DMA--- From the CNN site:http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9903/31/rwanda.01/
I'll give the first section:
Report: Rwandan genocide could
have been prevented
March 31, 1999
Web posted at: 12:37 a.m. EST (0537 GMT)
PARIS (CNN) -- The United States, Belgium, France and the U.N. Security Council all
had prior warning about plans for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and could have prevented
it, according to a human rights report released Wednesday.
At least half a million people died during the 13 weeks of killings in the central African
nation in mid-1994, said the report of over 900 pages, entitled "Leave None to Tell the
Story."
The report, released a week before the fifth anniversary of the start of the 90-day slaughter
in Rwanda, documents the events leading up to the Hutu government-orchestrated
genocide and how it was carried out.
Drawn up by the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues and the
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, the report criticizes France, Belgium, the United States
and the United Nations for failing to intervene to stop the systematic killings in which
mostly minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus perished.
Bodies in the back of a truck during the 1994 genocide
All the parties mentioned "received dozens of warnings in the months before the genocide
but failed to act effectively," the rights group said. "Even worse, foreign leaders reacted
timidly and tardily once the killing began."
U.N. peacekeeping troops were pulled out of Rwanda rather than ordered into action to
prevent the genocide.
While France's later armed intervention, dubbed Operation Turquoise, saved some lives, it
also allowed the massacres to continue, the report found.
Although the French operation's 2,500 soldiers saved an estimated 15,000 to 17,000 lives,
a poorly equipped U.N. force was able to save twice as many lives before it was
withdrawn, the report concluded.
The report is based on four years of research in Rwanda, hundreds of interviews and
thousands of documents never before made public, according to its authors. |
