Return to Rwanda
July 28, 7:00 p.m.

Eleven years ago, a Hutu genocide killed 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days while the international community did nothing. Today, a coalition government, led by a former Tutsi soldier, has stabilized, but is struggling with over 200,000 war criminals they have yet to try, the loss of a large portion of their most educated citizenry, and underlying tribal tensions.

The program includes General Roméo Dallaire, the UN peacekeeper over Rwanda during the genocide, as he reads from his book Shake Hands with the Devil; an interview with director Peter Raymont (Shake Hands with the Devil: the Journey of Roméo Dallaire); and a slide show and commentary on the genocide's aftermath by award-winning photo-journalist Peter Bregg.

Links and resources:

Letter to Representative George Radanovich (Dist. 19)
Genocide as it happened in Rwanda is happening again in Sudan, another African country. The Bush administration has given some aid, but a bill, called the Darfur Accountability Act (click here to read a summary of the bill) is pending in Congress to send even more. This letter is to encourage Congress to pass the Act as it was originally passed in the Senate, and not to weaken it, as Congress (and President Bush) has threatened. You will have to cut and paste this to a word processing program in order to personalize it.

Official film website

Official website of Rwanda

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
Official UN site

The Triumph of Evil
From Frontline, a comprehensive site dealing with the history and actions during the genocide.

100 Days of Slaughter
A chronology of US/UN actions

Never Again: the World's Most Unfulfilled Promise
An article by Samantha Power, which examines America's response to genocide since the Holocaust.

French Actions in Rwanda
From Philip Gourevitch's recent book, an excerpt about why France supported the Hutu regime in the years leading up to the genocide, and how France's Operation Turquoise in June of 1994 allowed the slaughter of Tutsis to continue for an extra month. This French deployment also helped secure safe passage for the genocidal Hutu command to cross into Zaire.

Defining the Crime of Genocide
Alain Destaxhe's analysis of the singular nature of genocide: how it is separate from all other crimes and why only three mass atrocities in the 20th century fit the definition. From Destaxhe's book Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century

Who Were the Organizers, Who Were the Killers, Who Were the Victims?
An excerpt from Gerard Prunier's book The Rwanda Crisis in which he outlines how the slaughter unfolded.

Justice in Rwanda Today
A summary of arrests and trials as of June 1999.

Leave None to Tell the Story
A comprehensive report from Human Rights Watch

Rwanda: How the Genocide Happened
An article from the BBC online

Rwanda Genocide: 10 Years On
From the BBC online

The US and Genocide in Rwanda in 1994: Evidence of Inaction
A National Security Archive Briefing Book

International Crime Tribunal for Rwanda
Official site of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Yale Genocide Studies Project

Rwanda: Accountability for War Crimes and Genocide
A special report from the United States Institute of Peace

Capt. Mbaye Diagne
Read about the Senegalese soldier who saved scores of Tutsis single-handedly.

Can it Happen Again?
The world's leaders have denounced what happened in Rwanda and are shamed by their failure to intervene to halt the slaughter. But if another Rwanda happened, would the world respond any differently? Here are the views of those who were involved in decision-making on Rwanda and a journalist who has analyzed America's response to genocide: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, U.N. secretary-general; George Moose, assistant secretary of state for Africa; Gen. Romeo Dallaire, U.N. force commander in Rwanda; Madeleine Albright, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Mission; Major Brent Beardsley, executive assistant to Gen. Dallaire; Michael Sheehan, peacekeeping adviser to Madeleine Albright; John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights; Prudence Bushnell, deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa; Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell; and Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton.

Rwanda Q&A
From Oxfam Int'l

Rwanda ten years on: what have we learned?

Interviews:
Madeleine Albright
She was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time of the genocide and later served as secretary of state in the Clinton administration. In this interview, she says that during the early weeks of the killing what was happening in Rwanda "was not clear. … For whatever reason, the system did not manage to push the information up high enough to people making decisions." She insists that, in retrospect, she did all that was possible. She wishes that she had pushed for a large humanitarian intervention, but even if she had, she believes the support wasn't there. "Nothing would have happened. … There was no way to get a large number of troops there quickly enough and to get the right mandate." This interview was conducted on Feb. 25, 2004.

