An Investigative Journalist and Author
Linda Melvern is an Honorary Professor in the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. A consultant to the Military One prosecution team at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, part of her archive of documents is used to show the planning and progress of the 1994 genocide.
She has written six books of non-fiction and is widely published in the British press and academic journals. She is the second vice-President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
A news reporter on the London Evening Standard, for several years Linda Melvern worked for the London Sunday Times, including on the investigative Insight Team. She conducted a major investigation into the eavesdropping capabilities of the UK government communications headquarters, (GCHQ) and the US National Security Agency, (NSA).
Other stories included an investigation into the death in custody of Steve Biko in South Africa. She led a major investigation into the business links of the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, (NUM), Joe Gormley. She was the first journalist to interview the serial killer, Myra Hindley, in Durham top security prison.
She left The Sunday Times in 1982 to write her first book, “Techno-Bandits” (Co-authored, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1983), an account of the illicit Soviet efforts to acquire American technology. This book was highly acclaimed and translated into several languages.
Linda Melvern began to investigate the circumstances of the genocide in Rwanda in April 1994. She published the earliest account of the decision making over Rwanda in The Scotsman, [“Death by Diplomacy”, January 1995] and this included the story of the abandonment by the Security Council of the volunteer UN peacekeepers under their Force Commander, Lt. Gen Romeo Dallaire.
This article gave an account of the secret and informal meetings of the Security Council held to devise UN policy towards Rwanda. The first crucial hours of the genocide, the murders of the ten Belgian peacekeepers, and the systematic elimination of Rwanda’s political opposition were described.
Linda Melvern’s book on the genocide, “A People Betrayed. The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide", (Zed Books, 2000) is in its sixth impression. It was published in Sweden: “Att Förråda Ett Folk. Västmakterna Och Folkmordet I Rwanda”, (Ordfront 2003)
In April 2004 Linda Melvern published her second book on the genocide, “Conspiracy to Murder. The Rwandan Genocide”. (Verso), a detailed account of genocide planning, those who were responsible, and how genocide was perpetrated. A German translation, “Ruanda. Der V?lkermord und die Beteiligung der westlichen welt, (Gebundene Ausgabe) was published the same year.
Linda Melvern has published numerous articles, essays and papers related to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. She has visited a wide variety of institutions in the UK and abroad in order to give presentations on the subject. These include at the Centre for Social for Social Theory and Comparative History, UCLA, The Press Union, Athens, Greece, The Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, Life After Death Conference, Kigali, 2001. The Genocide Prevention Conference, FCO and Aegis, Nottinghamshire, 2002, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH and the University of Mary Washington, Virginia.
For the tenth commemoration of the genocide Linda Melvern presented a paper at a conference at the Imperial War Museum, London and was a panellist at the tenth commemorative conference in Kigali, Rwanda.
Other books include United Nations, a book for children (Franklin Watts World Organisations Series, 2001)
Following the release of "A People Betrayed", The Observer published a detailed account of some of the book's main findings.
