Human Rights and Genocide

Washington, DC, August 13, 2014 – Marking the 90th birthday of the human rights legend and distinguished physicist Yuri Orlov, the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org) and the Memorial Society in Moscow (www.memo.ru) today posted online an extensive collection of formerly secret Soviet and U.S. documents on Orlov's career as a Soviet dissident, including the first English-language translation of his historic 1956 speech at his physics institute in Moscow, and his 1976 founding of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

Washington, DC, July 8, 2014 – The Brazilian military regime employed a "sophisticated and elaborate psychophysical duress system" to "intimidate and terrify" suspected leftist militants in the early 1970s, according to a State Department report dated in April 1973 and made public last week.

Washington, DC, June 3, 2014 – Significant cleavages existed within the Chinese political leadership and security apparatus over the decision to use force against student protesters at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, according to US military intelligence. Declassified reports citing well-placed sources inside China describe sharp differences among some of the country's military and political elite, as well as a range of other security-related concerns with important implications for the political longevity of the Chinese leadership.

EXPERT OPINION

Declassified U.N. Cables Reveal Turning Point in Rwanda Crisis of 1994
By Mark Landler, The New York Times, June 3, 2014

The United Nations Security Council in Rwanda
By Michael Barnett, the George Washington University, June 1, 2014

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Washington, DC, May 29, 2014 – Leading decision makers from the United Nations, Africa, the United States, and Europe will gather in The Hague from June 1 to 3 to consider the failure of the international community to prevent or effectively respond to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and to explore whether and how the tragedy might have been averted.

Washington, DC, May 21, 2014 – The Arusha Accords, a peace agreement between the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) signed in August 1993, failed in the worst way peace accords can fail — genocide. Documents posted today by the National Security Archive and the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum chronicle the international community's role in the failure to implement the demobilization program, a key part of the Arusha Accords, ultimately leading to genocide in April 1994.

Washington, DC, April 7, 2014 –The complete series of daily and weekly situation reports (sitreps) written by UN peacekeepers in Rwanda — published today by the National Security Archive for the first time in full — provides a detailed, on-the-ground perspective on the genocide in Rwanda that started twenty years ago today.

Washington, DC, March 31, 2014 – During the months leading up to the genocide in Rwanda, United Nations officials and western diplomats became increasingly concerned by the threat to political stability posed by millions of refugees and internally displaced persons in the Great Lakes region. Attempts by the international community to address the refugee crisis became enmeshed in political in-fighting inside the country.

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January 9, 2014

Washington, DC, March 6, 2014 – Concerned about the possibility of "a new bloodbath" in Rwanda, the Belgium foreign ministry issued a dramatic diplomatic dйmarche on February 25, 1994, calling for a strengthening of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African country. According to Belgium government dispatches, the initiative failed because of opposition by the United States and the United Kingdom and resistance from the United Nations Secretariat.