Panel
4: Preventing Genocide: the International Architecture of
Media and Humanitarian Intervention
Question
Period
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Paul Heinbecker (left) and Romeo
Dallaire listen to questions |
General Dallaire: As the
subject is preventing genocide, some of the examples before
we enter the next phase of this panel. Two weeks before the
Americans launched into Iraq, the President of United States
stated on the State of the Union, which is more and more becoming
State of the World, he said that the United States is not
going to do like the UN and what it did in Rwanda, it’s
going to intervene. When we know ladies and gentlemen that,
in fact, the United States was one of the leading countries
that prevented the intervention in Rwanda, you got to wonder
about history, and the idea and the aims of that nation in
prevention. Sir.

Jean-Marie Higiro |
Jean-Marie Higiro, Associate Professor
in the Department of Communication at Western New England
College, former Director of the Rwandan Information Office:
My first question, I would like to come back to the
intervention made by the last speaker, and also by Frank Chalk.
Who would make the decisions if there are early warnings of
genocide? Who will determine that a genocide is about to occur?
And somebody supposedly was mentioned, who would implement
those responses? Recently, I was browsing the Internet, and
somehow I came across a report on Ethiopia. Somehow there
is a group in Ethiopia, who is being killed. Now, we do know
that some countries in Africa have leaders, who are the darling
sons of the most powerful countries in the world. So how would
you then intervene? These are people who have a lot of support.
That is my first question.
General Dallaire: Yes
please, response?
Frank Chalk: Okay. I’m
not sure whether you’re referring to the Oromo or the
Anuak, but I’ll respond, because it’s a general
problem, as well as a specific problem. It would be dishonest
of anybody to claim that the chances for intervention in an
ongoing mass killing are high when that country is under the
protection, and in an alliance with the most powerful nations
on the face of the earth. So let’s start there. Let’s
recognize that. That’s true. It’s highly unlikely.
In the case of East Pakistan in 1971, the alliance between
China and Pakistan discouraged the United States from intervening,
and Henry Kissinger supported continued military assistance
to the army of West Pakistan for fear, we talk about the most
powerful nation on earth, but he was engaged in his China
diplomacy, and he was using Pakistan as a conduit, and he
didn’t want to offend the generals in Pakistan, and
so he refused to cut off all of the military aid going to
Pakistan, while 10 million refugees were forced to flee to
India, and approximately 1 million were killed, and tens of
thousands of Bengali women were raped. And not much was done
until India, which had no reason to be loyal to the United
States, took the opportunity of all these refugees flooding
into their camps, to intervene. India then suffered international
condemnation, lost it’s western foreign aid, became
more reliant on the Soviet Union as a consequence, and paid
for many years for this.
I’ll be brief here, I’ll just
give you one more example, in 1978-79, Vietnam invaded Cambodia
after being provoked by the Khmer Rouge regime on numerous
occasions, overthrew the most murderous regime we’ve
ever seen in southeast Asia, and was penalized for that act
by being denied foreign aid again for many years to come,
and condemned by the United Nations for transgressing national
borders. So let’s recognize not only that the odds are
slim of getting great power intervention, but also that even
those nations that seek to intervene will pay a price. I’m
not arguing they had humanitarian motives for these interventions,
but they did stop these ongoing genocides. However, I think
Ambassador Heinbecker has pointed to a very important new
development, and I want to pass it over to him now, or pass
the mic over to him now so he can comment on this, because
I think this fantastically good report that the commission
has brought in, which I have read, and which was distributed
in January at the Stockholm Conference on the Prevention of
Genocide, marks a real landmark of creative and rigorous new
thinking about what we can do, but it will all happen within
the framework that the question gave us.
Paul Heinbecker: On who
decides, and whether anybody decides, after the presentation
of this commission report, there was a retreat of the Security
Council. They have them periodically, and the Secretary General
asked the countries present, in light of what was happening
in Burundi at the time, whether they would be prepared to
intervene, and it transpired as the discussion took place
that none of the major powers, the representatives of none
of the major powers who were present at this retreat, thought
that their countries would intervene. That if the same thing
began to happen in Burundi that happened in Rwanda, there
would be no intervention. I don’t actually believe that.
