagine is that people who had been neighbors for years, "normal" every day people, suddenly picked up machetes and started killing their neighbors. This was clearly a case of a national psychosis if there ever was one.

[Ruinel]

Gaffer, I don't know if the "West doesn't give a damn" about problems going on in Africa because it involves blacks. That seems rather simple an argument for it to be the reason.

Personally, I feel the same way about sending US troops into any African country as I do about sending them into Iraq. It should be an equal amount of military representatives from each country of the UN!!! The problem seems to be that the countries of the UN can't make up their minds about such things. No one wants a war, so they're willing to turn to arguing among themselves about what to do rather than take action.

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by The Gaffer
An inescapable dimension here is that these countries are in Africa. They have no oil, they are about as black as it's possible to be, hence the west doesn't give a damn.

Although you mentioned it as the west, I know many people have this attitude mostly about America. We didn't "give a damn" as you put it - because when we tried to help out an African country - Somalia - our marines were dragged through the streets naked. That was for the thanks we got for protecting the humanitarian aid the UN was giving. People here were outraged and demanded that our troops be brought home. Being the "president by the polls" he was that is exactly what Clinton did and that is why we did not get involved with Rwanda. There were hundred of other countries in the UN that could have though.

It had nothing to do with there not being any oil, or with them being black. Otherwise we would not have gotten involved in Somalia or Bosnia or many other places where there is no oil - such as Haiti.

[Jonathan]

Originally posted by Ruinel
Gaffer, I don't know if the "West doesn't give a damn" about problems going on in Africa because it involves blacks. That seems rather simple an argument for it to be the reason.

Actually, I think one of the reasons the UN member states initially didn't want to intervene was that among them, Africe was widely looked upon as a continent where small countries like Rwanda were populated with "savages", who every now and then started to kill off one another without any given reason. It could be that the UN was reluctant to send troops to stop what they incorrectly considered a "normal" Rwandan event.

[edit] And as JD said, the US in particular was unwilling to send troops to Rwanda after what had happened in Somalia.

Originally posted by Ruinel
Personally, I feel the same way about sending US troops into any African country as I do about sending them into Iraq. It should be an equal amount of military representatives from each country of the UN!!! The problem seems to be that the countries of the UN can't make up their minds about such things. No one wants a war, so they're willing to turn to arguing among themselves about what to do rather than take action.

Of course, military representation from as many countries as possible would be preferable. However, the US is by far the biggest military power in the world, so that they contribute a lot more than the average UN member state is only logical.
The UN is known to not be able to act quickly, or even act at all. They need to become better at making decisions and hopefully they were taught a lesson by the Tutsi genocide. The UN security council had appealed to the other member states to send troops but they didn't.
When Kofi Annan attended a conference about genocide in Stockholm earlier this year, he was self-critical and said that he want to establish new UN authorities that will work for trying to prevent future genocides. The UN doesn't want to make the same mistakes again.

Furthermore, it is believed that the risks of genocide are biggest in Sudan, Burma, Burundi, Rwanda and Congo. People have already been killed in these countries but if the violence escalates, the UN has to be ready.

[The Gaffer]

I think I agree with what Jonathan said there, and it's clear that the UN has to be more effective, not less, to be able to act appropriately.

In some ways, things are changing: the Sierra Leone UN troops consist of mainly African nations.

But can we dismiss the racial element out of hand?

Does anyone else think it's a bit odd that a bad experience in one African country stopped the commitment of troops in another country? What, do they all look the same or something???

Look at the former Yugoslavia: when whites start doing each other in, we send in the troops. Look at the Middle East: when there's oil underneath the countries, we're well in.

If anyone thinks I'm specifically having a go at America here, PM me your reasons and I'll explain why not. I'd rather not clutter the thread with the usual mudslinging.

These kinds of emnities exist all over the world: Catholic/Protestant, Hutu/Tutsi, Hindu/Moslem, Jew/Christian, etc etc.

To my mind the real enemy here is poverty: when people have got nothing to lose they are far more likely to get caught up in the kind of barbarism that exploits these hatreds. And when they have nothing for us to take from them, we don't care.

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by Jonathan
...Of course, military representation from as many countries as possible would be preferable. However, the US is by far the biggest military power in the world, so that they contribute a lot more than the average UN member state is only logical.

I, for one, would like nothing better than to cut our military to the same size as any other country. There is no reason for the US to have bases abroad in countries that don't want us there. You can't say it's to protect "American interests", when a company goes abroad, they do so with the full knowledge that they are no longer under US laws or protection.

oops.. back on topic

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by The Gaffer
Does anyone else think it's a bit odd that a bad experience in one African country stopped the commitment of troops in another country? What, do they all look the same or something???

It's not that they look the same - it's that the American population did not want to send troops or get involved after seeing our soldiers dragged through the streets. We get criiticised for having a fighting tactic of bombing from 30,000 ft - but that is why we have it.

Look at the former Yugoslavia: when whites start doing each other in, we send in the troops. Look at the Middle East: when there's oil underneath the countries, we're well in.

We were prtecting the Muslims and no one got into Bosnia fast. It wasn't like many people didn't die over the course of years while every one looked on. The US didn't even want to get involved there - for a long time we were trying to get Europe to handle it on their own.

To my mind the real enemy here is poverty: when people have got nothing to lose they are far more likely to get caught up in the kind of barbarism that exploits these hatreds. And when they have nothing for us to take from them, we don't care.

I think the real thing is lack of freedoms - in the case of the Middle East and a lack of government in the African countries. it probably does have things to do with poverty too - but then the only way to relieve the poverty is by enabling them to take care of themselves.

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by Ruinel
I, for one, would like nothing better than to cut our military to the same size as any other country. There is no reason for the US to have bases abroad in countries that don't want us there. You can't say it's to protect "American interests", when a company goes abroad, they do so with the full knowledge that they are no longer under US laws or protection.

World trade and stability is an AMERICAN interest. The reason we were in Europe was to check Soviet power. To make sure they didn't expand and take over western europe. YOu know what affect that would have had on our economy on our safety if that happened? We are over in South Korea for th same reason. Can you imagine what would happen if we weren't there with North Korea just left to make nuclear bombs?