Global shame: World cannot continue to ignore bloodshed

An editorial from today's edition of the Binghamton, N.Y., "Press & Sun-Bulletin"...

Eleven years ago, the world for the most part averted its soul as half a million people were slaughtered in Rwanda.

At the time, President Juvenal Habyarimana's popularity was waning and he used the threat of an invasion by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (Tutsi who fled to Uganda when they lost power in 1959) as a means to foment hate between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi. He did this through defining Rwandans as those who backed him, and called the minority Tutsi and Hutu opposed to him ibyitso -- accomplices of the enemy.

On April 6, 1994, Habayarimana and the president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, were killed when their plane was shot down. The next day, Rwandan Armed Forces went house to house killing Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Thousands died. In response, the next day the RPF launched an offensive. But the genocide that would last three months had already gained ground.

The world powers debated whether or not to call the killings in Rwanda genocide. On April 30, the United Nations agreed on a resolution condemning the killings -- but it conveniently left out the g-word.

Why were the world powers so reticent to step in and end this crisis? Were no lessons learned from the horror wreaked by the Nazis and other "cleansings" through the years. In a statement marking the 10th anniversary of the genocide, Samantha Power of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government discussed the irony of the Clinton administration's initial response. Two days into the killing, she said, State Department official Prudence Bushnell addressed the press corps about efforts undertaken to evacuate Americans from the country.

Bushnell was followed by State Department spokesman Michael McCurry who "seamlessly turned to the next item on the day's agenda: U.S. criticism of foreign governments that were preventing the screening of the Steven Spielberg film Schindler's List," Power said.

McCurry said the film illustrated "that even in the midst of genocide, one individual can make a difference." Power noted that "No one made any connection between Bushnell's remarks and McCurry's, between Rwanda and the Holocaust. Neither journalists nor officials in the United States were focused then -- or in the ensuing three months -- on the fate of Rwanda's Tutsi."

Africa, it seems, is the forgotten continent. A world weary of the entanglement that getting involved in ethnic struggles brings, prefers to stand back and watch. But why do some conflicts matter, while others do not? Perhaps if Rwanda was sitting upon an oil reserve the size of Iraq's, and the genocide started today, it would be a different story.

Meanwhile, foreigners feel free to plunder the national resources of the struggling nations on the forgotten continent. Few seem to care about the millions who have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the past few years, but maybe they would sit up and take notice if mining its columbite-tantalite -- used in cell phones -- was threatened. And where was the world's outrage as 200,000 people were killed and 2 million displaced in Sudan's Darfur region? Where are the world's priorities?

World powers united against injustice could do many great things. World powers that remain silent on the rights of the powerless if speaking up would somehow complicate their lives, have no soul.

A survivor of the Rwandan genocide once said "When I came out, there were no birds. There was sunshine and the stench of death."

This sad anniversary, as well as those of the Holocaust and other dark moments in human history, should remind us all that the world could be a much better place for all. As Mike McCurry said, "even in the midst of genocide, one individual can make a difference." Just imagine what a united world could do.