NEVER AGAIN?

between April and July of 1994. Last week I wondered whether,

given its willful failure to act in

time to stop the killing, the United Nations should be entitled to exhibit the Rwanda

Project photos on view at U.N. headquarters in New

York. Tomorrow the U.N. will hold a private reception and commemoration for the exhibition,

which runs through April 15.

Joanne McKinney, project coordinator for The Rwanda Project, sent this

thoughtful response:

I understand your reaction. I also feel, though, that because we are there, and

because we will have people speaking on the issues — including a survivor — we are linking real

names and faces to the genocide to those who visit and work at the U.N. Being on the walls of

the UN, for us, is acknowledgment that this happened, that these children exist. Our exhibit lets

people confront that reality through a different lens.
I’m not personally forgiving the U.N. or the U.S. for the roles they played —

not even close. Rather, I hope we’re taking the opportunity to share the perspective of the

children, in a place of great importance.
The typical phrase coming out of the Holocaust “never again” I believe is a

false front. Genocide happens again … and again. I think we need to acknowledge that and share

stories, bear witness, attach real people to the atrocities. I think we need to acknowledge how our

own culture, cultures around the world and individual prejudice create an environment in which

genocide will happen again.
I wept watching [the recent “Frontline” documentary] “Ghosts of Rwanda” — particularly for

the children who now have to grow up having experienced evil and loss in such a dramatic way.

As adults, we know what humans are capable of — as children, we learn it only through horrible

adult behavior.
One other thought — I know you know that David [Jiranek, the late founder

of the Rwanda Project] really wanted to show that these children are more than just victims …

more than the images from 10 years ago. And these pictures do just that. While they were

interviewing the young woman on “Frontline,” I was longing for a sense of what her life is now —

what her future holds. So much of the news media is focused on the time of the event, not the

repercussions in the future.
All of the Imbabazi [Orphanage] kids are now adolescents — how will their

future relationships be affected, how will they enter an agricultural community with no family and

no land? How will they be able to bind their lives to others, having been amputated from their

loved ones in the past? What happens after genocide? Perhaps if we can show that to the world a

bit — today, and tomorrow, people will be able to connect to the issues and to the

atrocities.

The key phrase, unfortunately, is “perhaps if.” We still don’t seem to have

made the connection. As Samantha Power — winner of last year’s Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction,

for “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of

Genocide” — also writes today on the Times’s Op-Ed

page, in “Remember Rwanda, but Take Action in

Sudan”:

On this anniversary, Western and United Nations leaders are

expressing their remorse and pledging their resolve to prevent future humanitarian catastrophes.

But as they do so, the Sudanese government is teaming up with Arab Muslim militias in a

campaign of ethnic slaughter and deportation that has already left nearly a million Africans

displaced and more than 30,000 dead. Again, the United States and its allies are bystanders to

slaughter, seemingly no more prepared to prevent genocide than they were a decade

ago.

And why should they be when it’s easier to pay lip service to humanitarian

values — and cheaper, too?