At School of Death, the Lesson is Taught by the Victims - Rwanda

[superconnected]

This is on the front page of yahoo news right now.

http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs1180

The school was a trap. When it was finally sprung, 50,000 people were murdered in one day. Killing like that is not out of anger or passion -- it's efficient, systematic. It is killing on a scale of 2,000 people every hour.


(Note: This dispatch contains graphic video and photographs that some readers may find disturbing.)


This is how it happened: On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvnal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, dies in a plane crash. The death of Habyarimana unleashes a killing spree that is as calculated as it is savage.

Hatred between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis in Rwanda has existed for generations. The killings are an attempt by Hutus to end their rivalry with the Tutsis once and for all. When it is over, more than 800,000 Tutsis and their sympathizers are dead.

Hutu Interahamwe militias begin their rampage within days of the plane crash. The Tutsi population is panicked. In Gikongoro Province, Hutu officials use bullhorns to encourage the Tutsis to gather at the Murambi School -- still under contruction -- telling them they will be protected there. They pack every building and the surrounding grounds.


...more

[superconnected]

1. and this is why I'm pro the death penalty.

Monsters.

[Skwmom]

2. And where was the U.S. and the rest of the world?

"Despite intelligence provided before the killing began, and international news media coverage reflecting the true scale of violence as the genocide unfolded, virtually all first-world countries declined to intervene, and the United Nations refused to authorize its peacekeeping operation in Rwanda at the time, led by General Roméo Dallaire, to take positive action to bring the killing to a halt. This failure to act became the focus of bitter recriminations towards individual policymakers specifically, such as Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, as well as the United Nations and countries such as France and the United States more generally and President Clinton specifically. Clinton was kept informed on a daily basis by his closest advisors and by the U.S. Embassy of Rwanda. Clinton was also advised by others close to him to "stay out of Rwanda" because of the possible political backlash similar to that which occurred just a year earlier in a failed attempt to help the country of Somalia."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide

This came up in a google search. I'm sure there's more to the story.

[fortyfeetunder]

3. No oil there.

it's truly disgusting the people didn't get help.