Genocide in Rwanda: Leaked Evidence of US Inaction!

After our class discussion about WikiLeaks during our lecture on virtuality and government secrecy, this example instantly came to mind:

In April of 1994, Rwanda was struck with what the international world now refers to as one of the most devastating cases of genocide it has come to know. Of course, this was not the term used when the genocide initially took place. It certainly was not for the US government who refused to take actions of intervention during the mass murders until it was, by and large, almost too late.

The genocide in Rwanda was one that could have been prevented or, to say the least, could have been stopped before so much damage was done. During its atrocities, the Hutu militia killed almost one million Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus in a span of a hundred days. What is more disturbing to this fact is the idea that the US Government was well aware of this reality but refused to take action until actually pressured to do so by the United Nations.

On the National Security Archive website (linked below), a list of documents which were circulated to US Government officials were leaked and published for the world to see. They revealed shocking truth: the US Government was very aware of the genocide taking place in Rwanda. In fact, they knew there was a great possibility of it even months before the initial killings took place.

It then became evident that the failure of the US government to intervene in the Rwandan genocide was completely intentional. Article 6 of the archive is the document I find most evident of the American government's failure and negligence. If you look at #2 of the IWG's Six Short Term Policy Objectives, you will see that it was suggested to the US Government that it "support the UN and other in attempts to achieve a cease fire."

The American response to this was :

"Need to change 'attempts' to 'political efforts' -- without 'political' there is a danger to signing up to troop contribution."

A more disturbing example of this refusal of responsibility lies further in Article 6. If you scroll does to Issues of Discussion, the very first issue addressed is the following:

"GENOCIDE INVESTIGATION: Language that calls for an international investigation of human rights abuses and possible violations of the genocide convention. Be careful. Legal and State was worried about this yesterday -- Genocide finding could actually commit USG to actually 'do something.' "

These documents are real proof of the inaction on the part of the US Government; actions that if the people of the United States were aware of, could have most likely persuaded their government to act otherwise. And, if such actions could have been initiated to help Rwanda in its most dire time of need, there is a very real possibility the genocide would have never taken place.

National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/index.html