Britain ignored genocide threat in Rwanda (Lucía Hernández)

Britain ignored genocide threat in Rwanda
Documents declassified 20 years on show the UK and US were warned of a 'new bloodbath'

The Genocide in Rwanda was the attempt to exterminate of the Tutsi population by the Hutu. In the genocide 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Some political leaders have expressed their regret at an international failure to stop violence.

The USA president at the time, Bill Clinton, has admitted that if they had intervened earlier to stop the killing, 300,000 lives could have been saved.

In the 20th anniversary of the genocide, some declassified diplomatic documents were released by the National Security Archive which showed that the US, Britain and the United Nations were warned about the situation in Rwanda.

The diplomatic messages showed that on 25 February 1994, the Belgian foreign ministry had expressed "alarm" at the situation in Rwanda. Lode Willems (Belgian ministry's chief of staff)  wrote to Paul Noterdaeme, (the country's ambassador to the UN) describing Rwanda's "significant deterioration" and asking for greater UN powers to act.

Both the US and UK were opposed to action. The UN was against intervention in the Belgian colony.In May, UN members agreed to send troops of 5,000 people, but they were not sent for another six months and by that time the killing had already stopped.

While John Major defended his decision not to send troops to Rwanda ,he said that it was "simply not practicable" for the UN Security Council to become the "policeman of every part of the world" , Mr Clinton was apologetic on a visit to the country in 1998 when he said "We did not act quickly enough after the killing began."

This new has called my attention because I think that both US and UK had a shameful behavior regarding to the genocide, and It shocks me how they knowing what was going on in Rwanda they did not intervented. I find very interesting these subjects because I have seen many documentaries and some movies like “Hotel Rwanda” that shows in a very explicit way what happened in the genocide and I think everybody should know about this so hopefully this won't happen again.