Writing the Book on Human Rights

LOSS FOR ALL: Human Rights advocate Alison des Forges is shown here in a discussion panel at the Pierre Hotel in March 2005 in New York City. Her study of the Rwandan genocide documented the tragedy. She died in a plane crash last week. (Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images)

TEXT OF REMEMBRANCE: A Buddhist monk stands near one of the killing fields under the Khmer Rouge regime in Takeo province. Cambodia released a textbook of the genocide this week. A U.N.-backed genocide court on Feb. 17 will begin the long-awaited trial of (Nicholas Asfouri/ AFP/Getty Images)

The Epoch Times

Reuters
Feb 19, 2009

Supporters of Rwandan human rights causes lost a prominent advocate in a plane crash near Buffalo last Thursday. Historian Alison Des Forges was one of the 50 people killed when the plane crashed into a house and burst into flames.

Des Forges, 66, dedicated her life to studying Rwanda and wrote a definitive study of the 1994 genocide in which some 800,000 people from the country's ethnic Tutsi minority as well as Hutu moderates were slaughtered in 100 days.

A central thesis of her award-winning book, "Leave None to Tell the Story," was that the genocide was not an uncontrollable explosion of ancient tribal hatreds but carefully orchestrated by the government, which seized control of Rwanda in April 1994.

Des Forges appeared as an expert witness in 11 trials for genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as well as in trials in Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Canada, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Des Forges worked as a senior advisor to the organization's Africa division and was also an authority on human rights violations in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Her death is a tremendous loss for the human rights community, for Rwanda, and the Great Lakes, which are places that she loved so dearly," said Corinne Dufka, West Africa regional director for Human Rights Watch.

Des Forges also argued that the rebel army that defeated the genocide regime and is now in power should also be held accountable for crimes during and just after the genocide.

Genocide Remembered

On another continent, the Cambodian government unveiled its first textbook that tells about the human rights tragedy of the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1975-79 in which 1.7 million people died.

Thirty years after the fall of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist regime, many young Cambodians know little about one of the darkest chapters in the 20th century, education officials say.

"When we tell students about the Khmer Rouge genocide, they don't believe it and think it's fiction," Deputy Education Minister Ton Sa Im told Reuters. “But now when they see the United Nations help Cambodia put Khmer Rouge on trial, they start believing," she said of the first trial of a top Pol Pot cadre due to start on Feb. 17.

More than 500,000 copies of the textbook will be distributed in the impoverished Southeast Asian country, where more than half of its 14 million people were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in a 1979 Vietnamese invasion.

"For the first time in Cambodia's history, the genocide will be taught in high school," said Youk Chhang, director of the U.S.-funded Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), which has documented Khmer Rouge atrocities.

The center played a key role in bringing out the textbook, which includes chapters on other genocides such as the 800,000 people killed in the central African country of Rwanda in 1994.

Seng Nary, an 18-year-old student who only heard about the Khmer Rouge from her parents, said she knew little about the joint Cambodian-United Nations court set up in 2006 to investigate and prosecute Pol Pot's surviving henchmen. "I saw something on television about the Khmer Rouge tribunal, but that's it," she told Reuters.

A recent survey by the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley, found 85 percent of respondents "had little or no knowledge" of the tribunal. "On the eve of the first trial, more Cambodians should be aware of the court's work, especially as there is a strong desire for justice," director of research Phuong Pham said in the report, entitled "So We Will Never Forget."

It recommended that educational material combining historical texts and visual material from the forthcoming trials be created for use in primary and secondary schools.

Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, head of the S-21 torture center under the Khmer Rouge, will go on trial this week for his role in the deaths of an estimated 16,000 people. Another four senior Pol Pot cadres have been charged with crimes against humanity but their trial dates have not been set.