Repeating Rwanda: The Consequences of Euphemizing Genocide

It is a very serious misrepresentation of the situation in Rwanda to describe the killings simply as 'the slaughter of civilians' or 'the mass killings,' without explaining who is killing whom. The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of killings in Rwanda have been committed by the government militia and government army who have been implementing a well-organized plan of genocide of Tutsis.

 -Michael Doyle, BBC, 6/20/1994

The pervasive myth that there is an ongoing "humanitarian crisis" in Sri Lanka rather than genocide is causing problems that extend far beyond semantics.

In attempt to prove that they are unbiased, the vast majority of media organizations, aid agencies and politicians consistently criticize both the government and the LTTE as equally responsible for the ongoing ‘humanitarian crisis’. Such attempts to be ‘impartial’ have resulted in the almost ubiquitous oversimplification, euphemization and flat-out distortion of the present situation in Sri Lanka, and more specifically the popular misconception that the government is killing and displacing Tamil civilians out of negligence rather than malice.

This is not the first time that genocide has been misreported and misrepresented in such a manner. BBC journalist Michael Doyle reported that there were "serious attempts to 'balance' what was essentially an unbalanced story" while he was covering the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He describes one such particularly telling incident:

Some RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] soldiers killed five churchmen...Newsrooms around the Western world seized on the killings with undisguised glee – it was as if here, at last, was proof that the 'other side' was just as evil...Five murders, condemnable and awful though they may be, cannot, in my book, equate with 5,000 or 50,000 or however many had been committed by the other side by that time. I believe that highlighting this case, giving it the prominence it got, was misleading.[1]

As a result, the international community refused to even acknowledge that Rwanda was undergoing genocide until it was already over. Former President Clinton has repeatedly stated that his biggest regret as President was his failure to admit that Rwanda was undergoing genocide and subsequently failing to intervene. He estimates that the US "would have saved at least a third of those lives" lost had he acted.

Fifteen years later, the media and international community appear to be making virtually identical mistakes in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government's ongoing aerial bombings killed 2,683 Tamil civilians and injured 7,241 more between January 20th and March 7th alone, according to the UN. The UN’s figures also show that the rate at which Tamil civilians are being killed is rapidly accelerating: in late January, an average of 33 Tamil civilians were being killed each day, but by early March the figure had risen to 63 deaths/day.

Yet, the media consistently points to LTTE suicide bombings – which killed a maximum of 25 civilians in roughly the same time period[2] – as evidence that both sides are equally reprehensible. (I am not attempting to defend the LTTE here. My point is only that the number of civilians being killed by the LTTE is minuscule compared to the number being killed by the government.)

Moreover, several government initiatives, including the systematic rape of Tamil women, forcible detention in ‘welfare villages’ that bear a striking resemblance to concentration camps, an embargo on food and medical supplies (and subsequent mass starvation and epidemics of various diseases), mandatory civilian registration, and repeated bombings of hospitals and government-created ‘safe zones’, suggest that it intends to destroy the entire Tamil population, not just the LTTE.

At this point, it is fairly evident that the only way that the genocide will end is through international intervention. If public actors had the courage to call the situation for what it is, the international community would be legally (if not morally) compelled to act, as the UN Genocide Convention requires its parties – which include the US and the UK – to "prevent and punish" genocide, “whether committed in time of peace or in time of war”.

Every person and organization that comments on Sri Lanka needs to understand the vital importance of having the courage to call it like it is.

[1]Michael Doyle, "Reporting the Genocide" in The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, ed. Allan Thompson (London: Pluto, 2007), 155.

[2] There have been two confirmed LTTE suicide bombings since mid-January: one at a detention camp on February 8th that killed eight civilians and another on February 20th that targeted an air force building in Colombo and killed two civilians. On March 10th, there was a suspected LTTE suicide bombing that killed 15 civilians.