Sunday, April 06, 2003
Q: So you say genocide happens when certain acts happen, and you can say that those acts have happened in Rwanda. So why can't you say that genocide has happened?
Ms. Christine Shelley, State Department spokeswoman: Because, Alan, there is a reason for the selection of words that we have made, and I have--perhaps I have--I'm not a lawyer. I don't approach this from the international legal and scholarly point of view. We try, best as we can, to accurately reflect a discription in particularly addressing that issue. It's--the issue is out there. People have obviously been looking at it.
Shelley was a bit more to the point when she rejected the denomination of genocide, because, she said, "there are obligations which arise in connection with the use of the term." She meant that if it was a genocide, the Convention of 1948 required the contracting parties to act. Washington didn't want to act. So Washington pretended that it wasn't a genocide. Still, assuming that the above exchange took about two minutes, an average of eleven Tutsis were exterminated in Rwanda while it transpired.
---Excerpt from We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories From Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch.
Ms. Christine Shelley, State Department spokeswoman: Because, Alan, there is a reason for the selection of words that we have made, and I have--perhaps I have--I'm not a lawyer. I don't approach this from the international legal and scholarly point of view. We try, best as we can, to accurately reflect a discription in particularly addressing that issue. It's--the issue is out there. People have obviously been looking at it.
Shelley was a bit more to the point when she rejected the denomination of genocide, because, she said, "there are obligations which arise in connection with the use of the term." She meant that if it was a genocide, the Convention of 1948 required the contracting parties to act. Washington didn't want to act. So Washington pretended that it wasn't a genocide. Still, assuming that the above exchange took about two minutes, an average of eleven Tutsis were exterminated in Rwanda while it transpired.
---Excerpt from We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories From Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch.
