30 Years Later, Rwanda Genocide Shows Consequences of U.S. Refusal to Prevent Mass Killing

[Uncle Joe]

Rwanda is holding a week of commemorations to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, a period of around 100 days in which up to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by Hutu militias while powerful countries, including the United States, stood by and refused to stop the mass killings. Shortly after the genocide, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame took power and has since ruled Rwanda with an iron fist, leading a harsh crackdown on the press and opposition groups. We look back at the 1994 genocide and discuss the country's trajectory since then with two guests: Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton, and Noël Zihabamwe, a survivor of the genocide whose parents were killed during the violence in 1994 and whose brothers were disappeared by the Kagame regime in 2019. Zihabamwe now lives in Australia and runs the African Australian Advocacy Center.

[SunSeeker]

1. Not only did governments do nothing, but none of the cool kids on campus held protests.

Even though that was an actual genocide.

[Uncle Joe]

2. What has to happen before Gaza becomes an "actual genocide?"

One difference being, we weren't the primary source of arms for Rwanda.

[SunSeeker]

5. Nobody disputed that Rwanda was a genocide, yet nobody gave a shit.

Why do you suppose that is?

[Uncle Joe]

6. I disagree with your broad brush premise,

"yet nobody gave a shit"

One other aspect of the Rwandan genocide was the speed, it all happened within 100 days.

What's happening in Gaza is more like a slow strangulation.

[SunSeeker]

7. There was no uproar in the US in 1994. Nobody set themselves on fire over Rwanda.

100 days is a long time to watch close to a million people die, with no reaction from campus activists, let alone demands from them that the world stop the civilians from being slaughtered. Why do you think that was? Pro-Palestinian demonstrations accusing Israel of genocide were well-established in our major universities in less than 30 days from October 7, 2023. https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2023/11/israeli-palestinian-conflict-california-college/

Speaking of "slow strangulation," 18 million civilians are starving right now in Sudan because of war. Where are the tears for Sudan?

[Uncle Joe]

8. The people of the world were more ignorant in the 1990s

In the 1990s the American People were almost at the sole mercy of the corporate media for obtaining information regarding national reality and the state of the world.

Almost all information was just one way, top down regurgitation passed down from the corporate media, only six corporate conglomerates controlled over 90+% of everything the American People see on T.V. hear on the radio or read in publications.

The Internet has De Facto greatly empowered the peoples' freedom of speech and deliberation powers

In other words bad stuff isn't as easy to hide or ignore anymore.

Mar 25, 2024

Sudan is on track to become the world's worst hunger crisis, according to the United Nations. For over a year, fighting between the Sudanese military and the rival Rapid Support Forces has disrupted the country, displacing over 8 million people who experience extreme hunger in the areas with the most intense fighting. The increasing demand comes as the U.N.'s appeal for $2.7 billion for Sudan is less than 5% funded. Funding is also drying up in Chad, where some 1.2 million Sudanese have taken refuge. "This is the largest sort of mass mortality crisis that we are facing in the world and the largest that we have probably faced for many decades," says Alex de Waal, the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine, who laments the "shocking" cuts to the World Food Programme that is essential to the global emergency response system. "If it doesn't work, we are going to find ourselves facing the kinds of crises of mass mortality that we have simply not seen for half a century or longer."

https://www.democraticunderground.com/132114339

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017844542

On edit PS, The language coming from members of the Israeli government is evidence and gave an early indication as to their intent, so it wasn't a major stretch for people in Gaza and elsewhere to fear or realize Genocide was taking place from an early date in the conflict.

[SunSeeker]

9. People were not dumber in 1990. If anything, people are dumber now.

IQ levels have been falling since 1975, reversing a century-long trend of rising intelligence quotients. https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/research-confirms-it-really-are-getting-dumber.htm#:~:text=IQ%20levels%20have%20been%20falling,Britain%2C%20France%20and%20the%20Netherlands.

The corporate media was not hiding the fact of the Rwanda genocide. Journalist Catherine Bond looked back on media coverage of the 1994 killings in Rwanda — including her own reporting. Her main findings were that, in the early days of the genocide, national and international coverage of the killings was detailed, accurate and swift. All the material was there to convey the enormity of what was happening on the ground if you pieced it all together as a reader or listener outside. https://www.cigionline.org/articles/covering-rwanda-genocide/

And certainly nobody is hiding what is happening in Sudan right now, yet 18 million are slowly starving to death. Sadly, your post on Sudan sunk like a rock.

[Uncle Joe]

10. I didn't say dumber. I said ignorant

There is no logical possibility that people today with the world's library at their fingertips combined with instant mass two way communication as being more ignorant than people in the 1990s without those information resources.

The corporate media most assuredly determines; whether consciously or sub-consciously which issues of the day get priority in televising or publishing from their institutions and which ones get less attention.



The Western Media and the Portrayal of the Rwandan Genocide of the Rwandan Genocide


The primary purpose of this paper is to analyze the ways
the Western media described the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and
contrast those descriptions with the actual historical facts and
circumstances of Rwandan politics and social relations. Too often,
African political events that have particular and distinguishable
contexts and precedents are simply labeled as irrational tribalism,
without any attention given to the causes of a particular
occurrence.1
While journalists may attempt as best they can to be
objective when relaying information, they, like anyone else, are the
products of their training, their upbringing, their religious
affiliation, and their political and social views. And, in the case of
the Western media and Africa, the question of perspective is often
exacerbated by the relative ignorance of Western media about the
countries in Africa that they are asked to write about. Anne
Chaon, a journalist who spent time in Rwanda during the genocide,
explains that:
Most journalists are not experts in genocide. Many
of them - myself included - arrived in Rwanda with
very little knowledge of the country. So, it was
tempting, especially at the beginning, to speak of
the civil war, and to link these massacres to
previous massacres since 1959. We failed to
understand that the killing was something totally
new, that this was not a continuity of what
happened before.