It may be just a personality trait, maybe I’m foolishly
optimistic, but I think the world has got that message. I
think when you look at what the French did in Bunya, the British
action in Sierra Leone, some sort of intervention that took
place in Liberia, I think that we are making progress. We’ve
seen some mandates for UN missions that required them to protect
civilians. Not very much, but some. When you think about it,
Canadians I’m sure, assume that peacekeeping missions
are there to protect people, and they’d be shocked to
read the mandates to find that that isn’t the case.
Sorry.
General Dallaire: Thank
you.
Jean-Marie Higiro: My
last question is addressed to Philippe Dahinden. In those
countries where there are indications that genocide could
be perpetrated, and often these are countries with dictatorial
systems of government. If you want to intervene, when would
you intervene? Because if you intervene after the genocide,
then it’s too late to do anything. Of course, you can
use the media in order to encourage reconciliation, but I
would imagine that intervention should take place beforehand
in a country, as I said, which is run by a dictatorship. So
what can be done? So where should you start?
Philippe Dahinden: Well
in my view, this leads to a broader question, a more wide
ranging question than we can address here, that is the actual
right of interference. If you want to provide information
to a country which refuses it, which gives no possibility
for the domestic journalists, or even less international journalists,
who are working with the domestic or international journalists
in such a case, then we have to ask a question, that is could
it be done from the outside for a limited time in conditions
which we’ve just heard? For example, the question is
when is it possible to come and assist a civil population
that is being manipulated and mistreated? When can information
be given from outside the country? I think really, that the
real problem, is to decide what security to those people working
in that kind of operation, because inevitably there have to
journalists there inside the country. Today, with Internet
and other means, then in a quite discrete way you can get
information out, but you have to recognize that these journalists
will be very exposed.
So I’d say one other thing also,
namely, unfortunately we often come too late. For example,
the situation really is so locked up, that we weren’t
able to get in before. Foreign organizations such as ours,
or people who work in our organization, well it’s also
because there’s no geopolitical interest of the international
community, therefore they won’t fund or assist this
kind of project, but there are situations where unfortunately
the crisis is repeated. For example, the Great Lakes region,
we came there too late for the genocide, because by the time
we set up a radio station, this takes about a month, a month
and a half, it was a bit too late unfortunately, but then
other things happened in the region, and I think that while
in those we did help a little bit to prevent some.
General Dallaire: Very
good. Thank you very much. Now a few questions. Any questions
from the floor. We’ve got about 10 minutes left. So
I’ll start on the right side. That has nothing to do
with my political sympathies. Go ahead young man.
Unknown questionner: Thank
you very much. I’m an international consultant. We can
see really a failure of institutions in general, beginning
with the United Nations, going onto government, western government,
of course, the armies also, the church also or churches. So
we can see really there is a failure here on the part of institutions.
Everyone saw this. Everyone knew this when they saw the genocide
which took place in Rwanda, nothing was done. So what we see
here by reviewing the situation now, well we can conclude
is a failure. So I’ll come to my question now to Dr.
Frank, or Paul, or General Dallaire could answer also. The
institution that I would propose, that I would dream of is
it here, do we have something, namely university, research,
information? Am I dreaming when I say that if I were to propose
that? That you can abolish national armies, is that just a
dream, or is it something that could be considered, that is
abolishing national armies in order to set up an armed institution,
which has a monopoly of violence there. Thank you very much.
General Dallaire: Thank
you, thank you. An answer please, I think he asked you the
question.
Frank Chalk: Why don’t
you start this time?
General Dallaire: Yes.
So the question is quite simple, the institutions in place
at the present time, which have failed, could they be replaced?
Could they be replaced by another structure of institutions,
and particularly could be eliminate the armed forces in the
future so as to promote the cause of peace and humanity? I
think that’s a fair summary. Please go ahead.
Frank Chalk: I can pick
it up. I just didn’t want to hog it. I heard my name.
When I interviewed the military liaison officer between the
Pentagon and the State Department, who was in place at the
time of the Rwanda genocide, and also had been active in the
Somalia sphere in 1993, he said to me, both about Somalia
and about Rwanda, “the American military could have
handled this assignment.” Many officers of the American
army were devastated by President Clinton’s decision
that for political reasons, the American Armed Forces should
be withdrawn from Somalia. We heard a lot about the Joint
Chiefs of Staff at high level, but in the middle level ranks
of the American Armed Forces, and among the Special Forces,
and others who knew the situation well, they were devastated.
