Western hand in atrocities
BRITISH writer Hazel Cameron’s 20-page expose “The Matabeleland Massacres” warrants comment.
Her analysis provides the most comprehensive evidence of Western duplicity for mass atrocities over the past four decades.
Western intervention and duplicity lead us to ask many hurtful and puzzling questions. How extensive has been the brutal involvement and complicity of Western countries in global affairs?
French atrocities in Algeria, US crimes in Indochina, the former Belgian Congo, Chile, Bangladesh, Central America, Somalia, Liberia, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, the Middle East and the role of the West and the UN security council in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Historical evidence will reveal what Western democracies, most prominently the US, Russia, China and other powers, had done against countries and peoples involving over 50 countries.
It is about genocide committed by these powers themselves. It is a history of aggression, indiscriminate bombing, war crimes and complicity in massacres.
In November 1997, secretary-general of Amnesty International, Pierre Sane, pointed out that in that year alone “Algerians in their thousands have been slain with unspeakable brutality”.
He pleaded at that time: “Why is the international community silent?”.
In Rwanda it seems fair to estimate that at least 80% of the Tutsis lost their lives, methodically murdered, first with grenades and guns, then with machetes and traditional weapons.
Death squads carefully hunted and killed survivors in large-scale massacres.
One million people perished while the West and churches remained silent.
An effective enforcement of international justice in global conflicts must include enquiries into the role of International actors and the major powers in promoting and exacerbating areas of brutal conflicts.
An international community which is implicit in the global conflict arena lacks the moral authority to enforce international criminal justice on this war-torn planet.
While we remained silent, a new kind of horror emerged, hurtling towards the very core of civilisation; it was genocide on a massive scale.
It was in 1648 that French painter Nicolas Poussin, fearing a civil war in France, uttered these words which eerily epitomise, the current global turmoil. “I fear the malignancy of the century. Virtue, conscience, religion are banished from all men. Only vice, deceit and self-interest reign. All is lost, I despair of goodness; all is overcome by unhappiness.
The current remedies are not strong enough to remove the evil. If we do not get rid of the cause, we are wasting our time.”
Today’s massacres and killings are transposed and displayed in a virtual gallery as the crimes of others. FAROUK ARAIE
Benoni