Showing posts with label genocide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genocide. Show all posts

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Truth Be Told: Rwanda's Indictment


Kagame, in a sexy oversized leisure blazer, at right.

Aha! Perhaps Rwanda's indictment of senior French officials is not as altruistic as it seems. An IHT article published yesterday suggests that Rwanda's government, which is run by Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front, is distracting international attention away from itself. The International Criminal Tribunal has accused the RPF of killing tens of thousands of Hutus in the aftermath of the genocide. The indictment is more of a political ploy than a legal proceeding. It may also be a response to France's effort to bring Kagame before the UN Tribunal for plotting the plane crash that killed the former Rwandan president, an event that, when it occurred two years ago, set off more violence in the fragile country.

Says Kenneth Roth, president of Human Rights Watch, and a personal hero of mine:

"The timing of this report is no coincidence. At a moment when international pressure to pursue the RPF trials is at its height, this is an effort to change the subject and put the international community on the defensive."


Read the Katrin Bennhold IHT article.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Some Humpday updates

I just returned from a lovely vacation in Chicago. It was fabulous, but I am happy to be back in Cbus. Just in time to find some great reads in the Financial Times and Le Monde.

It looks like international law is going to get a lot more interesting in the coming weeks and months. The Rwandan government has indicted top French officials, including former Prime Minister de Villepin, in the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in the 90s. Further, the Spanish judiciary has determined itself fit to investigate charges of genocide in Tibet against Chinese Communist Party officials. What a brouhaha!

Financial Times
gems:

  1. Free Trade: The key to Britain's food security
  2. French government indicted in Rwandan genocide
  3. Greenspan's take on the state of the world's finances
  4. The consequences of China's weak civil society

Le Monde (en francais)

  1. Spanish court to investigate charges of genocide in Tibet against Chinese officials
  2. Coup d'etat in Mauritania