Council had avoided the use of the word genocide in Council meetings , and in the face of clear evidence had argued that nothing – they thought – could be done . In an eight-hour debate in the Council in late April , they had refused to recognise that a genocide reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust was under way . In the Council , the UK diplomats had argued that the use of the word genocide in relation to what was happening in Rwanda was inflammatory and its use would be “ unhelpful ”.
All these years later , and nothing has changed , and the same attitude remains . The UK and US continue to express reservations about the word genocide in relation to Rwanda , failing to understand its meaning in relation to what really took place .
Two years ago , in April 2020 , in a landmark resolution ( 74 / 273 ), adopted by consensus by member states in the General Assembly , the wording to enshrine an international day to commemorate the victims of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi was changed . It was decided henceforth the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Rwandan Genocide would become more specific , and 7 April became a day to commemorate the genocide “ against the Tutsi ” in Rwanda .
Two members states objected . The governments of the UK and US would have none of it . In letters to the president of the General Assembly , they complained about the phrase “ genocide against the Tutsi ”. The US Ambassador Kelly Craft said that the phrase failed to capture “ the magnitude ” of the violence against “ other groups ” and left “ an incomplete picture of this dark history ”. In her letter , she wrote : “ Hutus and others were killed during the genocide …… including those murdered for their opposition to the atrocities that were being committed ”.
For the UK , a letter from the Chargé d ’ Affaires , Jonathan Allen , complained about the “ framing of the genocide purely as the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi ” seemingly hinting at two genocides in a clear distortion of the historical facts . One sentence avoided the word genocide altogether : “ The UK remembers the tragic events in April 1994 and is firmly committed to ensuring that such atrocities never happen again ”.
While both the UK and the US pointed to other victims , these people were not killed in a genocide . Only one group was the target of genocidal extermination . Furthermore , the US and UK were ignoring the fact that the UN itself had officially recognized the genocide , when in November 1994 the Security Council had voted to establish a tribunal to prosecute those responsible , the International Tribunal for Rwanda ( ICTR ). Indeed , this tribunal ’ s Appeals Chamber later affirmed that genocide committed against the Tutsi was “ beyond any dispute and not requiring any proof ”.
The letters of complaint about the official designation that were sent to the General Assembly President from the UK and US , unusually for internal UN correspondence , found interest from outside the Secretariat building in New York . The letters were soon circulating widely among genocide deniers and their supporters who claimed that the misgivings expressed by these two powerful states showed that at the highest levels there was doubt about what they call the “ official narrative ”. The deniers used the letters to bolster their confused arguments of moral equivalence – repeating the nonsensical idea that ‘ all sides ’ were guilty of genocide in a bloody civil war and the killing of Tutsi had resulted from a spontaneous uprising .
These claims echoed those of the génocidaires themselves who in their trials at the ICTR when professing their innocence of any crime had claimed that in 1994 a genocide of Hutu had happened and that this had been the subject of an international cover-up . This is one of the oldest claims in the Hutu Power disinformation handbook and no more than a smokescreen to distract foreign attention from the genocide of the Tutsi . Today , the Hutu Power movement still tries to prove that each ‘ side ’ was as murderous as the other . In fact , at the very outset , it was the genocidaires themselves who killed Hutu when , as their attempted elimination of Tutsi got under way , they had systematically eliminated the political opposition , killing all those who
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