By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, January 29, updated here -- The Democratic Republic of the Congo sanctions resolution was already supposed to have been adopted by the UN Security Council. But among the issues that has delayed is one concerned how to refer to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Sources exclusively told Inner City Press that the United States resisted calling it a genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda, even saying that there is a US policy against referring to it in this way.
Where would such a US policy be written down? It seemed strange, particularly in during a week of Holocaust events at the UN, from one about Hungary to another about Albania.
Inner City Press asked a US Council diplomat, who said spokespeople would be asked. Inner City Press was told to wait for the language to be final. In fact, it is now set to be adopted by the Council on January 30, having been put "in blue," in final form, during the Security Council's debate on January 28.
In that debate, the representative of the DRC spoke about Rwanda and the M23 rebels. Rwanda's Deputy Permanent Representative replied with a series of questions: was it Rwanda who killed Lumumba? Was Rwanda responsible for Mobutu? Who hosted and failed to separate the genocidaires from Rwanda in 1994?
It is impossible not to note, particularly given the lack of explanation or transparency, that US Permanent Representative Samantha Power began her 2001 article "Bystanders to Genocide" in the Atlantic with this sentence: "In the course of a hundred days in 1994 the Hutu government of Rwanda and its extremist allies very nearly succeeded in exterminating the country's Tutsi minority."
Given that, why would the US Mission be saying it had a policy of describing the genocide as being against the Tutsi minority? Inner City Press asked again: Since I'm told that the US has said that there is a government position not to say the 1994 genocide was against the Tutsis, can you say what that policy is? Why does it exist? Does it apply to other genocides or atrocities?
As noted, Inner City Press also has pending with the US State Department a number of requests, including a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the Administration's Atrocities Prevention Board.
As the Security Council debate ended on January 29, Inner City Press was told a compromise was reached, in PP 13: a reference to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, during which Hutu, and others were killed.
A Rwandan diplomat told Inner City Press these were Hutu killed not because of their ethnicity but because they opposed the genocide against the Tutsi. "This is a precedent," the diplomat said. Watch this site.
