Archive for the ‘rwanda’ tag
The French Genocide #
From the annals of the slightly absurd:
Rwanda’s government ruffled some French feathers yesterday with the release of a 500-page report alleging that senior French military and political leaders had prior knowledge of the country’s 1994 genocide and that French peacekeeping troops actively participated in the killings. Among those accused are the late former President François Mitterand and former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
And the reason to doubt:
Given that the Rwandan government began work on the report just a few months after President Paul Kagame was accused by a French judge of assasinating the Rwanda’s former president — the event that precipitated the genocide — the report is going to be read with a pretty large grain of salt.
Post-election violence kills hundreds in Kenya #
In Kenya’s recent election, the incumbent Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, was victorious over the favored and hoped-for Raila Odinga. Odinga’s an ethnic Luo (like Barack Obama’s father) and after the probably-rigged election was awarded to Kibaki, riot police were immediately dispatched for fear of non-Kikuyu riots. Since then, many have died, and this New York Times report swings for the fences with a doozie of a line — which I can only hope will prove overstated —
“We’ve had tribal fighting before, but never like this,” said Abdalla Bujra, a retired Kenyan professor who runs a democracy-building organization.
As for the people burned alive in the church, Mr. Bujra echoed what many Kenyans were thinking: “It reminds me of Rwanda.”