Gregory "Gromo" Alex
He headed the U.N. humanitarian assistance team in Kigali during the genocide and delivered food and supplies daily to U.N. safe houses through enemy fire. "The convoys get shot at almost every day. We kept a tally -- degrees of attack: small arms fires, small arms and rocket, small arms with heavy machine gun[s] and rockets and grenades." He talks about the life-and-death confrontations at checkpoints, the deaths of co-workers, and the brave U.N. Capt. Diagne, who smiled and joked his way through the genocidaires and saved hundreds of lives. "There were some powerful, brave things that were being done by U.N. soldiers, completely devoid of any support from New York," says Alex. "Forget it, I'm sorry -- nothing came from those people." This interview was conducted on Oct. 18, 2003.

Kofi Annan
He is U.N. secretary-general and in 1994 headed the U.N.'s small office on peacekeeping operations. In this interview, he explains how Rwanda "became a victim of the Somali peacekeeping experience" and he talks about some of the controversial decisions he made during the crisis. He also discusses the reasons behind the world's failure to act, including the U.N.'s "lacking a culture of speaking out" and member states "not having the will" to intervene. As to whether the world's response to genocide will be any different next time, he is skeptical. "I really don't know. I wish I can say yes, but I am not convinced that we will see the kind of political will and the action required to stop it." Secretary-General Annan is now involved in a global effort to set a new standard for the world on humanitarian intervention. This interview conducted on Feb. 17, 2004.

Boutros Bourtos-Ghali
He was U.N. secretary-general from January 1992 to December 1996. In this interview, he discusses how the U.S.'s new doctrine on intervention, which was issued at the peak of the genocide, had a serious impact on the world's response. Although he points out that U.N. internal politics certainly was a factor in the failure to act, he believes that discrimination existed in dealing with African crises compared to those in Western nations. And he recounts a meeting with President Clinton in May 1994 as the slaughter continued unabated. "Based on this discussion I had with him, Rwanda was a marginal problem. He said [he was] not so sure if [the United States] was ready to help to send soldiers, but he was not interested in this problem." This interview was conducted on Jan. 21, 2004.

Prudence Bushnell
As U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, she chaired a mid-level interagency working group that was set up to explore what could be done about the mounting slaughter. In this interview, she offers a glimpse of a risk-averse, weak-willed bureaucracy and recounts how her group was working within severely limited policy parameters, the chief one being that U.S. intervention was never an option: "The anger, the horror of that policy. I don't think there's a person involved in it who doesn't have that frustration, horror still. ... You never wanted to do it again. Once was enough." This interview was conducted on Sept. 30, 2003.

General Romeo Dallaire
He commanded the U.N. force sent to Rwanda in 1993 to help enforce the Arusha peace accord. In this interview, he chronicles his time there,from the "gloom that came in" soon after arriving and sensing that trouble was coming, to the sudden collapse of his mission once the killing began and the moral burden of the life-and-death choices he confronted as he tried to save lives with a few ill-equipped troops. He also talks about the world's attitude toward dirt-poor African nations like Rwanda, the heroism of a few people, and the memory of how he looked straight into "evil" as he forced himself to negotiate with the genocide leaders. Finally, Dallaire describes how Rwanda will never leave him. "My soul is in those hills, my spirit with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered. … Lots of those eyes still haunt me, angry eyes, or innocent eyes. But the worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of those people who were totally bewildered. They're looking at me with my blue beret and saying, 'What in the hell happened?'" This interview was conducted over four days in the fall of 2003.

Mark Doyle
A correspondent for the BBC, he was for a while the only foreign journalist in Rwanda and he broadcast live what was happening. In this interview, he talks about what he witnessed and how individual U.N. soldiers made a difference, especially the Senegalese Capt. Mbaye Diagne who single handedly saved at least one hundred lives. In recounting the actions of Diagne and Philippe Gaillard and his Red Cross team, Doyle compares their response to that of the West's: "General Dallaire's plan to have soldiers at football stadiums to protect people -- I think it was a doable plan. He just didn't have enough soldiers. It didn't happen because they were Africans. … If hundreds of thousands of Europeans or Americans were being killed in the way that Rwandans were being killed -- Do you think the world would not have intervened? I think it's because they were Africans." This interview was conducted on Dec. 12, 2003.

