12 Years Ago....When the World Closed its eyes

[вор в законе]

Between April and June 1994, an estimated 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the space of 100 days.


The Hutu militia broke the peace of the country and begun killing any Tutsis in their sight as they called them "cockroaches".


Unlike the instigators of the killings of Armenians in 1915, and of Jews and Roma in 1941-5, no-one tried to keep the genocide in Rwanda a secret. Journalists and television cameras reported what they saw.... or what they found when the genocide was over.


Our story begins when Belgium colonized the country and sorted out the Rwandan people by shades of colour and nose size, in order to divide and control them.


Though western leaders split hairs over the meaning of genocide, simply got their citizens out of Rwanda and then remained indifferent to the senseless killings.

I guess they were too busy in splitting the Balkans during that period of time.


I assume that all this seems more immediate to you now. Maybe it's because we now see a similar slaughter of poor, downtrodden people in the Darfur region of Sudan and, again, western capitalist nations aren't doing much other than threatening to rap the knuckles of the bad guys like angry teachers.



http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/081305/i-live-in-rwanda.gif







The Rwandan genocide, that's what it was.









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[slightlyleft7_26]

great analysis...you're right about darfur, but what can we do about it?

[redsoldier32]

it's the sad, sad, truth, nobody except china helps africa

[Horatii]

it's the sad, sad, truth, nobody except china helps africa

Yeah man, those Chinese and their phenomenal human's rights records!

[Severian]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 9 2006, 03:15 PM
Maybe it's because we now see a similar slaughter of poor, downtrodden people in the Darfur region of Sudan and, again, western capitalist nations aren't doing much other than threatening to rap the knuckles of the bad guys like angry teachers.
You're mistaken if you think the "western capitalist nations" weren't "doing much" in Rwanda.

France even had troops there, as part of their support to the Rwandan regime which carried out the genocide.

And the U.S. aided the rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, mostly through the Ugandan government. After the RPF took power, the U.S. continued to aid the new Rwandan government - and use it as a means of intervening in the Congo/Zaire.

Like a lot of the bloody, dead-end conflicts taking place in Africa in recent years, Rwanda '94 had a strong element of inter-imperialist conflict. The imperialist countries' hand-washing stance was just that - a stance.

It'd be interesting to do a deeper examination of the Chad and Sudan conflicts from this viewpoint. It's known that Paris is backing the Chad government, which is backing the Darfur rebels. Also that the Sudanese government is backing the Chad rebels.

The question I'd ask is, is anyone quietly, maybe indirectly, backing the Sudanese government and/or the Chad rebels, while publicly deploring Sudan's actions in Darfur....

[dislatino]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16 2006, 11:13 PM

it's the sad, sad, truth, nobody except china helps africa

Yeah man, those Chinese and their phenomenal human's rights records!
:o Is that so, i never knew China are the only ones helping Africa, could anyone post any links or informative statisics on the chinese human rights records? anything will do just very interested now.

[Vanguard1917]

And the U.S. aided the rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, mostly through the Ugandan government. After the RPF took power, the U.S. continued to aid the new Rwandan government - and use it as a means of intervening in the Congo/Zaire.

I agree. In fact, the US and Britain's support for the RPF proved to be decisive in giving way to the genocide. The genocide in Rwanda was the product of Western intervention, not the lack of it.

[Janus]

As usual, much of the problems that Africa has faced can be blamed on imperialism. Imperialism, after all, was one of the factors that resulted in the Rwanda genocide due to the tensions left created by and left behind by the colonizers.


i never knew China are the only ones helping Africa
Of course, the Chinese aren't the only countries helping Africa but they were pretty much the only one helping Africa during the 1960's. In the African countries which received Chinese aid, the old-timers still remember Mao Zedong and think positively of him. Mao was providing major aid to Africa even while his fellow countrymen were starving!

[Gottwald]

Between April and June 1994, an estimated 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the space of 100 days.