(snip)

https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1200&context=history-in-the-making

[SunSeeker]

11. People are more ignorant today due to social media and cocooning in societal bubbles.

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/survey-finds-shocking-lack-holocaust-knowledge-among-millennials-gen-z-n1240031

Just because something is "at your fingertips" doesn’t mean you read it. People read what they want to read on the internet. And most people want to read what reinforces their world view. That's how Fox makes their money.

[Uncle Joe]

12. People are most ignorant today on how a moral compass works while cocooning in corporate media bubbles.

(snip)

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
One of the most prominent models of moral development today is that of psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, who felt morality was influenced by complex cognitive development and social factors.

“Lawrence Kohlberg developed the most commonly used model for moral development in the 1960s,” says Dr. Ronald Stolberg, a licensed psychologist, and professor in San Diego.

“In contrast to other developmental stage theorists, Kohlberg placed almost no emphasis on a child’s age but rather focused on their responses to moral dilemmas.”

In his moral development theory, Kohlberg identified 6 stages within 3 levels where different factors take primary influence over moral development:

Level 1: Preconventional

Stage 1: Behavior is shaped by consequences.
Stage 2: Focus turns to reward-oriented behaviors.

Level 2: Conventional

Stage 3: Behavior is dictated by social approval.
Stage 4: Societal rules and laws control behavior.

Level 3: Postconventional

Stage 5: Individual rights and freedoms dictate behavior.
Stage 6: Behaviors are influenced by the perceived impact on all those involved.

Becca Smith is a licensed professional counselor from Forney, Texas.

She says “these stages progress from conventional reasoning, where children base their decisions on avoiding punishment and seeking rewards, to conventional reasoning, where individuals consider societal norms and values.”

Smith adds that “the highest stage is post-conventional reasoning, where a person considers individual principles and ethical considerations above laws or social expectations.”

Not everyone necessarily progresses through all stages of their moral development under Kohlberg’s model, she clarifies.

(snip)

https://psychcentral.com/health/right-wrong-or-indifferent-finding-a-moral-compass



It was/is corporate media ownership that has long worshiped profit over the pubic good or enlightenment for the people, that's how a dangerous, unfit and corrupt lunatic came to power here in the land of the free.

It wasn't younger people getting bubbled on the Internet that put him in power, no matter how badly the corporate media wants you to believe that.

[Gaugamela]

3. Neither did a minority of Americans cheer on the slaughter. Sorry if the

genocide in Gaza doesn’t live up to your expectations, but be patient. The famine is set to start ripping through the population (the UN and other relief aid organizations call the situation “unprecedented”! — woohoo!), and Netanyahu promises a date has been set for the invasion of Rafah. Should be like shooting fish in a barrel. (I know, facts are for “cool kids” but I thought you’d enjoy knowing this.) So hold on to your hat, SunSeeker, the genocide is just getting started!

[SunSeeker]

4. Nobody here is cheering dead Gaza civilians.

Crazy strawman you got there, Gaugamela.

However, Hamas did cheer on the killing of Israeli civilians.

[betsuni]

13. "U.S. Refusal to Prevent Mass Killing"

"Why didn't Democrats stop ____ ?"

[JustAnotherGen]

14. The two could not be more different

And I was interning for a congresswoman that summer because of a paper I had written on American Non Response to Genocide - the Armenians to the Kurds. Who knew a month later Rwanda would blow up. I took calls from people trying to survive and had meetings as very very young woman with Prudence Bushnell.

Had we jammed the airwaves - we could have stopped it. It's that simple. It could have given Tutsis and Twa and Hutu Tutsi Sympathisers, spouses, parents, etc. etc. a chance to regroup and get away. But that didn't happen.

Jamming Hamas airwaves would have done NOTHING to prevent October 7. And jamming Israels airwaves will do nothing to stop their response.

There were never any hostages taken by the Hutus to be used as bargaining chips with an Army of a foreign country. They were just hacked to death or raped to death.

The only thing that can stop the Israel/Hamas war - is for Hamas to release every single hostage.

It's that fucking simple.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Do you mean like a "temporary ceasefire" with the hostages on all sides being released?

What would be a good motivation for Hamas to agree to a "temporary ceasefire?"

[JustAnotherGen]

16. Nope

Hamas kidnapped those people.

Hamas is the political leadership.

Hamas has all of the power to tell their citizens, regardless of the terrorist organization they are affiliated with to release the hostages.

A good motivation? We'll stop bombing your country that your political leadership lead in a horrific rape, murder, and pillaging like a bunch of blood thirsty vikings - if you give us back the hostages.

Americans are to be released first.

[Uncle Joe]

17. Do you believe that Hamas cares about the Palestinians trapped in Gaza?

What difference would a TEMPORARY ceasefire mean to Hamas?

"A good motivation? We'll stop bombing your country that your political leadership lead in a horrific rape, murder, and pillaging like a bunch of blood thirsty vikings - if you give us back the hostages.?"

Once the pause is over, Hamas would then be killed by the IDF.

So what's the motivation for Hamas to release the hostages?