The Road to Rwanda

On the Holocaust, Ian Kershaw famously said that, "the road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference." The genocide in Rwanda was perpetrated without shame and done using mass communications. There was no doubt to the world that ethnic cleansing was happening. However, the worst part was that those that could have easily intervened did not. The UN had peacekeeping troops deployed in Rwanda as were troops from multiple countries. They left when the conflict started however, leaving the genocide to occur without interference from foreign powers. The UN even avoided using the term "genocide" for the period of killing, one of which had the rate unrivaled in modern history. It was the inter-tribal hatred that started the killing but it was the blind eye of the world that allowed it to continue."Never Again" seems like a sick joke in this modern era. From the Balkans to Kashmir and South Asia to the Sudan, genocide has been committed and could have been prevented by the most powerful nations in the world. These mass killing can't be truly prevented but they can be halted before they reach the disgusting levels of carnage seen in Rwanda. You don't get to be a superpower and then claim you don't have it's responsibilities. Peoples in other nations can pressure action by their governments. It's a democratic responsibility as a citizen. That's what I took away from this reading. There will always be heinous crimes in the world but maybe there can be less of them.

This BBC article has most of the details I used in my post.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/3577575.stm