By Jeremy Dewar
“It is genocide which is being committed … and the international community is still discussing what ought to be done.” These words of United Nations Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali sum up the disgusting hypocrisy of the world’s leaders. For all their talk of a “new world order” they have watched over half a million black Africans massacred in just seven weeks.
When the grotesque wealth and privileges of a tiny handful of Kuwaiti oil sheikhs were threatened, the UN, led by the USA, summoned up the most devastating array of high-tech weaponry history has ever seen. This, our rulers told us, heralded a “new world order” where peace and democracy would reign. That “order” has been finally buried in the thousands of mass graves dotted around Rwanda.
Rwanda is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world. For over a hundred years, Rwanda’s fertile soil has produced superprofits for the Western powers.
Through colonial rule, the imperialists entrenched a vicious class system of exploitation in Rwanda. Since Rwanda gained independence they have continued to make big profits from arming and training government forces. These forces have now massacred 7 per cent of the population and forced millions more into exile.
The media and politicians have the cheek to call the fighting in Rwanda a “tribal conflict”. Nobody should be fooled. This term is simply a racist cover for the West’s lack of concern and ultimate responsibility.
Hutus and Tutsis have lived side by side in central Africa for centuries. They share the same language and culture. Whilst class divisions existed, it was the Belgian imperialists who systemised this, favouring the minority Tutsis and stamping the bearer’s ethnic origin on every identity card. These ID cards are now being used by the pogromists to identify victims.
Every worker in Britain should call on the government to provide unconditional emergency aid for the millions of refugees who are living in grass huts on the borders of neighbouring countries. Britain should also open its borders to relieve the African states of the burden of providing for the refugees.
At the same time we should oppose UN military intervention. We can trust neither the corrupt, capitalist dictators of Africa nor the lying, murdering governments of Europe or the USA to bring a progressive end to Rwanda’s torment.
Any UN force will be there to shore up the conditions for renewed exploitation and oppression. It will be there to imprison refugees Within the borders of a country that has collapsed into chaos.
Rwanda is not an aberration. It is just one of a list of countries that have collapsed towards barbarism as the imperialist order has come unstuck. Rwanda, Bosnia, Haiti, Liberia, Kurdistan … these are warnings to the workers of the whole world of the horrors capitalism holds in store-not in the far off future but in the closing years of the 20th Century. From decaying imperialism and collapsing Stalinism only two things can emerge: socialism or barbarism.
The terrifying glimpse of barbarism in Rwanda should renew our determination to fight for the socialist alternative.