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A bi-weekly audio series and podcast service, hosted by Committee on Conscience Project Director Bridget Conley-Zilkic, that brings you the voices of human rights defenders, experts, advocates, and government officials. Vital voices addressing one of humanity's most vital issues. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Museum.
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5/01/08
3/06/08
3/15/07
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Interview:
Former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights from 1993 – 1998, and the United States Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1998 – 2000, John Shattuck now heads the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston. In this interview, he discusses the politics of responding to genocide and the roadblocks encountered and caused by government agencies, the syndromes of past interventions gone bad, the public opinion stalemate, and the conflict resolution paradox. Mr. Shattuck concludes with ideas for bursting through these roadblocks and responding to low level conflicts before they turn into genocide.
This interview is the second of three that Voices on Genocide Prevention is producing in conjunction with Facing History and Ourselves. John Shattuck will participate in an online discussion on March 19th and 20th which you can join by registering here.
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Transcript
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3/08/07
2/17/07
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 On Saturday's front page, the LA Times explores in depth the allegations by a French court that Rwandan President Paul Kagame was responsible for shooting down the plane of his predecessor, Juvenal Habyarimana. I've touched on this issue a couple of times before. The downing of the plane, of course, was immediately followed by the Rwanda genocide, during which some 800,000 civilians were murdered, including about 3 out of every 4 members of the country's Tutsi minority. Kagame is a Tutsi, and like most of the members of his Rwanda Patriotic Front grew up in exile outside of Rwanda. The genocide was planned and executed by extremist leaders of the country's Hutu majority.
To be honest, I'm not sure that the allegations of the French court have any more validity than Oliver Stone's docu-fantasy JFK, which suggested that a vast conspiracy including Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the assassination of President John Kennedy. But what if Kagame did orchestrate the downing of the plane? I think that would raise two separate questions. The first is what it would say about Kagame himself. The second is what it would say about the Rwanda genocide as a whole. As to the first question, it would suggest that Kagame is a ruthless leader, willing to use violence to achieve his goals. That should come as no surprise. He was, after all, a leader of the RPF when it launched an armed invasion of Rwanda in October 1990. And he also ordered bloody incursions into the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996 and 1998.
But assuming that Kagame ordered the downing of Habyarimana's plane, does that change anything we know about the genocide? Not really. The inescapable fact of the genocide is that it was planned in advance and executed in a most determined manner by identifiable individuals, many of whom are being tried at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. There was nothing spontaneous or organic about the genocide. If the extremists who planned and orchestrated it did not kill Habyarimana themselves as a signal to start the violence, as many believe, they undoubtedly would have found another signal. They were bent on mass murder in order to protect their own power and privilege, and mass murder they committed. The search for truth in Habyarimana's killing is important, but we shouldn't let that search obscure the truth of the hundreds of thousands of killings that followed.
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2/15/07
1/18/07
1/13/07
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 This week's Economist has a very insightful article about Rwanda, detailing both the economic progress the country is making and the political perils that accompany that progress: “The view in the past was that it was our fate to be poor,” says a minister. “We don't believe that now. We believe our fate is to be rich.”
Rwanda's government is certainly focused on “performance” and “service delivery”. So while Kenya's talks about computers in universities, Rwanda's is busy installing wireless internet in rural primary schools. The government, still RPF-dominated, says it expects to meet most of the UN's Millennium Development Goals before 2015. Alone in the region, it eagerly promotes family planning. Foreign investors are wooed.
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[The] country still faces problems, especially in politics. [President Paul] Kagame may succumb to the cult of personality that has derailed so many other African leaders. His sometimes sinister secret police may already be more powerful than Rwanda's elected representatives. Crime may be low, but some say that political arrests and assassinations are still common; Mr Kagame rules Rwanda through fear as much as anything. The RPF has marginalised or smeared dissenting voices in the name of “one Rwanda” and the ruling party's supporters are accruing wealth and power. The Netherlands, a big donor, has reduced its bilateral aid budget to the country in protest against political repression. Meanwhile, Paul Rusesabagina, who was depicted in the film Hotel Rwanda, described the current situation much more harshly in remarks made in South Africa. He accused the Kagame government of laying the foundation for another genocide, claiming that "[s]ince 1994, Tutsis have been killing Hutus, and even now there are many who are being killed, or who simply disappear. Everything has been taken over by the Tutsi. The Hutu who are 85 per cent of the population are intimidated." Some background on the war of words between Rusesabagina and the Rwandan government can be found here.
(Photo of genocide survivor holding photos of murdered family members © Kimberlee Acquaro.)
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12/07/06
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 As I mentioned a few weeks ago, a French judge has accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame (pictured, greeting President Bush) and top associates of shooting down the plane (a Mystere Falcon) of Kagame's predecessor, Juvenal Habyarimana. The assassination was followed immediately by the genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority carried out by extremist leaders of the country's Hutu majority. The Hutu extremists generally have been believed to be the ones who killed Habyarimana. Kagame is a Tutsi, and at the time of Habyarimana's assassination was head of a Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The RPF ultimately defeated the "genocidaires" and seized power.
After the judge's action, Rwanda broke off diplomatic relations with France. The BBC's Mark Doyle has written an illuminating summary of the controversy. Money quote:I met Paul Kagame many times when he was a rebel commander, and have interviewed him since he became president.
I have no doubt that had he wanted to down the plane he would have had the technical and military capacity to do so.
But his denials have been so vehement, so public and so consistent that they might put his domestic political credibility on the line if he is ever proven wrong.
Kagame is not overly-concerned about his international credibility - ever since the genocide he has made it clear that he has no respect for an international community which largely stood by while hundreds of thousands were killed. In the latest twist, one of the key witnesses in the French inquiry, a former captain in Kagame's RPF who is living in exile in Norway, has said that he will no longer cooperate with the investigation because he believes there are political motivations involved in the French prosecution. But he hasn't recanted his allegation that Kagame ordered the downing of Habyarimana's plane.
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12/07/06
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The title of Philip Gourevitch's celebrated book about the Rwanda genocide was taken from a letter that Tutsi clergy of the Seventh Day Adventist church wrote to a Hutu colleague, Rev. Elizaphan Ntakirutimana: "We wish to inform you that tomorrow, we will be killed along with our families." They pleaded for his help. Instead, he helped guide Hutu militia to their refuge and facilitated their murders. For that, he was surrendered by the United States (where he came after the genocide) and convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of genocide and crimes against humanity. The ICTR sentenced him to 10 years in prison and gave him credit for the time he was detained in the U.S. awaiting surrender. Bottom line: the 81 year old pastor was released today. That's something I just don't get -- a 10 year sentence for genocide.
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9/07/06
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