InternationalCNN special to highlight those who tried to stop genocide
Christiane Amanpour reports
Covers “unchecked Evil” from Armenia to Darfur
Published: Saturday November 29, 2008
Christiane Amanpour in a compound associated with Osama Bin Laden. Brent Stirton / AP
In a two-hour special report, CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour will report on the recurring nightmare of genocide and the largely unknown struggles of the heroes who witnessed evil - and "screamed bloody murder" for the international community to stop it. The program will premiere on CNN on December 4 at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
"We have profiled individuals," Ms. Amanpour told the Armenian Reporter in an interview, "who have had the courage to stand up and tell their governments what was going on and how it needed to be stopped."
Ms. Amanpour said, "One of the people we look back on is Raphael Lemkin, who . . . coined the term genocide specifically after the Armenian Genocide and put that word right there in our vocabulary and lobbied very, very hard for the Convention that would define that word."
The occasion for the documentary is the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The program touches briefly on the Armenian Genocide in the context of Lemkin's outrage that the murder of one person is a capital crime, but the murder of an entire people was not defined as such.
Past as prologue
Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew and lawyer, narrowly escaped the Holocaust, but his parents and 40 other members of his family perished in the slaughter. In the 1940s, Lemkin coined the term "genocide" and lobbied the then-fledgling U.N. for an international convention compelling nations to prevent and stop genocide.
Mark Nelson, vice president and senior executive producer for CNN Productions says: "Lemkin hoped that the international community would ensure that genocide never happened again, but other crusaders against genocide met the same indifference and resistance Lemkin encountered. This film is about their stories - and what we can learn from them."
Just one generation later, Father François Ponchaud, a Catholic missionary working in Cambodia, tried to alert the world to the torture and mass executions following the rise of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. Fr. Ponchaud published articles, a book, and even spoke before the U.N. to urge action to stop the killing.
"No one believed us" Fr. Ponchaud tells Ms. Amanpour in the documentary. In fewer than four years, the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror claimed the lives of nearly two million men, women, and children - one fourth of Cambodia's population.
"No one defends human rights," the priest says in the documentary. "Governments are cold beasts looking out for their own interests."
Committing genocide in front of the news cameras
In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein unleashed poison gas on the Iraqi Kurdish population, killing tens of thousands of people. Ms. Amanpour draws on U.S. government documents that show the Reagan administration opposed measures to sanction Iraq - because it was trying to cultivate Iraq as an ally against Iran in 1988.
Peter Galbraith, at the time an idealistic staffer in the U.S. Senate, witnessed Hussein's brutal policy and tried unsuccessfully to get Congress to punish Iraq. The White House continued its support for Hussein. Ms. Amanpour questions the Reagan administration officials who made the decisions at the time, including former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz.
Ms. Amanpour returns to the former Yugoslavia - where in the 1990s she reported on the "ethnic cleansing" of Muslims by Serbs. She reminds viewers that the slaughter in Bosnia happened in full view of the world, captured on 24-hour television news.
Ms. Amanpour describes the efforts of Richard Holbrooke, a private citizen who would later become one of President Bill Clinton's most influential advisors; Mr. Holbrooke tried to persuade the Clinton administration to use military force to stop the principal aggressors, the Bosnian Serbs. It would take three years - and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica - for him to make his case and secure U.S. military support to end the "ethnic cleansing."
Speaking to the Armenian Reporter, Ms. Amanpour said, "When I ask former U.S. officials who were in national security or the State Department during the Clinton administration - in which genocide happened in Bosnia and in Rwanda - I ask them why was there this collective failure to act, and some of them said to me, ‘Look, we need our public behind us. This is something very difficult for us to intervene when our national security is not directly threatened. We need our public behind us.'"
She said her purpose was to raise awareness of international affairs among Americans, the citizens of the most powerful nation on earth.
During an international news conference in 1994, Ms. Amanpour challenged Mr. Clinton: "Do you not think that the constant flip-flops of your administration on the issue of Bosnia set a very dangerous precedent?"
Ms. Amanpour also returns to Rwanda - where she reported on genocide there 14 years ago. The atrocities still haunt retired Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire. In 1994, Mr. Dallaire was the commander of the U.N. peace-keeping troops in Rwanda. He sounded early warnings about an impending human tragedy but was prohibited from taking military action to prevent the slaughter that eventually claimed the lives of at least 800,000 people. Mr. Dallaire, ordered to leave Rwanda by his bosses, tells Ms. Amanpour, "I refused a legal order. But it was immoral."
Avoiding the G word
Ms. Amanpour recounts the Clinton administration's refusal to use the word "genocide" to describe the killing in Rwanda, and the U.N.'s refusal to reinforce Mr. Dallaire's troops. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake discuss the failures in Rwanda. Ms. Amanpour also interviews current Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who says the world was indifferent to the fate of Rwandans.
