More Reviews for A People Betrayed. The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide.
“It is the question of Western responses to Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that occupies Linda Melvern’s excellent book…. The book’s forte lies in depicting the human tragedy that was allowed to unfold in Rwanda and the role of several governments, most notably France, in fuelling this process. Melvern provides substantial new evidence…..her second main contribution to the literature lies in her detailed account of how events concerning the genocide transpired within the UN Security Council. Although the primary focus of A People Betrayed is Rwanda’s genocide, the book has relevance beyond both Rwanda and the question of genocide. Rather depressingly, it also sheds a great deal of light on the dynamics of international society”.
Paul Williams
The International Journal of Human Rights
Vol 5, no. 2 Summer 2001
“perhaps the most remarkable (documents) in her possession are abandoned Rwanda military intelligence documents and a 155 page transcripts of secret UN Security Council meetings…Melvern pulls no punches in her writing…. Even Britain’s inattention to the crisis comes under scrutiny…But for the leaked document in Melvern’s possession, the world would never have known that in the in first four weeks of genocide the fact that a systematic and continuing slaughter was taking place in Rwanda was not once discussed at length in Council meetings…..It is a testament to her integrity as a journalist, perhaps, that A People Betrayed refrains from polemics.. Melvern has managed to craft a detailed and non-nonsense account of the actions of the international community prior to and during Rwandans One Hundred Days”
Michael A. Innes
Journal of Humanitarian Assistance
“Linda Melvern has studied hundreds of documents… (she) can be admired for unravelling the background to the genocide and researching official documents. Translating these into readable English is a triumph in itself. Conflict brings out the worse and best in people: the book describes not so much faults of institutions as the actions of individuals who come over s heroes and villains. Read it – it is a landmark book.
Alexandra Murrell
Medicine Conflict and Survival
Vol 17. Number 4 Oct-Dec 2001
A Nightmare in Kigali ...But Boutros-Ghali was far from the only scoundrel. Melvern's account of the U.N. Security Council deliberations that spring confirms what was obvious from the general U.N. paralysis. The Western powers, including the U.S., spent most of April 1994 pretending the genocide was a civil war. Repeatedly, they instructed the peacekeepers to negotiate a cease-fire--"rather like wanting Hitler to reach a cease-fire with the Jews," as one diplomat tells the author.
By Nicholas Confessore
The Washington Monthly, December 2000
Melvern pulls no punches in her writing, detailing a substantial list of external actors: France’s support of the Habyarimana regime; Uganda’s role as a source of combat training and experience for the Tutsi army-in-exile, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF); Egypt’s channelling of armaments to Rwandan government forces through one of its diplomats, Boutros Boutros-Ghali – the man who would later serve as the UN Secretary General during the genocide; American stonewalling on the issue of armed intervention; even Britain’s inattention to the crisis comes under scrutiny.
By Michael A. Innes
The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, October 2001
When it came time to summon the mettle to confront and prevent the undeniable ethnic slaughter of innocents in Rwanda, the international community, in particular the Western governments faltered and mocked the mandate, "Never Again." The failure is even more shameful in that, by most accounts, a relatively small increase in the peacekeeping force in Rwanda, combined with a minimal show of resolve by the Security Council would have prevented the killing from reaching genocidal proportions.
Human Rights Watch
Books-Community Review, 2000
"Linda Melvern believes that the Rwandan tragedy represents the unravelling of the new international order built on the defeat of Nazism. The Convention on Genocide was, she points out, the world's first human rights treaty and if the UN was founded with one aim, it was to prevent things like this.
Melvern is clearly critical of America's unwillingness to enter into any overseas commitments and disapprovingly quotes Colin Powell's attitude towards a UN standing army: "As long as I am chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, I will not agree to commit American men and women to an unknown war, in an unknown land, for an unknown cause, under an unknown commander, for an unknown duration." America, of course, will not even commit ground troops under its own command if it can avoid it. That's the lesson of Kosovo." read review...
RW Johnson
Guardian Unlimited
