Rwandan Genocide

LeoCasey at aol.com LeoCasey at aol.com
Thu Oct 5 09:38:57 PDT 2000


James Heartfield writes:

<< Oh come on Leo, your post is just a smoke-screen. >>

And so on.

There is no point in belaboring a thread which consists only of two people of such contrary views. I have made it clear that I believe the Rwandan genocide to be an issue of political import and gravitas; and further, that the failure of the US to intervene to stop it, as well as the complicity of France in protecting its perpetrators, are matters on which Americans and French of minimal democratic or even 'humanitarian' sentiment would want to hold these states responsible. Jim will persist in his view that a genocide never took place.

All of the sources I cited for my view, from the United Nations reports to the OAU report, from the Amnesty International report to the Human Rights Watch report, from the International Panel of Eminent Personalities to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, from the Physicians for Human Rights to the Medecins San Frontiers, from the International Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda to the US Committee for Refugees, are readily available on-line. I would encourage anyone who wants to investigate the issue further to take a look at them. I would particularly recommend the exhaustive report of Human Rights Watch, "Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda." <A HREF="http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/">Click here </A> Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --



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