Paul Kagame
Now the president of Rwanda, in 1994 he commanded the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the Tutsi rebel force which toppled the genocidal Hutu regime and brought an end to the slaughter. In this interview, he responds to those who say that once the genocide started, the invading RPF forces were set on taking over the country and would have opposed any outside intervention designed to get the two sides back to the Arusha peace process. He also talks about the genocide and its personal impact on him. "I have lived in a world of injustice. Perhaps the only responsibility I have is to try my best that I don't get involved in what one would call injustice, because I have lived it. I know what it means." This interview was conducted on January 30, 2004.

Anthony Lake
Currently a professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, he was President Clinton's national security adviser from 1993 to 1997. In this interview, he discusses the "narrow calculations of national interest" that explain America's failure to halt the genocide and how it was that Rwanda never got top-level attention in the Clinton administration. "It is wrong to say nobody had any idea hell was breaking loose in Rwanda. Of course they did. But at the same time, there was very little attention to what the problem was and how to fix it politically through the U.N., etc. At least at my level. I should have reached out and said, "Tell me more." And I didn't, concentrating mostly at the time on Bosnia and Haiti, and various other issues." This interview was conducted on Dec. 15, 2003.

Laura Lane
She was consular officer at the U.S. embassy in Kigali and served as liaison between the U.S. ambassador, the Hutu-led government forces and the Tutsi rebel force, the RPF. Although she followed State Department orders to evacuate, she had wanted to stay and try to help: "We could have made a difference, and I was so frustrated. … Nobody wanted to take the risk of American casualties. … We were the embassy community. We could have made a difference." This interview was conducted on Oct. 3 and 4, 2003.

George Moose
He was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. His interview offers insight into how America had a crucial role in blocking an effective response by the world to the genocide. He discusses the U.S. decision to support a drastic reduction of U.N. peacekeeping forces and to evacuate Kigali. He also explains the rationale for rejecting General Dallaire's appeals for reinforcement and the "tortured debate" over using the word genocide. In one of the many examples of bureaucratic inertia and self-serving caution that marked America's response, Moose talks about the "truly shameful episode" where U.S. officials rejected a plan to jam the extremists' hate radio broadcasts "because of some legal nicety about international radio conventions. And then the [50 armored personnel carriers] thing… We spent so much time wrangling about who was going to pay for refurbishing them, … for transporting them. It's sort of bureaucracy at its very worst, and we couldn't break through that." This interview was conducted on Nov. 21, 2003.

Samantha Power
She is the author of A Problem from Hell, a book on America's responses to the major genocides of the 20th century for which Power won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. She currently is executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University's Kennedy School. In this interview, she discusses how those who shaped U.S. policy did know about the scale of the killing in the early weeks, but that the policy objective of the U.S. from the start was non-intervention in Rwanda. She also details the "variety of policy tools" short of U.S. intervention that America could have applied that might have diminished the killing. And finally, she discusses the lessons of Rwanda and the great failure of the Clinton administration. "No amount of Clintonian leadership may have carried U.S. troops [intervention] through the Congress; they may be right about that. But at least you want to be able to look back and say, 'We did everything short of a thing that we couldn't achieve.' Instead, they have to look back and say, 'We did nothing short of a thing that we couldn't have achieved.'" This interview was conducted on Dec. 16, 2003.

David P. Rawson
He was U.S. ambassador to Rwanda from 1993 to 1996 and arrived in Kigali at a point when the Arusha peace process was faltering. After being ordered to leave Rwanda after the killing started, he joined a mid-level group of officials back in Washington who tried to deal with the crisis: "We were all working very frenetically. The problem is, we weren't able to move the bureaucracy. We weren't able to get equipment out in a timely way. … We had debates that were probably too long and improperly focused on the strategy of the U.N. activity, before we actually took a vote to have this activity. All of this had us coming up with a peacekeeping force after the genocide had wreaked its havoc." This interview was conducted on Oct. 5, 2003.

Organizations working to help the victims
(Inclusion on this list does not imply endorsement by the Rural Media Arts and Education Project or its sponsors)

UNICEF

UN's International Fund for Rwanda

Doctors Without Borders

Catholic Relief Services

Christian Communications Commission
A small, faith-based child sponsorship organization that supports schools/orphanages operating in Rwanda.

Oxfam

World Vision
An international Christian relief and development organization working to promote the well being of all people - especially children. In 2003, World Vision offered material, emotional, social and spiritual support to 100 million people in 99 countries.

Continue the Discussion - Join our local on-line forum

Browse Public Cinema Project's Amazon Associate Store for products related to the Rwandan Genocide.