scm77
03-26-2004, 04:39 PM
Annan accepts blame for Rwandan genocide
CTV.ca News Staff
A memorial conference on the 1994 Rwanda genocide began Friday with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan accepting blame for the slaughter of 800,000 civilians.
"The international community is guilty of sins of omission," Annan told the crowd gathered in New York for the summit.
The head of the UN peacekeeping agency at the time, Annan said he did what he could.
"I believed at the time that I was doing my best. But I realized after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support," he said in his opening speech.
It was 10 years ago that the presidents of Rwandan and Burundi were killed in a mysterious plane crash. Before the wreckage even stopped smoking, the killing began. Spurred on by hateful radio broadcasts, 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in just 100 days.
Close to three million others were left homeless.
Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham, told the assembly on Friday that the world has yet to learn many of the important lessons of Rwanda.
"Or, to put it more starkly, we have learned what we need to do but I suggest, colleagues, we lack the political will to achieve the necessary agreement on how to put in place the type of measures that will prevent a future Rwanda from ever happening again," Graham told the one-day memorial conference.
Retired Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire became suicidal after watching hundreds of thousands of Rwandans being slaughtered. Today, he says he cannot forget a massacre infused "in the pores of my skin."
The Canadian general who led the peacekeeping mission into Rwanda in 1994 is at United Nations headquarters in New York to offer his opinions about a memorial scheduled for April 7.
"The principal objectives is one, to not let the Rwanda genocide die, to let it disappear from the sights of the developed world in particular, because we tend to have a very short memory," Dallaire told CTV's Canada AM.
He said the second goal is to take "a hard look at the prospects of such a terrible event happening again."
Dallaire, who arrived three months before the massacre, could see that a genocide was coming. He pleaded with the United Nations to send more soldiers and allow troops to shoot not just in self defence.
The United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, was hesitant to act after the killings in Somalia. Dallaire has also accused France and Belgium of being "un-cooperative."
On April 21, the Security Council refused to help and instead cut the 2,000-strong force to just 270 troops. Dallaire has said that a force of 5,000 could have stopped the killing.
For the next few months, Dallaire watched Hutus slaughter Tutsis with machetes. He refused to leave, but was already beginning to feel the stress. At one point, he went out alone in his jeep while the killing went on around him.
Dallaire fell apart when he returned to Canada. He once panicked in a supermarket because the smell of beets so closely resembled the smell of flesh. He also attempted suicide and was once found under a park bench.
He said writing his book, Shake Hands with the Devil, as well as facing Col. Theoneste Bagosora, the alleged mastermind of the genocide, at a tribunal in January helped him get "some of the monkeys off my back." But he doesn't ever want to forget.
"It's in the pores of my skin," he said. "And as such, there is no way that Rwanda is going to disappear from me, my life."
Annan has declared April 7 the "International Day of Reflection on the Genocide of Rwanda."
To that end, he has supported a request from the Rwandan government that the world observe one minute of silence at 12 noon on that day.
CTV.ca News Staff
A memorial conference on the 1994 Rwanda genocide began Friday with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan accepting blame for the slaughter of 800,000 civilians.
"The international community is guilty of sins of omission," Annan told the crowd gathered in New York for the summit.
The head of the UN peacekeeping agency at the time, Annan said he did what he could.
"I believed at the time that I was doing my best. But I realized after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support," he said in his opening speech.
It was 10 years ago that the presidents of Rwandan and Burundi were killed in a mysterious plane crash. Before the wreckage even stopped smoking, the killing began. Spurred on by hateful radio broadcasts, 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in just 100 days.
Close to three million others were left homeless.
Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, Bill Graham, told the assembly on Friday that the world has yet to learn many of the important lessons of Rwanda.
"Or, to put it more starkly, we have learned what we need to do but I suggest, colleagues, we lack the political will to achieve the necessary agreement on how to put in place the type of measures that will prevent a future Rwanda from ever happening again," Graham told the one-day memorial conference.
Retired Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire became suicidal after watching hundreds of thousands of Rwandans being slaughtered. Today, he says he cannot forget a massacre infused "in the pores of my skin."
The Canadian general who led the peacekeeping mission into Rwanda in 1994 is at United Nations headquarters in New York to offer his opinions about a memorial scheduled for April 7.
"The principal objectives is one, to not let the Rwanda genocide die, to let it disappear from the sights of the developed world in particular, because we tend to have a very short memory," Dallaire told CTV's Canada AM.
He said the second goal is to take "a hard look at the prospects of such a terrible event happening again."
Dallaire, who arrived three months before the massacre, could see that a genocide was coming. He pleaded with the United Nations to send more soldiers and allow troops to shoot not just in self defence.
The United States, a permanent member of the Security Council, was hesitant to act after the killings in Somalia. Dallaire has also accused France and Belgium of being "un-cooperative."
On April 21, the Security Council refused to help and instead cut the 2,000-strong force to just 270 troops. Dallaire has said that a force of 5,000 could have stopped the killing.
For the next few months, Dallaire watched Hutus slaughter Tutsis with machetes. He refused to leave, but was already beginning to feel the stress. At one point, he went out alone in his jeep while the killing went on around him.
Dallaire fell apart when he returned to Canada. He once panicked in a supermarket because the smell of beets so closely resembled the smell of flesh. He also attempted suicide and was once found under a park bench.
He said writing his book, Shake Hands with the Devil, as well as facing Col. Theoneste Bagosora, the alleged mastermind of the genocide, at a tribunal in January helped him get "some of the monkeys off my back." But he doesn't ever want to forget.
"It's in the pores of my skin," he said. "And as such, there is no way that Rwanda is going to disappear from me, my life."
Annan has declared April 7 the "International Day of Reflection on the Genocide of Rwanda."
To that end, he has supported a request from the Rwandan government that the world observe one minute of silence at 12 noon on that day.