There are not any Hutus nor are there Tutsis. It's all rubbish fabricated by the Flemische imperialists. If neither group exists, then there was not any genocide whatsoever. The primary reason why the Tutsis were targetted was because of their disgusting bourgeois status. Violence on the grounds of social class is entirely permissable when it is the bourgeoise that is targetted.


The Hutu militia broke the peace of the country and begun killing any Tutsis in their sight as they called them "cockroaches".

Again, the whole Hutu-Tutsi divide is nothing but an imperialist fabrication.


Jews and Roma in 1941-5, no-one tried to keep the genocide in Rwanda a secret.

..and the Poles, Soviet POWs, and Communists. You're emhpasis on Jews is utterly disrespectful to the tens of millions of our Sovet comrades that died to preserve our precious worker-peasant state. There is no such thing as the Holocaust although 5 million Jews did indeed die. What I'm getting at is that the "Holocaust" is simply a bourgeois Zionist chauvinist perspective of World War II. The "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" mentions 6 million dead Jews (more like 4.5 million according to "Collier's Year Book" in the 1946 edition), but does not include the term "Holocaust" because us Bolsheviks have a proletarian internationalist outlook. If we are to consider Soviet Jews as part of the Russian and Ukrainian people, then 4 million Jews died deducted from 5 million. If we are to consider Polish Jews as part of the Polish nation, then 1 million Jews died. With the Axis countries of Germany, Romania, and Hungary remaining, about 700,000 Jews died in World War II. Because the deaths of Jews also meant the deaths of citizens of USSR and Poland which were in warfare with Germany, then there is no such thing as a distinct Jewish "Holocaust" with 6 million victims.


Though western leaders split hairs over the meaning of genocide, simply got their citizens out of Rwanda and then remained indifferent to the senseless killings.

It was abominable for the West to have intervened in Yugoslavia. However, any internvention in Rwanda would have been equally condemnable because it is unacceptable for a country to in any way exercise influence over a country the consent of the regime in concern. It was a triumph for sovereignty and independence for USA to have refrained from its expected meddling.


Maybe it's because we now see a similar slaughter of poor, downtrodden people in the Darfur region of Sudan and, again, western capitalist nations aren't doing much other than threatening to rap the knuckles of the bad guys like angry teachers.

Here we go again with the genocide fable in Darfur. What is omitted from the bourgeois western press is that the superstitious southern Christians have at various times attacked government facilities. The behaviour on the part of the militia is merely reactionary. Unless we receive an invitation from Sudan's government, we haven no right to take any action. Otherwise such behavior would be an invasion. The proletarian internationalist world has more significant things to worry about particularly America's imperialist designs towards Russia's neighbours e.g Ukraine, Georgia.

[Alex S.]

There were distinct Hutu and Tutsi groups long ago, but the intermarriage and constant movement of the groups has all but eliminated the distinction. The Germans and Belgians simply exploited the miniscule divide because it fit the Hamitic Myth.

Genocides can occur even when there is no actual difference in the groups. The witch-hunts of the 1600s are one of the most notorious examples. Of course witches don't exist but anyone exhibiting characteristics perceived as witch-like was tried, tortured, or killed. The same thing happens in other genocides where the victim group is distinguished and stereotyped by the perpetrators regardless of the stereotype's basis in reality.

The idea that the Tutsi were a bunch of bourgeois oppressors is simply nonsense. Well over 90% of the Tutsi in Rwanda were as dirt poor as your average Hutu, yet suffered the same fate as the rich Tutsi. Many Hutu Power leaders and MRND officials were bourgeois but were not targeted by the genocide. Colonol Bagosora, one of the planners of the genocide, was a rich man (relative to the poverty of Rwanda) and only got richer through the genocide. If the killings were targeted to the rich there would be a lot fewer farmers in the graves and a lot more men with uniforms in them.

