BY: DR. LAINA FARHAT-HOLZMAN
Register-Pajaronian
The world system that we now live in is made up of recognized nation-states. The United Nations recognizes 192 of these — all of them expected to live by the values stated in the U.N. Charter. But this is a wish, not a fact. We (and the U.N.) have relations with countries with dictators, theocracies, puffed-up autocrats, and a variety of relatively new democracies. All of these give Western democracies heartburn from time to time, and sometimes grief to their own citizens.
Genocide
When a full-blown genocide tore Rwanda apart in 1994, the U.N. did nothing. Majority Hutus murdered Tutsis and uncooperative fellow Hutus. France, which had a long relationship with Rwanda, looked the other way. The Organization of African States, as usual, was useless. But then Rwanda finally had a bit of luck.
Today, it is at peace, thanks to the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front — the former rebels who toppled the genocidal regime. President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, rules Rwanda with an iron fist and his main objective is to remove the ethnic divisions that created the genocide and retrain the citizens for a civil government. Critics charge there is no freedom of press or association and opposition parties have been outlawed. However, Kagame may be right that a premature democracy would just brush the latent conflict under the carpet rather than fix the disease.
When Cambodia had a government-sponsored genocide from 1975-79, the world did nothing. It took an invasion of neighboring Vietnam to stop it, and instead of thanks, Vietnam was condemned by us all. Sudan has an ongoing genocide against its Darfur population and without an armed champion to the rescue, no amount of international condemnation can stop it.
Please click here to read more...
No comments:
Post a Comment