They didn’t want to leave after suffering a handful
of casualties. General Dallaire actually sounds to me, when
he points out that a relatively small number of deaths in
the American army caused the withdrawal, like these American
army officers. They’re not happy about it any more than
he is, or we are. So I don’t think it’s just a
dream that we’ll have action. I think that a lot of
the military in the western democracies, and the British in
Sierra Leone were another example, are willing to take responsibility.
Yes it may happen through executive outcomes at the beginning,
then they may have to switch to the real army, etc., but I
think the will is there. The problem is not the military.
The problem we have with the military is that guys like me,
who oppose the war in Viet Nam in the late ’60s, and
early ’70s, before there was Somalia, did a pretty good
job. And American politicians certainly are still afraid of
what we call “The Vietmalia syndrome,” the integration
of the two; Vietnam and Somalia. But I think it was General
Bush, who said to us in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the
UN Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, he said, “Chalk, you sound like one of those
B-52 liberals calling on us to intervene,” and I said,
“yes General, I have become a B5-2 liberal after all
of those years.” And I think there is a lot of popular
support for intervention.
General Dallaire: Anybody
else?
Paul Heinbecker: I would
just like to add I don’t think the problem is with the
military, it is with the government, and if there’s
a deficit at the UN, the deficit is in the membership. The
UN is not some independent entity that can act or not act.
It really is with the governments, and we’ve seen, as
I said with that anecdote with President Clinton, that people
do make a difference in either direction in that case.
General Dallaire: Very
rapidly if I may. When the Kofi Annan went and asked the nations
to provide troops, there was an entente that had been signed
in September of1993, where 68 nations had agreed that if Kofi
Annan needs troops, they would respond. All 68 nations refused
to send any troops. On January 13, which is two days after
January 11 fax where we described in great detail what was
going to happen including the massacres, and the support of
other information on massacres, and we informed the ‘big
three’ in Rwanda of that. None of them, even through
their ambassadors were prepared to have their forces intervene
in a proactive fashion. They couldn’t substantiate it
back home. If sending troops in there prevented it from happening,
was that the right decision? Did, in fact, did they have to
send the troops, and did they have to spend all that money
and risk other situations? None of them had the fundamental
courage to take that risk of going in, solving a problem that
may have never appeared in the eyes of the population.
Lastly, the doves of the Cold War, and
now the hawks of this era, and I believe fundamentally that
what we’re asking our military is not to fight wars
in the classic sense, but in fact, to acquire a whole new
set of skills. Skills that are in conflict resolution in which
we can, in fact, resolve conflicts, participate in an integrative
way with the humanitarians and the diplomats in a whole new
sequence of solutioning these complex problems versus the
old Cold War methods of a military plan, a civilian plan,
and so on. So there’s great optimism in the future use
of forces as long as you can move away the conservatives,
who are simply expecting World War Three to happen next week.
Sir.
Unknown
questionner: Thank you. My question is to
any member of the panel, even to the organizer of this conference.
The role of the media as we pointed out, the positive role
of the democratic media in the prevention of catastrophes,
such as genocide, but sometimes at first sight, a word which
seems to be quite innocuous lead to an unexpected or undesired
result. For example, as we’re approaching the 10th anniversary,
if you wil,l of the genocide against the people in Rwanda,
the media tend to use the term “genocide” of the
people of Rwanda. Was there, in fact, a Rwandese genocide,
a Rwanda genocide? There was an Armenian genocide committed.
There was a Jewish genocide also committed by the Nazis, but
there was a genocide of the people of Rwanda? We know that
the people who were targeted at the time were Tutsi, moderate
Hutu also, and democratic people were massacred also, but
for the genocide, it was the Tutsi. So I think really we should
have the courage really to call a spade a spade here. Don’t
you think if we’re to do that, it might contribute,
if we were to take this approach to tend to forget certain
aspects involved here?
General Dallaire: Well
I will answer that if I may, that essentially the Rwanda genocide,
one, it’s the Rwandan people, who actually committed
the genocide, and in this context you have to use that term.
Now the target wasn’t only the Tutsi, but it was also
moderates around them, but particularly the major target was
the destruction of a philosophy of life, a philosophy of a
nation, that is the philosophy of reconciliation, and they
eliminated this philosophy, and in so doing, they eliminated
at the same time hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Anybody
else? We one more question.
