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Friday, 28 December 2012

The US and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994

The US and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994
Evidence of Inaction
William Ferroggiaro, Editor
August 20, 2001
On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's personal plane, a gift from French president Francois Mitterand, was shot down as it returned to Rwanda, killing Habyarimana, Burundian president Cyprien Ntarymira, and members of their entourages.  The two presidents were returning from Tanzania, where they'd met with regional leaders concerning events in Burundi.  Habyarimana himself was pressed to implement the power-sharing Arusha Accord his government had concluded with the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in August 1993, which capped three years of war, cease-fires and negotiations.  To do so, however, would mean the effective end of his 20-year, one-party rule over Rwandan politics and society.  Extremists in the military and government bitterly opposed the accord; they are the likely culprits in his assassination.  Within an hour of the plane crash, the Presidential Guard, elements of the Rwandan armed forces (FAR) and extremist militia (Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi) set up roadblocks and barricades and began the organized slaughter, starting in the capital Kigali, of nearly one million Rwandans in 100 days time.  Their first targets were those most likely to resist the plan of genocide: the opposition Prime Minister, the president of the constitutional court, priests, leaders of the Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party, the Information Minister, and tellingly, the negotiator of the Arusha Accord.  Those who hesitated to join the campaign, such as the governor of a southern province, were quickly removed from positions of influence or killed.  As a US intelligence analyst noted in late April, 

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/index.html

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-“The root cause of the Rwandan tragedy of 1994 is the long and past historical ethnic dominance of one minority ethnic group to the other majority ethnic group. Ignoring this reality is giving a black cheque for the Rwandan people’s future and deepening resentment, hostility and hatred between the two groups.”

-« Ce dont j’ai le plus peur, c’est des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre ».

-“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

-“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.

-“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

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