I went to a lunchtime talk today which was one of the most amazing, inspiring things I have experienced. We had Simone Monasabien in today - a woman who has been a prosecutor in the ICTR and a defender in the Special Court of Sierra Leone. It was utterly humbling and astonishing. And a reminder of just how brutal the massacre was in Rwanda. Brutal. It's a horrible metaphor, but one that is worth remembering, given we understand the numbers - between two and three 9/11 attacks every day for 100 days - that's between September 11th until 19th December. Seriously. With machetes.
It was particularly amazing to hear her talk about her forced rethink of free speech in light of how the radio was used to incite the genocide, and how the "West" campaigned for the release of a newspaper owner whose front cover featured a machete and words to the effect of "let's finish the overthrow of the Tutsis that we started in 1959". Given my Note topic - on free speech guarantees and international legislation and so forth in light of hate crime - it was a startling and timely reminder of just how difficult an issue this is.
It was... it's hard to explain.
Particularly when people then send you links to things like this comparison of newsweek covers. Do I need to say more?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment