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INGREDIENTS FOR GENOCIDE: Burundi seems headed for same fate as Rwanda

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

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer

BUJUMBURA, Burundi–The driver’s father was a Hutu, but his mother was a Tutsi, and that ethnic mix is a recipe for murder in this country–where all the ingredients of a Rwandan-like bloodbath are beginning to boil.

Afraid he was a marked man, Selemani Hakizimana drove fast and furious through the Hutu-dominated villages along the winding road to this jittery capital city, where the outnumbered Tutsis have an uneasy hold on power.

“I must drive fast, I cannot stop,” he said. “These are Hutu villages; if I stop, they will kill me because they will see that I have Tutsi blood.”

The ethnic hatred that’s ripped apart Rwanda–leaving a half million dead from genocidal attacks and more than a million in refugee camps–runs even deeper in neighboring Burundi, a former Belgian colony of 6 million.

“In Rwanda, a Hutu and a Tutsi can marry,” Hakizimana said. “Not in Burundi.”

As in Rwanda, the Tutsis comprise only about 15% of the population; unlike in Rwanda, however, they have always held the military and political upper hand.

But now that a Tutsi rebel army has gained power in Rwanda, the Hutus of Burundi have seen the value of revolution. In the last month, 3,000 Burundians have died in political killiings, mainly Tutsis.

In reply, Tutsi students began rioting earlier this week and virtually shut down the city for two days. All businesses closed, as did the airport. Fifteen people have died.

Yesterday, in a televised talk, Burundi’s acting president warned the nation against going down a Rwandan path.

“Think twice before you act,” said Silveste Ntibantunganha. “Rwanda should be example for us all.”

June 2, 2008

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AFRICAN EPILOGUE: Dreams of Death

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

null by MICHAEL O. ALLEN
Amidst lesser mountains, Kilimanjaro sat mysteriously in the distance, its brooding, mammoth expanse shrouded by clouds that streaked the rising sun. It was barely dawn at this wildlife reserve, and the elephants were headed out to the swamps.

I must confess that the burden I had carried in my heart to Amboselli National Park, in Kenya, lifted at the sight of that first baby elephant. It loped along goofily, trying to keep pace with its mother.

Twelve more gray pairs followed, then a herd of wildebeest and a span of gazelles, warthogs, and buffalo. Cattle egrets paced with hippopotamus, munching grasshoppers while scampering from underfoot.

This visit last month to the wildlife preserve was my attempt at a vacation. Yet I held little hope that it would banish the nightmares that had been creeping into my sleep or erase memories of the horrors I had witnessed as reporter covering the tragedy in Goma, Zaire, and Rwanda.

A dozen zebras heading to a pond for a drink looked warily at three Maasai warriors approaching in the distance. A pack of hyenas, accompanied by two jackals, ate a baby wildebeest under the gaze of a council of vultures peering from the trees.

Here on the plains under the shadow of Kilimanjaro, the laws of nature were apparent. Animals engage in their own Darwinism. But how to explain the unnatural carnage of the prior month—the gruesome slaughter of 500,000 Tutsis by the majority Hutus, and the mass deaths of refugee Hutus from politics and disease?

Humans, when we deign to acknowledge our place in the animal kingdom, think we are better, more evolved beings than the beasts cavorting on the plains. The scriptures assures us, after all, that we are created in the image of God.

When, with the world’s complicity, a Rwanda happens, it gives us pause. It gave me nightmares—nightmares that started at one site of the carnage, and which have plagued me until I arrived home, in New York, this week.

Inexplicably, the nightmares began shortly after I arrived with other reporters to stay at the CentreCQ Cristus, a Jesuit retreat in Kigali, Rwanda, a few weeks ago. I say “inexplicably” not to diminish the horror of what happened at Centre Cristus, but it’s not clear to me why the story of what happened there affected me more than the horrors I actually witnessed.

June 1, 2008

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Rwanda’s story

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

I have been reading stories in newspapers and magazines lately about the anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

I was in South Africa in early spring covering the first all-race elections in that theretofore benighted nation when I got news of the atrocities in Rwanda. Nelson Mandela had been released from decades of imprisonment and he had, by sheer force of will almost, led South Africa to the brink of renewal as a nation.

It was a great development in the history of mankind: a tyranny, essentially, relinquished power to the people it once oppressed.

To be sure, there were elements in the country that resisted the new dawn that was about to eclipse their world. The AWB, a militant Afrikaner group, for instance, mounted a bombing campaign that failed to halt the votes. Also, while the demise of apartheid meant the end of the despicable ideology of white supremacy on that continent, it did very little for women of all races who still had few rights in the new South Africa and were subject to incredible violence.

But those were days of hope and that was how I and the platoon of journalists from all over the world that descended on South Africa covered the story.

Then dark tidings reached us of violence convulsing another part of the continent, genocide in the East African nation of Rwanda.

On April 6, 1994, a mysterious plane crash killed Juvenal Habyarimana, president of Rwanda. The Interahamwe, militias made up of Hutus, the majority tribe, commenced a reign of bloodletting that did not stop until an estimated 1 million of their fellow Rwandans had been killed. The dead consisted of mostly Tutsis, the minority tribe, but Hutus considered opponents of the government were also slaughtered.

April 19, 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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