When we think of the immense genocides perpetrated throughout the world
in the last decade, it's hard to compare which has been the worst, or
most horrible.       The most miserable aspect of it all, is that the
march of terror goes on under a shroud of polite complicity, all under
the pretense of promoting peace and human rights.

And the silence...........           The ruling classes in the
imperialist countries have such a multitude of apologists for their
crimes, that Stalin, Mao, or the Khmer Rouge never, ever even began to
assemble such a throng.       Voices are few indeed, to hold that the
capitalist architects of genocide are in fact--  GUILTY  --of their
crimes.

How guilty?         The fact that such a report, given in its entirity
to reporters, has been mainly hidden away on the same day of its release
in our daily press.... that's how guilty.    And that the world has no
intent to have their churches on trial, nor their 'democratically
elected leaders' in the docks.

Still,  The Organization of African Unity did release its Rwandan
report.       And it will not go away.        Clinton and Mitterrand,
will long be remembered along with the sponsors of slavery and facism,
as leaders who drenched the planet in blood.

The Catholic Church will be remembered also, not only for the
inquisition, or how many women are being and have been murdered under
their name......  but also for their sponsorship of genocides from
Native Americans victims to Jews to Gypsies to Rwandans only so
recently.

Those of us on The Left are accustomed to pointing out the guilt of the
above parties,  just as we accustomed to having the finger pointed at us
in regard to crimes created in the name of communism.

Will I be accused of unscientific, non-marxst moralism,  but who stood
behind Mitterrand?       How many minutes of Left debate in France, The
US, Germany, and Great Britain,  alone, have gone into conversations
about the need to support supposedly progressive candidates, all because
they had some sort of supposedly superior program to the Right Wing
politicians in helping out the native working classes in imperial
countries?       And that to talk about imperialism's crimes abroad
while at home, was not realistic or supportable?

These 'socialists' and 'communists' and 'liberals'  always seem to see
such advances in their Clintons and Naders?       All the time while
there is silence about helping the real international working class as
they come under the gun?

That is a great silence, too.       To not show solidarity with those
outside the neighborhood.        It is a form of Left tribalism, like
capitalist class tribalism, or church tribalism.     Left tribalism
should be condemned for what it is, as clearly as Leftists condemn
capitalism or religion.

Yes, this is moralism.      So what?     It was immoral what was done in
Rwanda.     And the 'socialist' Mitterrand did it.      I will not
forget the fanfare that launched him into office.       And which sector
of the population that sruggled so sort to convince itself that
something great was under way.

So in memory of the dead in Rwanda, now is the time to think about how
the 'realistic' Left led to Mitterrand and genocide.

Tony
______________________________

The Guardian 
Africans say UN must pay for genocide
Victoria Brittain
Friday July 7, 2000

The Organisation of African Unity is demanding payment of "significant
reparations" to Rwanda by the countries that failed to prevent the
genocide of 1994, when 800,000 people are believed to have died.

A special report released today for the July 10-12 opening of this
year's annual OAU summit parallels the requested reparations with the
$13bn Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after the second world war; at
today's value that would be more than £60bn.

The uncompromising report names the United States and France in
particular, along with the UN security council as a whole, as guilty
parties who allowed "this terrible conspiracy to go ahead".
It is written by a team headed by two former African heads of state,
three former UN officials and a high court judge, and makes searing
criticism of "the international betrayal of Rwanda".

"The United States had the influence within the security council to
ensure the authorisation of a military mission that could have prevented
the genocide...but the US made sure that no such force would ever reach
Rwanda, even after it was known beyond question that one of the 20th
century's greatest tragedies was unfolding," the report says.

"The French had unrivalled influence at the very highest levels of the
Rwandan government and Rwandan military...[but] they chose never to
exert that influence," it said.

This is the first time that the OAU has committed itself to such a
high-profile political intervention on behalf of one of its members.
"This is a real landmark for the OAU, of unprecedented boldness," said
one African official.

After two years of research, the report's authors go much further than
was expected in their demand for reparations.
The document will carry considerable weight well beyond Africa because
of the influence of its signatories; Sir Quett Masire was president of
Botswana from 1980 to 1997, General Ahmadou Touré was the president of
Mali for 15 months from March 1991, Justice P N Bhagwati is a former
chief justice of the Indian supreme court, while Stephen Lewis of
Canada, Lisbet Palme of Sweden, senator Hocine Djoudi of Algeria, and
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia have all had distinguished careers in
UN circles.

