genocide Archives - MICHAEL O. ALLEN

Rwandan Leaders vow to punish ‘genocide’

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on RwandaNo Comments

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by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Wednesday, August 3, 1994

KIGALI, Rwanda – Leaders of this war-ravaged nation yesterday said they will execute those responsible for the slaughter of up to 500,000 Rwandans in ethnic fighting.

“Those who willingly carried out genocide deserve no less than the death penalty,” Rwanda’s President Pasteur Bizimungu told the Daily News yesterday at his villa near the capital, Kigali.

“We need a fair and transparent justice as a pillar of the government of national unity,” he said. “We don’t want to wait two or three years before we start.”

Bizimungu said trials and executions must begin soon to avoid revenge atrocities.

Speaking from his makeshift office at the Meridien Hotel in Kigali yesterday, Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu agreed.

“We do not want to be involved in retribution, revenge reprisals. The law must be followed,” he said.

The former government and ousted Rwandan Army, which triggered the civil war in April, primarily were composed of radical, ruling class Hutus. The Hutus, however, were defeated by Tutsi rebels in the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Bizimungu and Twagiramungu are moderate Hutus appointed by the Tutsi government. Among the issues causing a rift within the fledgling government is when elections will be held.

Asked by the Daily News yesterday when he would be putting himself up for election, Bizimungu became agitated.

“There has been a tragedy in our country,” he snapped. “If you were sensitive to our tragedy you would not be asking for an election.”

In sharp contrast, the bespectacled Twagiramungu smiled easily as he sat in his office yesterday. Room 529 was neat and furnished with a dining room table and four sofas arranged around a coffee table. It does not give the appearance that the business of governing a nation of seven million people is being conducted here.

But it was here Twagiramungu met with George Moose, the U.S. assistant secretary of African Affairs, and assured him he welcomes America’s help in the daunting task rebuilding the nation.

Yesterday, U.S. Army convoys delivered more than 100,000 gallons of water to Rwandan refugees, bolstering their chances of surviving in crowded, disease-infested camps in Zaire. But much more will be needed to defeat the cholera, dysentry and simple dehydration that have killed more than 20,000 people since the refugee crisis began two weeks ago.

June 5, 2008

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Envoy’s Search for Justice Shows Rwanda’s Dark Side

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on RwandaNo Comments

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Sunday, August 7, 1994

KIGALI, Rwanda–Sylvestre Kamali finally broke down.

Imprisoned for 21 days, he was tired, hurting and badly in need of a bath.

A career diplomat, he has served his country in all branches, including terms as vice president of the Supreme Court and ambassador to Belgium, Burundi and China.

Now Kamali was wearing the gray pants and white shirt he had on the day he was arrested in July. He was unshaven and had no shoes. He had not been given hismedication and special diet for a colon condition.

The tears came this day when he was told the new leaders of Rwanda are holding him on a charge of genocide. His jaw dropped. He looked at his two prisonguards and his face spread into a smile of incredulity.

“I am happy because now I know the reason why I am in prison,” the diplomat said in an interview with reporters from the Daily News and the Washington Postlast week. It was the first time he had been seen by people other than his jailers since his arrest in July.

In his native language, Kinyarwanda, as a prison guard translated, he said, “They told me my cars did not have all the proper papers.

“Me, Kamali?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “Me, Kamali? From the time I was brought onto this earth until now, and I am 59 years old, I have never killed anyone, or ordered anyone to be killed.”

June 4, 2008

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Cold comfort

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

Transcript:
“It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
But there’ s a phone in the White House and it is ringing.
something is happening in the world
your vote will decide who answers that call.
whether it is someone who already knows the world’s leaders,
knows the military
someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
its 3am and your children are safe and asleep.
Who do you want answering that phone?”

This is inadvertent but former Pres. Bill Clinton just showed why his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, (D-NY), is not only not the person you want answering the phone, she might not even answer it if she gets the opportunity.
Mrs. Clinton has mentioned often in this campaign her “35 years of experience,” which she says has put her “across the threshold” to be commander-in-chief. Well, the phone rang in 1994 regarding Rwanda. It rang. And rang. And rang. And rang. No one answered.
Bill Clinton spared no effort trying to stop genocide in the former Yugoslavia republics. This was admirable. But close to a million people were killed in the genocide when Hutus decided to kill Tutsis in that African nation.
Bill Clinton said his wife had urged him to take military action to stop that genocide. History will record that, even if it is true that Mrs. Clinton did offer that advice, and there is no record whatsoever to prove she did, she was in ineffectual. Mrs. Clinton was just as ineffectual trying to ram a health care overhaul through the U.S. Congress.
That was when she became a full-time touring first lady. She visited many countries. This is part of the experience that she says qualifies her to be president and commander-in-chief. It is the lifetime of experiences that she says qualifies her and Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ), to be president but not Sen. Barack Obama, (D-IL).
If we know anything at all about Bill Clinton, besides the fact that he’s a political animal, it is that he is an inveterate and pathological liar. This advice that he remembers Mrs. Clinton giving him is clearly a political memory that he’s fantasizing now to help his wife’s candidacy.
Sen. Clinton, in her many statements lately, is also showing herself to be power-hungry.Not only did Sen. Clinton cross a threshold that qualifies her to be president, whatever that means, but she broke a golden rule of politics when she gave Republicans ammunition to use against Sen. Obama, should he be the party’s nominee.

March 8, 2008

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