The Truth Behind the Slaughter

December 2000
Socialist Review

In 1994 in Rwanda, between 6 April and 18 July, 1 million Tutsis and pro-democracy Hutus were killed. They were hacked to death with machetes or shot by gangs of Hutu militia. The killings were egged on by the RTMLC radio station, which broadcast lists of those to be hunted down.

At the time in the west the genocide was dismissed as 'civil war' or 'ethnic clashes' between the Hutu government and the largely Tutsi resistance movement. But, as this book demonstrates, western governments were aware, or at least should have been, that the Hutu 'interim government' was attempting to annihilate all Tutsis in the areas it controlled.

Melvern describes how, months in advance, funds from the World Bank and IMF were diverted to buy weapons from countries like China, Egypt and France. These weapons were stockpiled around the country, so that when the signal was given bands of unemployed youth could be armed in order to begin the slaughter. The radio station that coordinated the genocide was powered from generators in the presidential palace. This was not ethnic conflict but a desperate attempt by a ruthless clique to stay in power.

Melvern exposes how the bureaucrats in the United Nations, and the leading politicians in the United States, Britain and France, sat on their hands and did nothing despite increasingly desperate appeals from the commander of the UN troops on the ground.

When France eventually did send troops, it was to prop up its allies in theHutu 'interim government', to delay the invasion of the opposition forces, and to allow the escape of those responsible for the genocide.

The author is very critical of the United Nations, but nevertheless sees this organisation as our only hope to prevent events like those in Rwanda happening again. But for me this book exposes the UN, and the leaders of the western democracies, as unreformable. It is not just the representatives of the great powers who turned away from the genocide in Rwanda. The day to day running of the UN is in the hands of the general secretary, at the time Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He had inside knowledge of Rwandan politics. As the Egyptian deputy prime minister for international affairs he had earlier played a major role in securing Egyptian weapons for the regime. During the entire Rwandan crisis he was unavailable at the UN headquarters because he was touring in Europe. He made no attempt to make the Security Council take action.

Despite differences of analysis about the UN this is an extremely important book.

John Baxter