"Apologies alone are not adequate. In the name of both justice and
accountability, reparations are owed to Rwanda by actors in the
international community for their roles before, during, and since the
genocide," the report finds.

Besides the 800,000 people murdered, the report says that, "hundreds of
thousands more suffered unimaginable suffering and suffer still".

To bring survivors a measure of peace, the report says that all leaders
of the genocide should be brought to justice, extradited from the
countries - 11 of which are OAU members, plus France and Belgium - which
are thought to be harbouring them.

The report also calls for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
in Arusha, Tanzania, to be transferred to Rwanda - a long-standing
demand of the Rwandan government.

The OAU urges the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, to establish a
commission to work out a formula for reparations, and says the money
should go to urgently needed infrastructure and social services. In
addition, the government's survivors' fund, which takes 5% of the annual
budget, should receive generous contributions from the international
community, the report says. And the special needs of women should take
priority.

It also urges the immediate cancellation of all Rwanda's debt, saying
much of it was accumulated by the governments that planned and executed
the genocide.
The Rwanda report is sure to be the highlight of next week's summit in
the Togolese capital, Lome. The summit's main focus will be on the
dramatic situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo which has split
the continent; the continued fighting in the country involves a dozen
countries, but has at its heart the aftermath of Rwanda's genocide.
________________________________

Published on Saturday, July 8, 2000 in the Toronto Globe & Mail

Rwanda Fallout: Denial, Anger
Report's Author Blasts America's Albright
by John Stackhouse

 Canada's Stephen Lewis launched a stinging rebuke against U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the Roman Catholic Church
yesterday after the United States and the Vatican played down a report
that condemns their role -- along with France, Belgium and the Anglican
Church -- in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Saying the West chose to ignore "one of the great calamities of our
age," Mr. Lewis, who helped write the report, singled out Ms. Albright
for what he called a determined effort to stop any international attempt
to end the genocide in its early days. Ms. Albright was then U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations.
"Personally speaking, I don't know how Madeleine Albright lives with
it," he told a news conference at the UN.

"They made a decision to do nothing," he said later in an interview with
The Globe and Mail. "Madeleine Albright single-handedly prevented the
Security Council from beefing up the mission in Rwanda."

He called the Clinton administration's actions in the spring of 1994 "an
almost incomprehensible scar of shame on American foreign policy." Ms.
Albright's own history as a refugee in war-torn Europe, he said, "makes
it all the more inexplicable to me."

Mr. Lewis was releasing the most significant report yet on the genocide,
which he and a panel of six eminent persons prepared for the
Organization of African Unity. It was immediately played down by U.S.,
French and Catholic officials.

They suggested that they were no more responsible than the rest of the
world that stood by and did little as the killing escalated.

"The Vatican had no role in the genocide and therefore is in no position
to apologize," said Gilio Brunelli, director of overseas operations for
the Catholic-run agency Development and Peace.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Clinton
administration and Ms. Albright had already expressed remorse for the
administration's inaction although he added it wants to learn from
history.

"We did not act quickly enough after the killings began and we did not
immediately call these crimes by their rightful name, genocide," Mr.
Boucher said. "President Clinton pointed out we cannot change the past,
but we can and must do everything in our power to help build the
future."

A French Foreign Ministry official told the Associated Press his
government would consider the OAU report. "We agree to look truth in the
face and to draw lessons from this genocide."

Mr. Lewis said the Vatican and France were complicit in the rise of the
Hutu extremists in Rwanda, and owed the country the same apology the
Anglican Church has issued for its failure to stop the killing.

Although he singled out France for its special support to the
genocidaires, he also said the United States could no longer hide behind
a veil of ignorance -- the most common defence given by the Clinton
administration. Ms. Albright ignored early warnings of the genocide and
then intentionally blocked hopes for greater UN intervention, Mr. Lewis
said.

