Rwandan president calls for genocide-preventing mechanism

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, April 05, 2004

Rwandan president calls for genocide-preventing mechanism

Rwandan President Paul Kagame Sunday urged the international community to establish an effective mechanism to prevent reoccurrence of horrible killings like the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

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Rwandan President Paul Kagame Sunday urged the international community to establish an effective mechanism to prevent reoccurrence of horrible killings like the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Opening an international conference on the genocide, Kagame said that establishing such an effective mechanism will help avoidmore losses of innocent lives and more bloodshed.

The conference is part of the commemoration week launched by the Rwandan government to commemorate those dead in the genocide 10 years ago. The 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide that claimed about one million lives in three months falls on Wednesday.

Kagame said that the international community failed Rwanda whenit was plunged into a frenzy of hatred and killings from April to July 1994.

He questioned whether the lack of a mandate for using force by the United Nations peacekeepers could exempt the international community's obligation to stop inhuman crimes.

"What are their arms for? If they cannot stop killings, why arethey in this country? How about giving their weapons to us so thatwe can use them to protect our people?" asked the president.

Some 2,500 blue helmets were stationed in the tiny African country to monitor the implementation of a peace accord signed late 1993 by the then Hutu government and the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Kagame.

They refrained from being drawn into the killings of Tutsis andmoderate Hutus and clashes between the Hutu army and the RPF forces when a terrible massacre swept the country after the assassination of then Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana in a missile attack on his plane on April 6, 1994.

The genocide destroyed so many Rwandan families and threw the survivors into sadness, loneliness and poverty, Kagame said, adding that the 1994 tragedy is a failure of the international community.

"The last 10 years are years of deep reflection of the genocideand its consequences," he said.

As for the government's efforts to heal wounds of the nation, Kagame said that reconciliation has taken root in the Rwandan society and people have come to the knowledge that they must love each other and unit to rebuild the country into a new one.

About 500 representatives, including officials, diplomats, nongovernmental organization workers as well as scholars attended the conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Kigali, which will last for three days.

Some participants, when speaking at the opening ceremony, called on the international community and the Rwandan people to draw lessons from the genocide in order to prevent it from replaying.

A survivor narrated how he survived from the mass killing and what had happened around him during those bloody days.

The one-week commemoration will reach its climax on Wednesday at the official ceremony at the Amahoro Stadium of Kigali.

Source: Xinhua

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