Free Republic

The United States has done much to keep alive the memory and learn the lessons from the genocides of the 20th century. The Jewish Holocaust, the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and the Armenian Genocide – most recently recognized by the Biden administration - are seared in the minds of us all. When discussing genocide, commentators typically focus on terrifying headline numbers – thousands, sometimes millions of victims. But the definition of genocide is not a numerical one. The United Nations defines this crime as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group”....

Authorities in Rwanda have discovered a mass grave containing about 30,000 bodies of victims of the 1994 genocide that claimed an estimated one million people. The mass grave, which was found in a valley dam located in Kigali, was discovered following a tip off by people who had been jailed over genocide and have now completed their sentences. Naphtal Ahishakiye, the executive secretary of genocide survivor organization Ibuka, said that they have now embarked on exhuming the bodies for a decent burial. However, the exhuming of bodies is now a challenge as the country is in lockdown over coronavirus. Ahishakiye...

Given the ongoing furor over President Trump's executive order commanding the State Department cartographer to mark the map of the world with "Here be sh***holes", I thought for our Saturday movie date we should have a film about just how bad it can get. Twenty-four years ago, the Rwandan genocide was just about to get under way: In a hundred days, a million people were murdered - with machetes, all very low-tech. Since then, as I noted only the other day, the machete has been introduced to such boring white-bread places as Shelburne, Vermont, and Dundalk, Ireland, and Gothenburg, Sweden,...

The bishops saw them not as people but living sins who must be severely punished and the State facilitated that torture Catherine Corless at the boarded up site at Tuam Mothers and Babies home where there is now verified evidence of remains of a significant number of babies and young children being buried. (Photo: Ray Ryan) The horrors of the Tuam cesspit cast a long shadow over any International Women's Day celebrations. And the Taoiseach added to the gloom by appearing to defend the nuns who may have dumped the bodies of up to 800 children in a disused sewer....

By Ignatius Ssuuna Bujumbura — More than a week after he disappeared from a Bujumbura prison, Hussein Radjabu, a former rebel commander and powerful politician who enjoys significant popular support, has finally spoken. "I am planning to work with all Burundians [to bring about] a better politics that brings everybody on board, so that we have a better country," he told the Swahili service of Voice of America, putting paid to rumours that he might have been assassinated. His location was not disclosed. Rajdabu's 1 March jailbreak, which was well organised with outside assistance, adds to the uncertainty and tension...

"In our petition we rely, among other sources, on an Amnesty International report that was published in 1995... "There was tension in Rwanda as early as January of 1994. Several of the world's most powerful states imposed international arms control regulations and on May 17 1994 there was a UN embargo. Israel breached the embargo, as did Russia, Belgium, South Africa, France, Spain and others. Many of the planes that transported the shipments were British. The last license to export arms was issued by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in October 1993, about half a year before the massacres began....

Who the hell does National Security Advisor Susan Rice think she is? Does she believe in freedom of speech? How else to explain her disdainful tweet: “Personal attacks in Israel directed at Sec Kerry totally unfounded and unacceptable.” Unacceptable? Is it only Israel that has no right to criticize him? Has Rice forgotten that Israel, like the United States, is a democracy that enshrines the freedom of speech? There has been a penchant of late by those in the Obama Administration to treat Israel like an errant schoolboy. When Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said, according to media reports, that...

WINDHOEK (AFP) – Southern African nations on Saturday expressed concern at the growing number of Rwandan troops on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and said it hoped an invasion was not imminent. A statement from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional body said it was concerned "at the deployment of Rwandan troops along the common border" and "expressed the hope that Rwanda is not contemplating to invade". ... The UN accuses Rwanda of backing the M23, a charge the country has adamantly denied. The rebels in turn have accused the Congolese army of joining forces against...

Alleged Rwandan war criminal Leon Mugesera played Canada's ponderously slow judicial and immigration systems like a concert violinist, but now he is finally where he should have been more than a decade ago. And that's in Rwanda, and a jail cell in Kigali. We trust his accommodations are suitable. Rwanda, in turn, has promised Canada that Mugesera would get a fair trial on charges that he incited the 1993-94 genocide of millions of the Tutsi minority by marauding Hutu militiamen. Canada, in turn, should promise Canadians to speed up the system to that no alleged war criminal can ever again...

NAIROBI (AFP) – A Rwandan journalist who accused the regime of attempting to assassinate a dissident general in Johannesburg was gunned down in Kigali, police said Friday, fuelling tensions ahead of August elections. Jean-Leonard Rugambage's colleagues and media watchdog Reporters Without Borders alleged Thursday's killing was linked to reports alleging the involvement of President Paul Kagame's services in the assassination bid. "He was killed in front of his house when he was going home at 10 pm last night," police spokesman Eric Kayiranga told AFP by telephone, adding that the "unknown gunman" responsible for the attack had fled. Rugambage ran...

Few combinations are more poisonous than race and politics. That combination has torn whole nations apart and led to the slaughters of millions in countries around the world. You might think we would have learned a lesson from that and stay away from injecting race into political issues. Yet playing the race card has become an increasingly common response to growing public anger at the policies of the Obama administration and the way those policies have been imposed. When the triumphant Democrats made their widely televised walk up Capitol Hill after passing the health care bill, led by a smirking...

Hotel Rwanda hero no hero at home Elizabeth Sullilvan Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Paul Rusesabagina may be a hero, the real-life Hotel Rwanda operator who saved an estimated 1,200 lives by bartering words, cash and courage to save family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Yet the nonfictional subject of the 2004 movie cannot go back again. The son of a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother - considered a Hutu by Rwandan standards - could have died for standing up to the radical 1994 Hutus who were butchering Tutsis and the Hutus who supported them. He saved hundreds in his Mille...

Rwanda has set up an inquiry into the downing of a plane carrying former President Juvenal Habyarimana, an incident widely seen as triggering the country's 1994 genocide, a government minister said on Thursday... The subject caused a diplomatic rift with France last year after a French judge called Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, to be charged with the death of his predecessor. Kagame, who was a rebel leader at the time, denies any involvement. That prompted Kigali to sever diplomatic ties with Paris, and led to an ugly spat with Rwanda accusing French troops of encouraging the architects of the...

<p>Maybe it's because I spent time last summer in Burundi, the poorer twin-sister country of Rwanda, which shares a similar history, tribal make-up, geography, culture, and terrifying undercurrent of genocide. Maybe it's because while there, I met some Anglican priests serving in Rwanda, who told personal stories of the tragedies there and their efforts to bring healing and reconciliation in the aftermath. Maybe it's because (I know some readers will be tempted to write me off after reading this sentence) I was so frustrated by last year's promotional hype surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and I was so frustrated by the movie itself, although I know many good people found it moving and spiritually edifying. Maybe it's because I have deep concerns about the alignment of major sectors of Christianity with "red-state Republicanism," and I worry that a kind of modernist, nationalist neo-fundamentalism is trying to claim all Christian territory as its sovereign domain.</p>

Violence and Suffering in Sudan's Darfur Region The Crisis in Darfur A preventable humanitarian crisis, affecting more than two million people, is raging in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Not since the Rwanda genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of slaughter, rape, starvation and displacement. Government-backed militias, known collectively as the Janjaweed, are systematically eliminating entire communities of African tribal farmers. Villages are being razed, women and girls raped and branded, men and boys murdered, and food and water supplies targeted and destroyed. Victims report that government air strikes frequently precede militia raids.

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (AFP) - US President George W. Bush will bestow the highest US civilian honor on boxing legend Muhammad Ali, "Hotel Rwanda" hero Paul Rusesabagina and 11 others, the White House said. Singer Aretha Franklin, US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, and golfer Jack Nicklaus will also receive presidential medals of freedom in a November 9 ceremony at the White House, said Bush spokesman Scott McClellan. Last year, Bush raised eyebrows by giving the medal to former CIA director George Tenet, retired general Tommy Franks and the former civilian overseer for Iraq, Paul Bremer, sidestepping their ties...

Tagline of the movie: When a country descended into madness And the world closed its eyes He opened his arms And created a place Where hope could survive

Blood flowed in the streets. Machine guns and machetes replaced courtesies and conversations among neighbors and colleagues from different ethnic groups. As Rwanda fell into the grip of genocide 10 years ago, what distinguished Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in Kigali, the capital, from many of his countrymen was an unspoken passion to serve others and a knack for decorum. "I was not brave, but maybe I was someone who refused to follow the mob," Rusesabagina said in an interview in Washington before the screening last week of "Hotel Rwanda," a film based on heroic exploits by which Rusesabagina ultimately...

ARUSHA, Tanzania (AFP) - A UN-backed tribunal convicted a former senior Rwandan army officer of playing a major role in the country's 1994 genocide and sentenced him to 25 years in prison, the court said. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found ex-colonel Aloys Simba guilty of genocide and extermination during the 100-day massacres in which some 800,000 people, mainly minority Tutsis, were slaughtered by Hutu extremists, it said. The former officer and member of parliament had initially faced four counts but was acquitted on charges and conspiracy to commit genocide and murder, the ICTR said in a statement....

ARUSHA, Tanzania (AP) - A U.N. tribunal sentenced a former local government official in western Rwanda to prison for the rest of his life for shooting to death and raping mostly Tutsi victims during the 1994 genocide. Judge Khalida Rashid Khan said the tribunal found beyond any reasonable doubt that Mika Muhimana, who was a councilor in the province of Kibuye, shot mostly Tutsi victims, raped several Tutsi women and encouraged other men to rape in the town of Gishyita. The sentence of imprisonment for the rest of one's life is the highest penalty under the rules of the International...