Unknown questionner: Natalie
(?) from the International Bureau for Children’s Rights
in Montreal. I’ll ask my question in English. I don’t
have the training as a journalist. So it might seem a bit
naïve, my question. I know that certain non-governmental
organizations choose not to speak out against certain violent
events. So when you decide to become a journalist, when you
work for a press agency, when you actually observe or hear
about violent events, which are disturbing, does the question
arise? That is, should you publish or not? Should you report
the news or not regardless, of the reason chosen to do so,
not to do so? And if the question does arise, what are the
obstacles you have to overcome? And is there a more conducive
time when you decide to publish your piece of news of when
you’re a journalist, because you’re sure, or can
you always be sure that you will, in fact, be able to report
disturbing piece of news?
Philippe Dahinden: Well
I’ll answer first, because I guess it directed to me.
In a zone of conflict, there’s no reason not to give
the same information as elsewhere, but you need to be a lot
more rigorous about it. You have to be a lot more vigilant
is the term we used today, because the consequences could
be enormous. But I think if you don’t give information,
it’s worse, because then there’ll be rumors. There’ll
be disinformation. Therefore you have to take certain precautions
as a journalist. When you’re talking about very sensitive
information, when you’re in an area, where there’s
a great deal of violence, so you have to stick only to the
facts. Don’t make any comment, and do this in such an
austere way as possible, and the most sober way possible.
I’ll give you two examples. I was in Bukavu. There was
a demonstration by students, which was put down by Mobutu’s
military, and two people were killed. The national radio would
never have dared talk about that. We talked about it. But
we simply said that a demonstration had been organized by
the students for a certain reason, that the force of order
considered the public order had been disturbed. They intervened,
and there were two people killed. Two people died. We didn’t
repeat it 10 times for two weeks. That’s an example
that I can give you.
The second point was recently. In the radio
station, which I put up with other journalists in the Congo
in Kisangani, a larger city, a large town by the Congo River,
there was a mutiny. They tried to take over, the military
mutineers, they took over the radio station in the morning.
There were massacres, killings in working class areas, and
when we broadcast the news, we were the only one to have the
news, because even the military people there were not able
to go into that neighborhood. So our journalists collected
evidence in Swahili, the language that is spoken in that region.
We listened 10 times, 20 times for a long time. We had it
translated by a Swahili journalist to be sure that we’re
going to broadcast something, which could not be interpreted.
For example, there was one person, who said, “I saw
the military arrive. They killed everyone.” No doubt
he was telling the truth, given what he himself had seen,
but we didn’t have a number there. If we had, in fact,
broadcast that, that interview as such, then it could have
been far open to interpretation, therefore we got rid of it.
So have to be very vigilant. I remember we on after midnight,
listening to each piece of evidence, and choosing only those,
which we could be sure could not be interpreted in a different
way. However, we did say the truth. We did repeat what people
said in the neighborhood. That’s something else, which
is very interesting is that these people said to us, “But
is the UN doing? The UN is there to observe the corpses. There’s
UN mission, people are being killed, and the UN is doing nothing.”
And the radio station, which we set up, Radio Okapi, we set
that up in cooperation with the UN, and the UN played along.
It admitted this radio station was able to criticize it, or
disseminate information criticizing. So except in exceptional
cases, where you put in danger thousands of people by giving
information, I mean in hostage taking incidents. There are
cases, of course, where you have a very limited ability, and
really have to keep the information quiet, but that’s
exceptional. In most cases, you can find a way of saying it.
You have to give the information, and if not you must realize
that it will leave the field open to rumors, and for example
in Bukavu, people will tell you that hundreds of students
were killed, others would say something else. So it’s
far better just to tell the truth.
General Dallaire: Thank
you. We’ve got permission for two other questions very
quickly. Please go ahead quickly.
