Biden administration wrong to send Bill Clinton to Rwanda for anniversary | Opinion

This April marks the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

In selecting former President Bill Clinton to lead the U.S. delegation to Rwanda to commemorate the genocide, the Biden administration made a grave error that has predictably offended and distracted many Rwandans while they seek to focus on remembrance, mourning, and healing.

During the one hundred days of carnage unleashed in April 1994, members of the Hutu majority ethnic group massacred more than one million people, primarily members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group. At the time, Clinton was the U.S. president.

Immediately after the genocide commenced, the Clinton administration, like other Western governments, initiated an operation to protect and remove its nationals.

Within days, the Clinton administration had evacuated 230 Americans who wished to leave Rwanda out of the 258 total Americans living there at the time.

The Clinton administration also quickly shuttered the U.S. embassy in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. As part of that effort, the administration deliberately elected not to save any Rwandans, even those working for the U.S. government at its embassy. More than one-third of the U.S. government’s Foreign Service Nationals were killed during the genocide.

These Rwandans had been employed by the U.S. government to work in the embassy, some for approximately a decade.

Senior members of the Clinton administration have acknowledged the U.S. government’s failure to help Rwandans. Clinton himself wrote in his autobiography: “The failure to try to stop Rwanda’s tragedies became one of the greatest regrets of my presidency.”

Similarly, Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, and his National Security Advisor at the time of the genocide, Tony Lake, are among several members of the Clinton administration who have expressed regret for not even attempting to do more to assist Rwandans.

Clinton went so far as to travel to Rwanda in 1998 to apologize in person. While at the Kigali airport, which he never left, he stated: “The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy, as well. We did

not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe haven for the killers.” In a rare admission by a U.S. president quantifying the extent of their administration’s failure, Clinton has even estimated that the U.S. government could have saved 300,000 Rwandan lives through an intervention.

Experts on the U.S. government’s role in the genocide argue that the government was not just a bystander but also actively undermined assistance.

The Clinton administration “led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of U.N. reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on

average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term ‘genocide’ for fear of being obliged to act.” Moreover, Clinton has falsely claimed that he did not “fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which [Rwandans] were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.”

In sending Clinton to Rwanda now, the Biden administration unnecessarily dredges up Rwandans’ memories of U.S. bystanderism (and worse) during their country’s greatest time of need.

Instead, the U.S. government should commemorate the genocide in Rwanda—and other genocides—through high-level representatives who provide genuine sympathy and meaningful support, not those stained with blood. While actual or possible genocides still rage around the world, the U.S. government should always center victims and survivors, not ways to assuage its own guilt.

Zachary D. Kaufman, J.D., Ph.D., is a professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. An expert on the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda, he is the author of United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics and co-editor of After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond. Kaufman has assisted Rwanda’s post-genocide criminal justice development and has served at three war crimes tribunals, including the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.