The JEM and SLM (now united) did attack government facilities thus sparking the current near three-years old conflict, true. However, while the Janjaweed might have originally been a reaction, a group of tribes answering the government's call to arms, it has long since gone past that. The original parties (JEM, SLM, and the Khartoum government) signed an armistice in 2004, but the Janjaweed simply kept attacking villages and civilians, sometimes with the help of government helicopters in violation of the no-fly zone agreed in the armistice.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2006, 06:25 PM
There are not any Hutus nor are there Tutsis. It's all rubbish fabricated by the Flemische imperialists. If neither group exists, then there was not any genocide whatsoever. The primary reason why the Tutsis were targetted was because of their disgusting bourgeois status. Violence on the grounds of social class is entirely permissable when it is the bourgeoise that is targetted.
Well, that's a truly vile pile of excuses for mass murder carried out by a neocolonial client regime of French imperialism.

It's also false. (http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6029/6029_11.html) As Alex S. says, there were poor Tutsis and rich Hutu. Many Hutu were also killed in '94 - political opponents of the regime and the genocide.

You're also self-contradictory; if there are no Hutus or Tutsis, then how can being Tutsi be a valid justification for murder?

And in fact it was that (arbitrary) distinction that was the basis for mass murder. People were killed for holding official ID cards that designated them as Tutsi.

Those cards were established by Belgian colonialism but maintained by independent Rwandan governments (until 1997). For many years, Hutu-dominated governments had enforced a quota where 90% of government employees had to hold "Hutu" ID cards....which of course gave rise to a lively trade in ethnicity-switching ID cards.

[Messiah]

I'm pretty sure Cuba provided/provides Africa with doctors still to this day, no? The "Communist" countries generally had a fairly good track record of providing practical help to the "third world".

[Mujer Libre]

On the subject of both groups being really poor, I was under the impression that that was how it was. Part of the reason for the sudden upsurge in violence was the lack of food- due to a lack of arable land and problem with dividing it etc. This led to tension in communities, which eventually led to hostilities and killings.

I found that staggering when I read it. Maybe if the world had noticed (when the food shortage hadn't yet turned into genocide) then this whole thing wouldn't have happened. :(

[Messiah]

No, the "world" doesn't care. If they don't care about the poverty in misery in their own countries they sure as hell aren't going to give a damn about it in Africa. Out of sight, out of mind, and build walls to make sure you never have to look.

[mzalen-do]

im happy to hear some of u understand the real side of the story....though some are as ignorant as the average "westerner"..let em bygones be bygones but the genocide taught us a very good lesson,the west doesn't give a damn what happens in africa as long as it don involve none of they citizens..whats going down in darfur aint genocide cause the big ass amerikkka aint declared so...gimme a break

[Alex S.]

I don't know if food was an issue in the time preceding the genocide. Nothing I've read has even attempted to address that idea. But since the genocide occured during April, when spring crops would be planted, it certainly made food scarce until humanitarian aid started flowing in July/August after the genocide ended (and even then most of this aid went to the Hutu Power camps in Congo!). Certainly during this time people would have been killed for food at least on a small scale. Jared Diamond (a recent best-selling historian many of you have probably heard of) argued in his latest book "Collapse" that overpopulation, which I assume is related somewhat to food production, was a contributing factor. He uses as evidence a small area in Rwanda with 2000 residents, and only one Tutsi, where 5% of the population was killed.

Re: Darfur. We actually had a leading genocide historian, Samantha Power, speak at my university a while back. That same day Collin Powell had called the situation a genocide. Unfortunately as Power made clear to us, Powell's stance was unofficial to the US government.

Even the UN is cowardly here, their reasoning for denying it's a genocide was given in the January 2005 report, that only individuals, even some in the Sudanese government, are carrying out genocidal acts, but not the Sudan government itself. How they came to that conclusion is beyond me. It is at best a semantic and irrelevant distinction and at worst allows war crimes to continue. The same report tries to save itself by claiming they aren't belittling atrocities, but that isn't the point. Labelling it genocide would mean the UN had to act on it as per the Genocide Convention, which is something fact-finding missions are rarely prepared to propose.

[Severian]

I've seen some stuff suggesting the civil war between the government and the RPF rebels was in part fueled by a worsening food production situation. Caused by droughts and so forth. I don't know if that's accurate.