Posted on 09/13/2005 9:33:18 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (AP) - Pregnant and with three small children in tow, Grace Mukagabiro ran for her life after her husband was beheaded and their house burned down.
On Tuesday, the Rwandan survivor of the attack on her Tutsi village joined activists in urging the United Nations summit to endorse a measure that would protect civilians from mass killings.
"I survived the Rwandan genocide. Almost a million others did not," the 42-year-old mother of four said, a decade after the massacres led by the extremist Hutu government. She still lives in Kigali, Rwanda, working as program coordinator for the global aid agency Oxfam.
Mukagabiro spoke at an Oxfam-sponsored news conference in the Church Center opposite the United Nations headquarters, where the summit of more than 160 world leaders was to begin Wednesday.
Then the activists walked several blocks to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, where a mock graveyard was erected, with 100 white tombstones that read, "NEVER AGAIN?"
U.N. member nations are trying to agree on a document enabling the world body to tackle major issues of the 21st century. It would reaffirm nations' obligation to protect their people from genocide - a crime under the U.N. convention first adopted in 1948.
But the document has been significantly watered down from earlier drafts, which might have given the international community the firm responsibility to protect victims by overriding the sovereignty of local governments and taking direct action.
Some nations are leaning toward a pro-active response, committing both people and money to stopping genocide; others disagree, citing prohibitive costs.
Kemal Pervanic, a 37-year-old Bosnian Muslim who was tortured for seven months in two Serb-run camps, said a U.N. measure defining an international plan to deal with genocide "could prevent people like me from going through this sort of ordeal."
wont do a damn thing if its not enforced
"I'm sorry I thought you were here about oil for food, what's the next thing on the agenda?" Kofi Anan (Sarcasm/ deep and wide)
Don't hold your breath.
Kinda like a great big restraining order. Yea, should work.
There were signs in Rwanda that a genocide was being planned. Somebody should have stepped in before it began...that would have been the only way to stop it.
The people committed mass murder - it's not like they killed a couple of people each day. I don't understand the UN at all.
The UN and the MSM won't remind us of it, but the Hutu government of Rawanda long delayed international action by putting forward arguments that resonate well with internationalists. For example: "The Hutus represent a majority racial group that have long been oppressed by the elite Tutsi minority"; "The Hutus are reversing decades of colonialism and the Tutsi were collaborators with the colonialist system"; "The Hutus are rectifying economic inequities in which the Tutsi minority held most of the property".
It was a slow, gradual but inevitable march from this rhetoric to the mass killings that took place. For much of the early portion of that march, the international community (UN) nodded in approval at the fact that there was now a 'progressive government' in place in Rawanda. How could this happen? Look at what the same people have done in Zimbabwe and in the Isreal/Palestine conflict.
In the end, the only thing that stopped the genocide and saved many Tutsi's (and Hutu's also) was the fact that the Tutsi's tribe had organized armed forces in neighboring countries. Individuals persons and nations are the best protection against genocide. The victims will never be popular enough to leave it up to the "lets take a vote whether the UN should do anything" crowd.
Agreed. Nobody can depend on outside help. I read a book called something like "Tommorrow they are Coming to Kill our Families" and it was amazing to me that so many people 'saw it coming' and didn't get organized to stop it.
I know there's another book about the UN's role - I'd like to read that one and find out more information. It should have never happened, it was just an unimaginable tragedy.
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