Unknown questioner: Thank
you. Good day. I’m (?). I’m a survivor of the
Tutsi genocide. I was in Rwanda in ’94, and I worked
as a journalist for five years in Rwanda. I saw that very
few people spoke about journalists, who were killed during
the genocide. You talked at length about the genocide media,
and journalists, who propagated hatred, but there’s
a risk here. We might tend to overlook the fact that many
journalists had, in fact, resisted this hate propaganda, and
did fight the genocide right to the death. Kangura, everyone
knows Kangura now, but very few people know about Kanguka,
which was poles apart from Kangura, and the head of this was
killed. I think we risk having genocide without victims, and
if mechanisms were set in place to keep alive the memory with
concrete facts, for example, if there was a fund, an award
which could be set up for journalists, who were gallant, who
died because of their bravery. Secondly, in Ottawa, we have
an association, Humura which is organizing the 10th commemoration
of genocide…
General Dallaire: Well
it’s here, please ask your question.
Unknown questioner: My
question is how should we think about this. How can we possibly
remember these people? Humura wants to set up a reference
library on genocide. We would ask the authors of works on
genocide to contribute copies to this reference library. If
you contribute, I’d be very grateful. Thank you.
General Dallaire: Well
thank you very much for wanting to immortalize, as you put
it, the genocide, and there’s no doubt that through
journalists, who conduct investigations, who raise certain
questions as a result of this, they probably will not forget
the scope of this genocide, the fact the genocide took place,
although some people do tend to forget it. We’ll end
with you. I’d like to thank everybody else. Also we’re
not taking any more questions.
Unknown questioner: Thank
you. My question is for Mark Frohardt, I’m sorry I can’t
see that far. Regarding your study, among your conclusions
was that the monitoring and reviewing of vulnerable media
was crucial. I was wondering if you meant internal monitoring
by academics, or by governments, or by the media, institutions
themselves, or external, and secondary to that, what will
you do with the results of this monitoring? How would you
turn them into real and useful information for people to act
on?
Mark Frohardt: First of
all, thank you for the question. I was wondering how overwhelming
my presentation was, or underwhelming. In any case, I would
say that one of the things that I tried to focus on here in
this paper, which can be found at the USIP website if one
wants to look at it more extensively. It does look at various
forms of intervention, later forms of intervention, but for
me I think that the most important is the earliest, because
that is when you can actually create a local capacity to address
these problems where you don’t have to wait until it
gets to a point where the interventions demand a more large
scale force, whether it be military or humanitarian. So in
this case with regard to monitoring and evaluation, the most
effective form of monitoring of the media is done by peer
review. It is done when journalists monitor themselves, when
they establish organizations. They establish associations.
They develop ethical codes of conduct, and they criticize
each other when they start to report in a non-professional
fashion. And so I would say that we would always support the
idea of working at a level that would try and foster that
type of development and peer review. Unfortunately, as we’ve
seen in Rwanda and elsewhere, there are several situations,
which get much too far along the way, where that is not possible,
and as Philippe has mentioned earlier, there are situations
in which it’s impossible for media organizations to
do much of anything. And in those cases, there needs to be
something, which is external. There needs to be some type
of international forum or a system for monitoring. The United
States has FBIS, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.
BBC has BBC monitoring. There have been local monitoring systems
set up, for example, in conflict areas, or post-conflict areas,
for example, in East Timor. All of these are noble efforts,
but none of them are comprehensive enough now to actually
have a network, where people are going to really pay attention,
especially in some of the most vulnerable societies. There
are societies where media is vulnerable. Those are a lot of
times not the ones which are being covered by these monitoring
organs.
So what I would say is that there needs
to be a more structure for monitoring, but that needs to include
organizations, which not only can help gather that information,
and help the development of local organizations that can gather
this information, but also can have an agreed-on plan on what
they are going to do with it, and that’s the reason
why I mention the importance of working with donors and international
institutions ahead of time, because we need to be able to
first of all, have the systems in place to monitor, but then
we also have to have a system in place of what we’re
going to do when we identify there are problems. And so yes
there does definitely need to be an international effort,
but at the same time, we would like to think that you could
start locally first.
General Dallaire: Well
thank you very much gentlemen. If I may conclude this before
we hand over to our leader. It is my experience, and as I
go across the country talking about conflict and conflict
resolution, it seems to me that the future of many of the
organs that may prevent conflict lays in the hands of the
NGOs. And I consider the NGO community to be still a very
immature structure, and it doesn’t realize the full
potential that it can have, and certainly journalists, who
can work not only their professional and direct missions and
roles that they have, but also strengthen international journalists,
NGOs can I think do a lot in enhancing their position within
the world of conflict and conflict resolution. Thank you.
Next: Closing
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