RWANDA: U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN HAS PAID HIS RESPECTS TO THE VICITMS OF RWANDA'S 1994 GENOCIDE
Record ID:
222990
RWANDA: U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN HAS PAID HIS RESPECTS TO THE VICITMS OF RWANDA'S 1994 GENOCIDE
- Title: RWANDA: U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN HAS PAID HIS RESPECTS TO THE VICITMS OF RWANDA'S 1994 GENOCIDE
- Date: 4th September 2001
- Summary: KIGALI, RWANDA (SEPTEMBER 4, 2001) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. LV FORMER MILITIAMEN BEING RE-EDUCATED IN NKUMBA SOLIDARITY CAMP 0.03 2. SV U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI ANNAN, AND HIS WIFE NANE 0.06 3. MCU SOLDIER 0.08 4. MCU (English): U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI ANNAN SAYING: "We are all determined to work together to ensure what happened here is never repeated." 0.16 5. LV KIGALI SUBURBS 0.19 6. SV COFFINS AT GISHOZI GENOCIDE MEMORIAL SITE 0.22 7. MCU U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL, KOFI ANNAN AND HIS WIFE NANE 0.26 8. SLV SKULLS AND BONES UNDER A SHED 0.28 9. SLV ANNAN, NANE AND RWANDAN PRESIDENT'S WIFE, JANET KAGAME, LAYING WREATHS 0.41 10. SV/SLV ANNAN AND NANE STANDING (2 SHOTS) 0.46 11. CU OF VISITORS BOOK WITH ANNAN'S REMARKS, "WHAT A TRAGEDY. IT MUST NEVER BE REPEATED" 0.53 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 19th September 2001 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: KIGALI, RWANDA
- Country: Rwanda
- Reuters ID: LVABP2FMUE9NI7CKTHXFZR40MP7J
- Story Text: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has paid his respects
to the victims of Rwanda's
1994 genocide, finally finding acceptance from the Rwandan
government.
Annan visited a Nkumba solidarity camp in northwest
Rwanda on Tuesday (September 4) where hundreds of rebel
soldiers -- some of whom would have taken part in the genocide
before fleeing to the Democratic Republic of Congo -- are
being held in a re-education camp.
The former rebels were captured earlier this year, and the
Rwandan government hopes
to reintegrate them into society.
Annan said Rwanda could count on the help of the U.N., and
on him personally, to
help in the reconciliation process.
On his last visit to Rwanda in 1998, Annan was fiercely
criticised for not doing
more to prevent the genocide, in which ethnic Hutu extremists
massacred 800,000
people, most of them minority Tutsis.
This time, however, Annan was warmly welcomed by Rwandan
President Paul Kagame
on his arrival on Monday night and thanked for his commitment
to the search for peace
in the region.
With his wife Nane at his side, Annan visited a site in
the capital Kigali where
a memorial for the dead is being built.
At the Gisozi genocide memorial on the side of one of
Kigalis many hills, tens of
thousands of victims of the genocide have been reburied in
five huge underground
tombs.
Nane Annan and Rwanda's first lady Janet Kagame laid
wreaths with the words
Let us remember forever, beside a stone cross at the site.
Annan peered into one of the tombs, at dusty coffins
stacked in rows, each covered
by purple and white sheets and many carrying bunches of
flowers.
Near the tombs, hundreds of skulls and bones lay on wooden
benches in one
makeshift shelter, while in another piles of dusty and rotting
clothes -- belonging
to the victims -- were scattered haphazardly along shelves and
on the floor.
Annan wrote a simple message in the visitors book: "What
tragedy. It must
never be repeated."
The visit by Annan, who was head of U.N. peacekeeping
during the genocide, was
a sharp contrast with his last trip to Rwanda when he was
snubbed by Kagame and
subjected to a blistering indictment of U.N. failures in
Rwanda by the foreign
minister.
The United Nations has been blamed for apparently
disregrading warnings from its
own staff in Kigali that the genocide was about to happen, and
for withdrawing its
peacekeeping forces once the massacres began.
The world body has always insisted it can only do what its
members are prepared
to allow, and at the time very few countries wanted to step
into the Rwandan
nightmare.
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