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French accused of complicity in genocide that killed a million in Rwanda
By Linda Melvern
05 November 2006
The Independent
An unprecedented public inquiry into France's role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda held hearings in Kigali last week, where the French army was accused of complicity in massacres of Tutsi.
The seven-person examining commission is hearing testimony from 20 survivors, some claiming serious human rights abuses, including rape and murder, by the French military. link to article..
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"To claim that fiction is fact does a disservice to history and also to the understanding of how mass human rights abuses take place. It also allows those politicians and officials who were responsible for the failure over Rwanda to escape adequate scrutiny"
Linda Melvern |
The west did intervene in Rwanda, on the wrong side
France was intimately involved with the extremist Hutu regime
Linda Melvern
Monday April 5, 2004
The Guardian
In a few terrible months in 1994, up to 1 million people were killed in Rwanda in a planned political campaign. The preparation for mass killing on a countrywide scale took three years and involved a conspiracy that embraced the country's political, military and administrative leadership.
In a campaign relentless in its incitement to hatred and violence, the conspirators set out to destroy the minority Tutsi as a people in order to create a "pure Hutu state". link to article... |
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The Media and the Rwanda Genocide
Panel 3: International media coverage of the Genocide
Linda Melvern
Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication
The events in Rwanda in ’94 were defined for our generation, the consequences of the failure of intervene in the face of mass murder, and there remains little doubt that what took place, the failure to predict it, to prevent it, and then to stop it is one of the greatest scandals of the last century.
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"What happened in Rwanda showed that, despite the creation of an organisation set up to prevent a repetition of genocide - for the UN is central to this task - it failed to do so, even when the evidence was indisputable."
Linda Melvern |
One of the great sadnesses is that it is an enormous failure of the profession of journalism. First in failing to adequately report what was happening, and the first international inquiry into the genocide determined that this contributed to what happened, and I do think the time has come to seriously question our news values. link to transcript...
History? This film is fiction
A new BBC film telling the 'truth' of events in Rwanda only compounds the original sins of the West's media. |
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Linda Melvern
Sunday March 19, 2006
The Observer
In the course of a few terrible months in 1994, up to one million people were killed in Rwanda in organised and systematic massacres. It was slaughter on a scale not seen since the Nazi extermination programme. The comparison with the Holocaust is impossible to resist, for the central purpose was the elimination of a people. Every Tutsi was targeted. The failure of the Security Council of the UN to act responsibly is one of the great scandals of the 20th century. link to review... |
"It is a terrible story, made worse because its true nature has been deliberately distorted and confused"
Linda Melvern |
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Rwanda and Darfur
The Media and the Security Council
Linda Melvern
University of Wales
Aberystwyth Abstract
The United Nations Security Council is central to the application of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This article examines the role of the Council in the circumstances of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and questions the secrecy of its decision making.
It outlines the similarities between response to genocide in Rwanda and the mass human rights abuses in Darfur, Sudan. It questions the failure of the western press to provide adequate and timely information about both these tragedies. link to pdf download... |
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My work on the circumstances of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda
Briefing by Linda Melvern
Monday, March 11, 2002
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
I'd like to thank Jerry Fowler, staff director of the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for asking me to share with you my work on the circumstances of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
I'm an investigative journalist, and my work on this story began while the genocide was happening. I was in New York with a Channel 4 TV crew filming a book I'd written on the secret history of the United Nations. keep reading...
A Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide
Linda Melvern
18 May 2004, 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Notes from a parliamentary lecture
The obligation of states towards genocide prevention is outlined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – the world’s first truly universal, comprehensive and codified protection of human rights. The convention stood for a fundamental and important principle; that whatever evil may befall any group, nation or people, it was a matter of concern not just for that group but for the entire human family. keep reading...
Read more articles written by Linda...
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