"In 1994 in Rwanda up to one million people were killed in three months – every day for three months the equivalent of three 9/11 tragedies." Linda Melvern |
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Preventing Genocide
Preventing Genocide, Threats and Responsibilities
Presentation by Linda Melvern
Stockholm International Forum
I am a British investigative journalist and have spent the last ten years studying the circumstances of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
I was in New York in April 1994, and my first interviews where conducted there with some of the non-permanent members of the Security Council.
My first book on the role of the west, “A People Betrayed, The Role of the West in Rwanda’s genocide”, had the benefit of a leaked document detailing the decision-making in the Council in the first crucial weeks – what was said by government representatives in the secret and informal Council meetings held to decide what to do and particularly the attitude towards the crisis of the permanent members of the Council. link to presentation...
The problems that the UN faces today it has faced before.
From a speech given to Action for UN Renewal |
"The combination of revelations about the scale and intensity of the genocide, the complicity of western nations, the failure to intervene, and the suppression of information about what was actually happening, is a shocking indictment, not only of the UN Security Council, but even more so of governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening, but chose not to do so." Linda Melvern |
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Linda Melvern
September 13, 2004
Speech given in the House of Commons
Thank you to Act-UN for allowing me to share some of my work on the United Nations. I would like to begin by paying tribute to all those people who work for the organisation in the field and who, as we sit here in comfort, are doing what they can to ease the suffering of the world’s peoples. These UN employees are often unsung and too often unsupported in what they are trying to do.
I think particularly tonight of UN peacekeepers working in missions that are hopelessly ill-equipped and understaffed – of those soldiers in the DRC who are in the midst of violence which the world ignores. And while Iraq takes your own time and attention many thousands continue to die in Darfur, in Sudan. This tragedy, which has been classified genocide, receives intermittent press coverage. link to speech...
The Rwandan genocide and 'ancient tribal hatreds'
Support for the campaign by Survival International
Against the irresponsible use by journalists of phrases such as "ancient tribal hatreds"
Letter from Linda Melvern
to Survival International
I have researched the circumstances of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and I have had the opportunity to study in some detail the western press coverage. There is no doubt that the events in Rwanda in April 1994 took the British and the American media by surprise, but the message that the violence in Rwanda was the result of "ancient tribal hatreds", the cliché that dominated the early reports on the genocide, was quite simply wrong. read the letter... |
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Missing the Story
The Media and the Rwandan Genocide
By Linda Melvern
Copyright Frank Cass Publishers, 2002
In the course of a few terrible months in 1994, one million people were killed in Rwanda. It was slaughter on a scale not seen since the Nazi extermination programme. The killing rate in Rwanda was five times that achieved by the Nazis. Such a crime requires motives, means and opportunity. The motive of those responsible for the genocide was to continue to monopolize power and seek a ‘final solution’ to the political opposition. The means was the mobilization of militia and use of the civil administration to encourage people to take part. download PDF... |
