“If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will all disappear then they will. All of them. An entire generation of people. And we will have only history left to judge us.” – George Clooney
Graffiti “Kahana was right” on a closed down Arab store, with a ‘Shut-down’ warrant for the stores
“Silence, acquiescence, paralysis in the face of genocide is wrong.” – Barack Obama
Rwanda Still in Our Human Rights Blind Spot
By Juliane Kippenberg, Africa Division, Human Rights Watch, published in The Observer
25 July 2004
Ten years ago this month, the Rwandan genocide came to an end. For months, the world had stood by and done nothing, while Rwandan leaders organized the murder of more than half a million people. It was a rebel group, not the United Nations or any international force, which finally defeated the genocidal government.
The victors, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, is still in power. It has vowed to fight against anyone who propagates genocide—on the face of it, a laudable aim. But the “fight against genocide” has become an excuse for new abuses. It served to justify four years of Rwandan occupation of eastern Congo, which in turn sparked Africa’s bloodiest war. The genocide was used as a pretext for dissolving the main opposition party before presidential elections last year. Now, the RPF-dominated parliament wants the country’s largest and most respected human rights organization to be dissolved—allegedly in the name of preventing genocide.
What Future?
Street Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Photographs by Marcus Bleasdale
The civil war in the DRC, which has claimed the lives of some four million Congolese, has contributed to an estimated doubling of the number of street children in the last decade. A growing number of children orphaned by war are accused by surviving family members of practicing sorcery. Blamed for their families’ misfortunes, accused children are severely abused in their homes and in churches where they are sent to rid them of “possession.” Children affected by or infected with HIV/AIDS are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Extended family members who take in their relatives’ children orphaned by AIDS, often blame them for their parents’ death and accuse them of transmitting the disease through sorcery. These children are frequently beaten, neglected, and thrown out of their homes.
Iraq’s rising numbers of orphaned children
Report, IRIN, 18 April 2006
Some of the orphans in Iraq are exploited by criminal gangs. (IRIN)
According to the voice over [ Celebrities, Activists Rally for Darfur AP Video ], Elie Wiesel said he will not remain silent while families are being uprooted and starved and children are tormented and slaughtered.
“And in the eyes of the victims the world remains indifferent to their plight. We are here because we refuse to be silent and remember. Silence helps the killers, never the victims.” – Elie Wiesel
World Health Organization: Life Quality Dramatically Deteriorated for Palestinians
If you click through to nothing else in this post, be sure to view the AP video and take note of the age of those in the rebel armies in Sudan, the same rebels who refuse to sign the peace treaty that would pave the way towards the end of this miserable conflict. Could it be they’re being counselled to hang tough, reinforcements for their child-slave armies are on the way? Why is it that those who marched on Washington and applauded the Democrats who spoke to them have nothing to say about these disappeared or ethnic cleansing elsewhere?
Could the reason possibly be that ethnic cleansing is okay depending on who’s doing the cleansing?