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I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: As Rwanda Bled, Media Sat on Their Hands By Jane Hunter As a genocide it ranks with the century's biggest--the Armenians, the Jews, the Cambodians. But this spring, as Western officials marked the 50th anniversary of the Nazi Holocaust, no one--least of all the U.S. government--lifted a finger to stop the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans. And U.S. media coverage played along with the Clinton administration's policy of handwringing. Almost daily since the Rwandan genocide began on April 6, broadcast media have aired horrific accounts and the major papers have featured the story on their front pages. The media seldom wavered, however, from their habitual racist portrayal of African strife as atavistic tribal savagery. Occasionally, deep down in newspaper stories, the political context of the attacks on the Tutsi minority by members of the Hutu majority was acknowledged. But a reader seeking an explanation for Washington's inaction could read on through the end of May and come up empty. Instead of probing U.S. policy, the big media gave the Clinton administration an easy ride. Contrary to the media's endlessly reiterated theme, what is going on in Rwanda is not mindless tribal slaughter. The April 6 downing of an aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habiyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira--the incident that sparked the genocide--is widely believed to have been the work of Habiyarimana's own ruling clique, a hardline group bent on aborting a laboriously negotiated coalition government. That coalition would have brought the Tutsis into the Hutu-dominated government for the first time since Rwanda gained independence from Belgium in 1962; it would also have included democratic-minded Hutu opposition parties. To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1241 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

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