Article

2008-10-09 Africa Subsaharan

Rwanda: Call to Indict French Leaders for Genocide

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Posted by 3dc 2008-10-09 02:35|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top

#1 Heaven forbid that Africans should assume any responsibility for slaughtering Africans. Yeah, just innocent child-like victims of colonialism.

Posted by SteveS 2008-10-09 11:06|| 2008-10-09 11:06|| Front Page Top

#2 If you've ever seen the documentary "Dance with the Devil", you'd understand what happened a little better. Not completely, I'm sure. There have been a long line of people positioned to take the blame for what happened, Including the U.N. General from Belgium who had all of 40 troops at his disposal. This is just white noise to put the blame on others instead of themselves. They were the ones in the streets with machetes and knobkerries murdering their neighbors. It was a long simmering tribal conflict, that was the result of one tribe being chosen long ago to be the preferred people to deal with by the colonial powers. They enjoyed a somewhat imaginary preferred status in the post-colonial years.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2008-10-09 11:33|| 2008-10-09 11:33|| Front Page Top

#3 It is not a surprise that Africa cannot manage to govern itself. Nobody is willing to take blame for anything, even things they were taking credit for a decade ago.

Posted by rjschwarz 2008-10-09 12:38|| 2008-10-09 12:38|| Front Page Top

#4 No kidding, it's their fault for doing it, and the rest of the world's fault for not stepping in and putting a stop to it. In 10 years, I guess they'll try to blame the Darfur genocide, on the African Union or something. Has the UN even decided if it fits the technical definition of a 'genocide' yet?

Posted by bigjim-ky 2008-10-09 13:07|| 2008-10-09 13:07|| Front Page Top

#5 Bigjim and others

1) The genocide was perpetrated by the precedent (Hutu power ) governement and this one is dominsted by the Tutsi and the modetete Hutu (who were massacred with nearly as much glee then the Tusi). In other words the .

2) The French governemnt supported the genociders before the genocide (it was French forces who a couple years bedore the genocide stopped the FPR forces after they had routed teh Rwanda Army) depite knowing all too well (they made no mysteries misteries about it) what the Hutu power was preparing. It supported them during the genocide by covering their retreat (*), it supported them after the genocide by funding and rearming them so they could start a guerrilla campaign in Rwanda and perpetrate new massacres.

3 In case you want to know why the French did that, it is because Africa is France's milk cow and while Rawnda is dirty poor, French politicians feared a domino effect favoring the Americans.

4) In case you want to know why I take it so personally: because my daughter was eighteen months old and children her age weren't being spared.

(*) Tha forces deployes in Operation Manta officlally for protecting the victims of genicide in fact want to areas where there were about zero survivors. But their deployment prevented the FPR from cutting the retreat of the genociders.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-10-09 15:07|| 2008-10-09 15:07|| Front Page Top

#6 1) The genocide was perpetrated by the precedent (Hutu power ) governement and this one is dominsted by the Tutsi and the moderate Hutu (who were massacred with nearly as much glee then the Tusi). In other words the victims.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-10-09 15:08|| 2008-10-09 15:08|| Front Page Top

#7 Just a quick clarification:
There were not separate tribal groups in Rwanda. It was, in essence, a class war. The Hutu were the cow-herding class and the Tutsi were the subsistence farmers.
These groups did not typically intermarry,(cow herding brought more wealth and one wants to keep that within the family structure) but they have identical languages and cultural practices. By all definitions, they are the exact same ethnic group. The French created the difference and assigned physical attributes to the two groups.

This does not exempt the two groups from what happened, but the French did play a much larger role in defining these groups than we like to give them credit for. French involvement in the fighting was a completely different story and I agree with JFM on that.

Posted by sjb 2008-10-09 16:33|| 2008-10-09 16:33|| Front Page Top

#8 Sorry SJN but you have it all wrong, or more excatly you have been lied. The people who lied to you tried deny an emabrassing evidence for them (Balck racism) and horseshoe it into their cheap marxist ideas

1) Hutus and Tutsis share a language (Kinyarwanda) a bantu language. Hutis seem to be native and Tutsis are Nilotic (like Masai in Kenya) and came mater (there is a third ethina, the Twas: avraity of pygmeys). Hutus and Tutsis are phisically very different: Hutus tend to be realtivaly short and broad, while Tutsis are very tall (a lot/most of their women are over six feeet, three inches. Men are taller), with very long legs and arms. Also most hutus have the same squat noses and fat lips typical in African Americans. Tutsis have thin lips and straight noses a feature who cannot be explained by mode of life or alimentary habits.
Also while there were cases of Hutus becoming cow-herders that never made Tutsis of them. ditto for Tutsis becoming farmers.

2) Even if you believed the cow herders versus farmers theory the fact is that teh Hutu propganda didn't present it as a class war. They presented it not as class war but as a racial war between Nilotics and Bantus (properly the Bantus are a linguistic not racial group, but since most Bantus have "negroid" facial features and those with Nilotic like ones are a miority coming from outside and adopting Bantu languages, the Hutu power people defined Bantus as race).

3) Rwanda was conquered by Germans and became Belgian fter WWI. It was never in French hands. Tutsis had been the rulers of Rwanda (and cut to pieces all slave-taking expeditions venturing in their kingdom) since around 1600. After WWII, the Belgian version of Mountbatten thought it would be a good idea to handle power (and thus the weapons and army) the majority ie the Hutu. Pogroms started neraly immediately, culminating with a quasi genocide in 1962 (*). Benjamain Franklin said: "Democracy is when two wolves and a lamb vote about dinner, a Republic is when you have a weel armed lamb able to object. The Belgian governor who handled power to Hutus should have thought about it.

(*) That was slogan Radio Mille Collines repeated during the genocide: "Let's not repeat the 1962 mistake: don't spare the children". There is a kind of sinners Jesus Christ was unable to forgive: those who harmed children.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-10-09 17:46|| 2008-10-09 17:46|| Front Page Top

#9 JFM,
I certainly cannot dispute your last two points in the slightest.
As to the first, well, the gist of what you say i agree with. It is possible that I have been lied to, but the people I talked to about it were people from the region, and also researchers who have spent extensive amounts of time in the country during and after the conflict.

Were they biased in telling me details? Quite possibly. If so, I apologize deeply. I hate being wrong and I hate even more inaccuracies in information sharing. But I prefer first-hand accounts and study, and they all told me the same thing, so forgive me for my thinking.

Posted by sjb 2008-10-09 18:28|| 2008-10-09 18:28|| Front Page Top

#10 When will they investigate the culpability of Bill Clinton for the Rwanda debacle?

Posted by Woozle Unusosing8053 2008-10-09 20:18|| 2008-10-09 20:18|| Front Page Top

#11 Never, he simply did nothing, that's not a crime unfortunately. He him-hawed around until there was nothing left to do. And do you know he had the balls to show his face in Rwanda after it was all over.

JFM and SJB, however you stack it up, it seems it was one 'favored' group with either real or imagined social status that was being murdered by people they lived next to and looked, spoke, lived and dressed identically to. It was pointless.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2008-10-09 22:26|| 2008-10-09 22:26|| Front Page Top

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