It is arguably the most revealing Western documentary produced on the abandonment of Rwanda in 1994, and yet it is the least known. It asks one central and important question: why had the US so casually turned its back, had decided to disregard the international human rights framework that it had done so much to create. Why had US officials knowingly ignored the Genocide Convention?ALSO READ: Early release of genocide criminals one more betrayal The documentary “Rwanda: That was a local thing”, is distinguished by the startlingly honest answers from US officials who are prepared to acknowledge that so immense was the US failure that it merited a government enquiry. This was the only appropriate response. The US was the one country with unparalleled military capacity to respond, but was unwilling to provide anything.ALSO READ: Genocide against the Tutsi: A moral test everyone failed The documentary was scripted and directed by the Israeli film maker Dror Moreh. The Rwandan episode is one of eight in his series spanning four presidencies: “Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World?”ALSO READ: Who exactly failed the Rwandan people in 1994? The suggestion of an enquiry into the decision-making over Rwanda is not new. I wondered if the failure by the US over many years to account for its role in 1994 was linked in some way to the continuing rejection by the US of the phrase “genocide against the Tutsi”. The US had abstained in the 2020 General Assembly vote to change the wording of The International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi held each year on April 7. To make it more specific it would now include the phrase “genocide against the Tutsi”. The US continues to officially use the “Rwandan genocide”. Its diplomats argue that the new phrase did not recognise the murder of other groups. Yet only one group was targeted for extermination. The other victims were not killed in a genocide. Any accounting of the US failure would surely have to acknowledge that the genocide against the Tutsi was undisputable – and preventable.ALSO READ: Rwanda’s commemorations in the shadow of indifferenceThere are interviews with retired government officials in the Dror Moreh documentary. They appear uneasy and hesitant. Anthony Lake was the US National Security Adviser, senior adviser to President Bill Clinton. He said he should have become more involved when the crisis erupted. They had never got to grips with the issue. “That’s on me”, he said. “And I’ll regret it for ever”. John Shattuck was the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights. This had been a terrible mistake, he told Dror Moreh, and an inquiry was a necessity. Shattuck remembered that on the advice of the State Department’s legal adviser’s office he was told: “We don’t call this genocide”. It was not US policy to call this genocide. “If we don’t determine it’s a genocide, we don’t have to do anything about it”, Shattuck said. Prudence Bushnell was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of African Affairs at the State Department. In 2014 Bushnell had called for an enquiry at an international conference in The Hague. She had spoken of the need for accountability telling delegates that individuals made a difference only when they spoke out. Bushnell’s courage and commitment on this issue are unmatched. In her quiet and considered way she described how in the first hours she warned the Secretary of State Warren Christopher, telling him: “If we don’t do anything, hundreds of thousands of people could be killed”. The failure to act has haunted her since. Bushnell tells Dror Moreh about a secret deal struck between the US and the genocidaires. “In return for safe passage of diplomats, not only of Americans but diplomats of other embassies, we would not take any Rwandan citizens out with us.........we left our Rwandan colleagues to fend for themselves”. Bushnell said that once the US citizens were safely out of Rwanda the interest of the White House evaporated. The US later took the lead in removing UN peacekeepers and then prevented anyone else providing help. Bushnell watched her staff in the State Department realise the enormity of this decision. “I will never ever forget the look on the face of key members, including a desk officer from Rwanda, who looked at me and said you know what is going to happen. It was a look of utter horror”. We knew what would happen – and it did happen. To claim ignorance, as President Bill Clinton had done, was “unbecoming” of the leader of the free world, and American foreign policy. Anyone who had bothered to examine the cables from Kigali, carefully filed in the State Department’s Africa Bureau, would have found the outline of a planned, political campaign to exterminate the Tutsi.Information was in the President’s daily intelligence briefing as those terrible months progressed. The massacres were discussed in National Security Council meetings, in the situation room in the White House. Senior leaders of government knew about it. The idea of sending US troops never came up. The genocidaires knew that US intervention was unlikely after Somalia, and the recent killing of 18 US Rangers in Black Hawk Down. It was factored into their planning, said Shattuck.It is 32 years ago and time enough to find out why the US government fails to officially acknowledge what the whole world knows – that the genocide against the Tutsi is an historic fact. This continuing and unfortunate US policy serves to embolden those who seek to bury the truth – the genocide deniers and their acolytes conducting an on-going and pernicious campaign. The writer is a British investigative journalist who has extensively researched and written on the circumstances of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. She is the author of three books on Rwanda; A People Betrayed, Conspiracy to Murder, and Intent to Deceive.
