Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
The killing fields of Rwanda are in full swing once more, and there doesn't seem to be much the international community can do about it.
Mar 20, 1998 | | In politics, gestures are everything. And President Clinton has just made one that many believed was years overdue from the United States: He agreed to touch down briefly in Rwanda next week, during the first Africa tour ever taken by an American president.
Remember Rwanda? The tiny East African country, about the size of Rhode Island, broke into our consciousness for a few months exactly four years ago, when we sat watching on our television sets, horrified, as the brutal genocide exploded there. The scale and swiftness of the killings were unheard of: In a country with little more than 7 million people, more than 500,000 were slaughtered in 100 days, mostly minority Tutsis by the majority Hutus. Nearly 2 million others fled in terror.
Clinton's Rwanda stop -- probably no more than a few hours at the airport -- might seem a paltry response. But in Washington, Africa watchers have already taken it as his apology for failing to do a single thing to stop the 1994 genocide. But more than an apology is required if any justice is to be rendered.
Despite millions of aid dollars since, not a single Rwandan has been convicted of genocide by the international tribunal -- the West's grand response to Rwanda's misery. More than 130,000 Rwandans are sitting in jail, awaiting local trials. Hundreds are sprung from holding cells by armed insurgents in almost daily raids on the prisons.
As Clinton began packing for Africa, Amnesty International released a chilling report warning that in northwest Rwanda, hundreds of civilians were massacred by militias in January and February alone.
But it's not clear that the U.S. response will be very different this time if Rwanda's current conflict descends into another hellish war. The administration has relied heavily on the international tribunal convicting someone -- anyone -- for genocide. And Madeleine Albright has proposed spending millions on the administration's "Great Lakes Initiative," a plan to put some judicial structure in place in Rwanda. "Privately, they admit they don't quite know what they mean," says Jeff Drumtra, Africa policy analyst at the U.S. Committee on Refugees, whose report on Rwanda in February was as grim as Amnesty International's.
Events in the U.S. have not helped matters. Last month, a U.S. judge refused to extradite a Rwandan pastor living in Laredo, Texas, despite strong evidence that he'd masterminded the killing of thousands of people. There are also concerns that the Senate will refuse to ratify the establishment of a permanent, United Nations-backed International Criminal Court, which supporters say is crucial if war crimes in Rwanda, Bosnia and elsewhere are ever to be brought to book.
About 200 lawyers met in Los Angeles two weeks ago to discuss these developments. At one point, a survivor of the massacres cried in front of the lawyers as she described how her entire family was slaughtered. After the conference, Salon spoke with Elizabeth Farr, a federal prosecutor in Arizona, who until last September directed the U.N.'s genocide investigations in Rwanda.
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