I always like to read Bernard Naylor's "Just a Minute" column in Library and
Information Update.
The June column, however, contains a very serious error. He says that the
treatment of the Hutu by the Tutsi in southern Africa has been characterised
as "genocide".
In the context of his article, I am sure he intends to refer to the
systematic extermination of well over half a million people in Rwanda in
1994. If so, readers of Update and this discussion list need reminding that
it was Hutu that were carrying out the killing. It would be unforgivable to
leave anyone with the impression that it was Tutsi that were the aggressors
in that particular low point in the lamentable history of the "New World
Order".
Notice I say "Hutu" and not "the Hutu": many Hutu opposed the killings and
indeed many of the victims were moderate Hutu trying to protect their
neighbours (or indeed their families, since mixed marriages seem to have
been a particular target of the madness).
There might be other interpretations of his words. Extremist Tutsis have
been responsible for their own share of killings over the years, in Burundi
and the eastern Congo, as well as in Rwanda. Or perhaps he is referring to
the former systematic class repression of Hutu by traditional Tutsi
dynasties, which was heavily reinforced by white pro-Tutsi discrimination
during the colonial period.
But all-in-all I think he was referring to the 1994 massacres, and made a
simple slip. That such a slip was so easy for a liberal white Brit to make,
and for the fact-checkers at Update not to notice, speaks volumes at a time
when the scale of another disaster in this part of the world is beginning to
emerge.
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