Demagogue

The Ottawa Citizen has a good article on Romeo Dallaire and the new documentary chronicling his return to Rwanda in 2004 for the 10th anniversary of the genocide.

Dallaire notes that, judging by the outpouring of aid and support for victims of the tsunami, that the international community is quite capable of responding to disasters - just not when they happen in Africa

Rwanda is also being mentioned in relation to the world's reaction to the tsunami disaster in Asia, which stands in stark contrast to the indifference of Rwanda.

"It's a great statement of a lesson being learned," Dallaire says. "It's still not being learned in Darfur and they're fiddling still there, but this one there was an outright human communion. And I, unpretentiously, hope that the Rwandan exercise which has left a lot of guilt and a lot of bloodied hands, maybe there was a bit of that that was an impetus behind this massive reaction."

Peter Raymont, the director of the new Dallaire documentary, makes a similar point - and then throws in a stupid one for good measure

"I think part of it was slow news over Christmas," he said backstage at the Ottawa screening. "I think part of it was there were a lot of American and western tourists involved. You know, Rwanda was an obscure country in the middle of Africa with a sort of tribal warfare, Hutus and Tutsis, who the hell are they anyway? -- Black people fighting other black people. You know? It was very hard to get a handle on."

In addition, the genocide took place at the same time as the O.J. Simpson trial, "which took over the news, every part of the news, every network. So there are a lot of factors. It's wonderful to see the outpouring for the people who suffered and died in the tsunami. People have said there's a tsunami-like event happening regularly in the Congo. Does anyone know about it? There's something about Africa. It's still the dark continent."

The O.J. Simpson story didn't break until June 14, 1994. The genocide began on April 7th. By mid-May of that year, the International Committee of the Red Cross was estimating that 500,000 people had already been killed.

The people and the media weren't ignoring the genocide because they were distracted by the O.J. Simpson story. They were ignoring it because nobody really cared.