Home   >   News   >   Watch   >   West Africa: The scaring word – GENOCIDE – in the UN Report

West Africa: The scaring word – GENOCIDE – in the UN Report

By on October 5, 2010
When the French newspaper “Le Monde” published the first draft report on the abuses committed on Rwandan Hutu refugees in DRC, General Kagamé began to stir.

The word “genocide” contained therein scared him and he quickly threatened to withdraw his troops from Sudan if the UN ever “persist” to publish this report. During this short arm wrestling between the UN and Rwanda, observers were wondering whether the U.N institution would have the courage to release the document. Fortunately, the activism and the threat of the Rwandan president have not shaken the international organisation. The UN has instead split the pear in two. In other words, it “added some cream to the dry bread to make it less difficult to swallow”. Thus, the word “genocide”, hated by Kagamé and other heads of state from the Great Lakes region under investigation remained in the final report but has been put in quotation marks. All the acts are in the heart of the investigation led by the UN today, and the conclusions published in the 550 pages’ text, give a list of 617 grave crimes having provoked tens of thousands deaths of civilians between 1993 and 2003, committed by rebellion movements, but also by regular national armies of ex-Zaire, Angola, Zimbabwe, and especially that of Rwanda.           The Democratic Republic of the Congo has so far not disputed the report, and its publication is a big step towards justice and transparency. Today, these crimes could be qualified, by the International Crime Court, as “genocide” and the perpetrators could fall under international warrant arrests.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.