Annan Tours UN "Re-education" Camp.

In what must be considered a surreal spectacle, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan paid a visit to the northern Rwanda village of Nkumba, where he was entertained by 600 veterans of the Rwandan killing fields. As we've reported previously (see "A Silent Accomplice to Mass Murder" in our June 8, 1998 issue), Annan himself was an accessory before the fact to the genocide.

As head of UN peacekeeping operations in 1994, Annan received detailed advance intelligence about the impending massacres from the commander of the UN mission to Rwanda, Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dallaire. Annan ordered Dallaire to share that intelligence with the same Rwandan government that was planning to murder, in toto, the nation's Tutsi population. The UN's own official investigation later concluded that Annan's actions "gave the signal" to the killing squads that they could proceed with their demonic work unhindered by outside interference. One Tutsi survivor insists that the UN's assurances that it would protect them in the event of ethnic violence "tricked us into staying," rather than fleeing the country.

As the UN closed its Rwandan "peacekeeping" mission in 1996, an angry crowd gathered outside its office in Kigali to wish it good riddance. Annan received a much warmer reception from the veterans of the killing squads in Nkumba.

"Wearing civilian clothes, the former fighters, many of them implicated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, sang and danced for Annan," reported the Agence France-Presse on September 4th. The AFP referred to the Nkumba facility as a "re-education camp" for the former "Hutu Power" soldiers. "After staying in the open center and receiving training on the themes of reconciliation, Rwandan history, AIDS, and politics, the former rebels are to go into civilian life or join the Rwandan army," noted the report. Some of them might wind up being arraigned by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is located in Arusha, Tanzania.