Globe and Mail, Canada
Nov 28 2009
Our Rwandan betrayal
Former UN general Roméo Dallaire returns to Rwanda 10 years after the
genocide. CBC Handout
Ottawa has acknowledged the Armenian genocide and apologized to native
Canadians. Will it do the same for its abandonment of the Tutsi?
Gerald Caplan
Published on Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009 11:42AM EST
.Earlier this month the RCMP arrested a 37-year old Rwandan man,
Jacques Mungwarere, in Windsor, Ont., and charged him with genocide
during the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi in his home country. Barely days
before, a Canadian court sentenced another Rwandan, Desire Munyaneza,
to life imprisonment for his role in the same genocide.
The two cases reflect a fact of Canadian life that few Canadians are
actually aware of: For the past 50 years, before, during and since the
genocide, Canada and Rwanda have been closely linked in a remarkable
number of ways. Large numbers of Rwandans have studied, lived, worked
and made lives in Canada, while countless Canadians have been
associated with Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire being only the most
prominent.
Yet in its moment of supreme need, during the 100 days in 1994 when
the Hutu leadership organized a systematic conspiracy to annihilate
the country’s entire Tutsi population, the Canadian government largely
abandoned the Tutsi to their terrible fate. Why this happened has
never been investigated in a proper way, and one of the world’s
leading historians of the genocide, Linda Melvern of Britain, wants to
know why. So do many others of us.
Rwanda became independent of Belgian colonial rule in the early 1960s
and Canadians have been closely involved with the country ever since.
Canada was actually the most influential middle power in Rwanda until
the genocide, largely through the work of French Canadians.
Francophone officials in both Foreign Affairs and CIDA knew the
Rwandan government well and treated it well. Although few Anglophones
knew much about the tiny country, `Rwanda was considered the jewel in
the in the crown of countries receiving Canadian aid,’ according to
Professor Howard Adelman, and in fact was the highest recipient per
capita in the world of such aid.
The main university in Rwanda was founded by a Quebec priest and
funded by Canadian aid, and Canadians, many also Quebec priests,
became intimately involved in the training of Rwanda’s elite until the
very eve of the genocide.
That very closeness blinded many of those involved to the ugly truths
about president Juvénal Habyarimana and his government, which they so
lavishly praised. In reality, it was a Hutu dictatorship with the
minority Tutsi suffering grievous discrimination in every aspect of
society. As a result, most Rwandans with whom Canadian government or
church officials came into contact with would have been part of the
Hutu ruling class. It seems apparent that the Canadians who worked
with Rwanda largely accepted the racist ideology of the Hutu regime
and closed their eyes to the persecution of the Tutsi. There were
honorable exceptions, however, including prime minister Brian
Mulroney, who was critical of the president, and human-rights
advocates Ed Broadbent and William Schabas, who exposed the
government’s increasingly murderous treatment of Tutsi.
Yet despite the close ties between the two countries, the Canadian
government ` by 1994 under Jean Chrétien ` refused to answer the pleas
of its own soldier, General Dallaire, for substantially more troops
once the genocide erupted, nor did it react to the crisis by urging
the United Nations to intervene more forcefully. The Canadian
government knew perfectly well what was happening. It had Dallaire. It
had General Maurice Baril heading up the military component of the UN
Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York. It had James
Orbinski running the Médecins Sans Frontières mission in the heart of
the killings. It had deputy defence minister Robert Fowler strongly
urging greater Canadian intervention. Yet except for some minor (if
important) logistic help to Dallaire’s military mission, Ottawa did
little.
Why? Fifteen years later, we still don’t know. Linda Melvern reminds
us of several harsh truths in the newly published, revised version of
her classic study A People Betrayed: The role of the West in Rwanda’s
genocide. There is no question of the reality of the genocide (despite
a growing chorus of deniers); almost a million Tutsi were mercilessly
slaughtered. Rwanda was abandoned by virtually all the players who
should have intervened, and who are therefore responsible in part for
that slaughter. Most of those players still refuse to acknowledge
their role or seek to account for them.
We’re talking here of France and the Roman Catholic Church, both
actively complicit in enabling the genocide, the United States,
Britain, Belgium, the UN Secretariat, the UN Security Council, the
Organization of African Unity, and, yes, Canada. Of these, only the
United Nations, Belgium and the OAU have commissioned proper studies,
all of which came down harshly on their sponsors. (I wrote the OAU’s
report.)
>From France: a refusal to acknowledge a jot of responsibility and a
whitewashing study. From the Church: no acceptance of responsibility,
no apology, no investigation of itself. From Washington: dishonest
apologies and no investigation. From Canada: silence.
Melvern is tireless in demanding from each of those who either
betrayed or abandoned Rwanda that they must set up a serious
independent commission to investigate the role each country or
institution played. The government of Stephen Harper has formally
acknowledged the reality of the Turkish genocide against the Armenians
in 1915, and has apologized to both Chinese-Canadians and native
Canadians for injustices against them perpetrated by the Canadian
governments of their time. Maybe they will continue this admirable
record by allowing the truth of our abandonment of Rwanda to be
discovered.
s/politics/our-rwandan-betrayal/article1381438/
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
