UN SUSPENDS EXHIBIT ON RWANDA GENOCIDE, OVER ARMENIAN KILLINGS
EarthTimes.org
April 10 2007
New York – A photography exhibition on the massacre of 800,000
Rwandans in 1994 was suspended Tuesday after Turkey protested that it
carried a mention of the massacre of Armenians after World War I. The
photographs were shown in a lobby at UN headquarters. But a Turkish
diplomat discovered a caption explaining the meaning of genocide,
citing the case of Armenians murdered in Turkey.
Turkey denies that the killing of up to one million Armenians
constituted genocide, putting their deaths down to ethnic strife,
disease and famine, and has prosecuted some historians for calling
it genocide.
The UN said Tuesday it decided to call off the show while the dispute
was being settled.
The massacre of ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda, which was incited by the
Hutu-led government in Kigali following the death of their leader
in a plane crash in April, 1994, has been branded a genocide and
condemned by the international community.
The victims were slaughtered within three months while a UN
peacekeeping mission stood by under orders not to get involved – the
result of a restrictive mandate provided by the UN Security Council
in New York.
The Rwanda genocide exhibition had been planned to move to Ghana,
Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania after New York. It was
uncertain whether that plan still stood.