When the killing blew wide open, he alleged, the Clinton administration
went on to block a last-ditch UN plan to get armoured vehicles to the
region, a move that could have saved thousands of lives.
In the interview, Mr. Lewis, a former deputy executive director of
UNICEF (the UN Children's Fund), said he was fed up with the West's
efforts to consign the genocide to history.

"I don't have any compunction about identifying France or the United
States, or identifying Clinton or Albright or (the late French president
François) Mitterrand," he said testily. "Because of their inaction,
800,000 people died, most of them unnecessarily. I've reached a stage of
life, I'm 62 now, that I no longer see the need for compunction, and the
entire panel felt this way, to put up with this sort of inaction."

The report points out that the UN Security Council did not approve a
stronger mission to Rwanda until May 17, six weeks after the daily
killing of tens of thousands of people began. Citing procedural delays,
the Pentagon then blocked a UN request to lease 50 armoured personnel
carriers that Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, then head of
the UN mission in Rwanda, said were needed to save thousands of lives.

When the war ended in July with a Tutsi-led force capturing the Rwandan
capital, Kigali, no additional UN forces or vehicles had reached the
country. By then, three-quarters of the registered Tutsi population had
been killed.

"Today it seems barely possible to believe," the report says. "The
international community actually chose to abandon the Tutsi of Rwanda at
the very moment when they were being exterminated."

Mr. Clinton has apologized for his government's failure to respond more
quickly to the crisis. So did Ms. Albright, who visited Rwanda in 1997,
soon after she became secretary of state, and publicly expressed remorse
for her government's and the UN's failure to do more.

Mr. Brunelli said the Vatican issued a condemnation of the killings on
May 3, 1994, at the height of the genocide. "The Pope was among the
first people to say something very wrong is taking place in Rwanda," Mr.
Brunelli said, adding that only some priests and bishops were openly
supportive of the Hutu extremists while others risked their lives to
smuggle Tutsis and moderate Hutus out of Kigali.

"When you talk of the position of the church in Rwanda, you have to
think of the church being made up of oppressors, victims and heroes,"
Mr. Brunelli said. He argued that it is unreasonable to expect the Roman
Catholic Church in Rwanda to apologize so soon after the genocide when
Japan has yet to apologize for its role in the Second World War.

"To me it seems a little bit unrealistic for this process of healing,
which took 40 or 50 years in other parts of the world, to occur so
quickly in Rwanda."

The controversial report, titled Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, was
two years in the making and covers similar ground to previous reports by
the UN and several governments but stands out in its strident criticism
of the Western powers and its call for significant reparations to
Rwanda.

"The report is sufficiently strong in its views that it's not likely to
die an instant death," Mr. Lewis said.

The report lays heavy blame for the killings on Mr. Mitterrand and the
French government for giving aid and military support to the Hutu
officials and militias who planned and carried out much of the genocide,
and then for helping them flee an invading Tutsi force. France has
refused to apologize for its role in the tragedy.

France is condemned for supporting the genocidaires and subsequently
leading them into exile in what was then eastern Zaire, where they
enjoyed the protection of UN refugee camps and of the government of the
late Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko. The report accuses the United
States of giving "tacit approval" to Mr. Mobutu, a long-time ally, to
protect the fleeing killers from a Tutsi-led force that eventually took
power in Kigali, where it still rules by military force.

For their part, U.S. officials continue to say they were not aware of
the extensive planning that occurred before the genocide, or of its
extent until it was well under way. At the time, the United States was
also haunted by its own disastrous military intervention in Somalia the
year before.

"That's just no excuse," Mr. Lewis said.
The report cites intelligence reports and official communications to
show senior U.S. officials were aware of the risks and the killings once
they started.

Detailing the history of Rwanda leading up to the genocide, the report
highlights a series of ethnic slaughters that were ignored by the
Catholic and Anglican churches and by most Western diplomats in the
region, despite alarming reports issued by respected international
human-rights groups. The report says most Western governments were aware
of detailed death lists drawn up by Hutu extremists as well as the
growing hatemongering on Rwandan radio stations.

"With some heroic exceptions, church leaders played a conspicuously
scandalous role in these months, at best remaining silent or explicitly
neutral," the report says. In addition to reparations, the report calls
for a sharp increase in resources for the judicial process, both inside
the country and at a UN war crimes tribunal in Tanzania.

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