Photos of African Genocide used to campaign against Mass Murder - PART 4 of 5 | Voice of America - English
American photographer Lane Montgomery has compiled a book documenting six major genocides of the past 100 years, during which an estimated 70 million people were killed. She says she was inspired to create Never Again, Again, Again following an assignment in Rwanda, where in 1994 Hutu extremists murdered more than 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis. Montgomery?s book also focuses on the conflict in the Darfur region, where human rights activists say that since 2003 the government of Sudan has killed at least 300,000 people belonging to black ethnic groups.
Theskeletons sprawled across the slatted wooden bench in a college in a ruralRwandan district are alabaster white and shiny?as if they?ve been polished upto form the centerpieces of a macabre art exhibit, when in fact it?s the limestrewn on their corpses after their murders to prevent them from rotting that?sbleached them an ivory white. Inanother of Montgomery?s photographs from Rwanda, a crimson rosary curls acrossthe warped, tattered and burnt pages of a bible ? an image testament to thetruth that tens of thousands of people who hid from the death squads inchurches found no safety. Instead, they became easy targets for marauders wavingmachetes and torches of fire. ?Afterthe Nazi Holocaust, the expression went around, ?never again.? People said,?Never again will these terrible things happen,? with all these Jews killed andthe concentration camps and so on. But of course, genocide keeps happening?.That?s why I called my book ?Never Again, Again, Again, Montgomeryexplains. For decades the New York City-based photographer hastraveled to war zones around the world, including African conflict zones inLiberia, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Montgomery has takenpictures for a variety of human rights groups, including Doctors WithoutBorders and the International Rescue Committee. She?s also an activist forpeace and serves on the advisory board of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiativein the United States. In ?Never Again, Again, Again? Montgomeryintersperses the narrative with interviews with war criminals and commentaryfrom ambassadors, academics, human rights activists and journalists. But mostdisturbing are the first-hand accounts by survivors, such as a letter writtenby seven Tutsi pastors in Rwanda?s Mugonero district to the leader of theirchurch shortly before they were murdered. The document reads, in part, ?We wishto inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will be killed with ourfamilies?. We believe that with the help of God who entrusted you with theleadership of this flock, which is going to be destroyed, your interventionwill be highly appreciated?.? Benjamin Ferencz, the former chief prosecutor of Naziextermination squads at the Nuremburg war trials in 1947, describesMontgomery?s work as a ?grim and important reminder that we owe it to our ownhumanity, and to the memory of those who perished, never to stop trying to makethis a more humane and peaceful world under the rule of law.? Montgomerystates emphatically, ?Rwanda was the reason I started the book.? In2004, a humanitarian organization asked her to visit the country to takephotographs to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide there.Montgomery says she expected to find a ?clean country? with few reminders ofthe horror that had unfolded a decade before, with ?everything hidden;forgotten.? Her first port of call was a Catholic church in the ?middle of thewoods? on the outskirts of Rwanda?s capital, Kigali. ?Idid not expect to find what I found?. The bodies were still there. Theskeletons were there with hair on their heads, the purses, high heel shoes,tattered clothing. This was in the raw, what I saw,? Montgomery recalls. Atanother church, this time in the Ntarama district, Montgomery found a ?burntbible, and the rosaries, still left over from the massacre?. I found itabsolutely amazing that these things were still there, after so many years.? Duringthe height of the mass murder, Hutu militia hacked and burned thousands ofTutsis to death at the place of worship at Ntarama. ?Whathappened was they went to their pastor and asked for protection and he turnedthem in, he told the Hutus that they were hiding there ? for money,? saysMontgomery. ?And in my pictures you see all the skulls, and the crosses, andthe aftermath of the slaughter. And you can imagine the terror that must havegone through the worshipper?s minds before they were massacred, trapped in thechurch.? Shesays she found it very difficult to do her job in Rwanda. ?Iwas crying all the time and I didn?t think I could take the photographs. But Iforced myself to.? Later,Montgomery acknowledges, she became even more emotional ? not with taking herown pictures, but by studying those others had taken of the aftermath of thegenocide. ?Isaw all these pictures of the little children, the orphans of the massacre?.The mothers had been raped by the Hutus and had been given AIDS, and theydidn?t want to keep the children,? she whispers. Uponher return to New York City, Montgomery says she was ?plagued? by what she?dwitnessed in Rwanda. ?Irealized how many photographs I had of situations like Kosovo, and Rwanda, andso I decided to write a book?to highlight the fact that these mass killings arestill taking place, even with world attention focused on them.? A chapter in is dedicatedto the conflict in Darfur and contains some of the most graphic images in thebook. In one such photograph, a rebel soldier swathed in white robes, his armsbent in prayer, stands over a twisted body decomposing in the tawny desertsands, its dark skin long ago ripped apart by wind and sun and assortedparasites. Montgomery suggests that the ongoing violence in Darfuroffers incontrovertible evidence that most world leaders ?care very little?about the ethnic cleansing happening there. ?Ihave no faith in the authorities, because what they say and do are very, verydifferent,? she tells VOA. ?In 1992, (then US President) Bill Clinton said, ?ifthe horrors of the Holocaust taught us anything, it is the high cost ofremaining silent and paralyzed in the face of genocide.? (But) this isprecisely what his administration did in Rwanda, and what the world did (there)in 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were killed in eight weeks. And we?re still doingit? in Darfur. One of her book?s key points is that genocide willcontinue as long as the perpetrators escape justice. Montgomery is in ?totalfavor? of the International Criminal Court pursuing war crimes charges againstSudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, who has allegedly sanctioned the attacks onblack ethnic Darfuris. ?Anexample must be made of al-Bashir,? she snaps, despite the Sudanese leader?spledge to disarm the janjaweed and other violent groups there. ?Ifal-Bashir gets off scot-free, and the world keeps on turning its eyes away fromleaders like him just because they are in positions of authority, then genocidewill keep on happening,? she reasons. Montgomerydescribes what?s happening in western Sudan, where janjaweed militiaallegedly allied to the Sudanese government and state troops have attackedvillages and refugee camps, as ?impunity beyond belief. These are brutal menwho are destructive, and they?ve been getting away with it for years. The UNand human rights officials have made Darfur the longest ongoing episode ofgenocide in the past century, because (they) don?t do anything about it.? She?s convinced that the ?atrocities in Darfur could havebeen shortened to months rather than years? had the perpetrators beenprosecuted shortly after the attacks began almost six years ago. ?Punishment of perpetrators opens the doors for diplomacyand dignity. Silence and looking the other way emboldens the janjaweed.The lack of punishment of perpetrators fosters more evil. Our silence is theirmachete...their rifles, their poisoning of wells with the bodies of deadchildren,? the photographer writes in her book. Montgomery says the UN Responsibility to Protect (R2P)resolution is ?sensible? and ?well-intentioned but also ?totally ineffectual?in preventing and stopping mass murder. Instead, she advocates the creation ofan ?independent International Genocide Force? that has the ?necessary amount ofarms, weapons and personnel to achieve its mission; it must be staffed withleading negotiators and mediators to bring about an immediate end to bloodshedand foster peace?.? Shemaintains, though, that she realizes the ?enormity? of the task facing the UNand its secretary general, Ban ki Moon. ?He (Ban) faces a different world. The 1990s were blissfulcompared to today because genocide today is often used as a tool by the peoplethat are in charge to stay in power ? like al-Bashir.? She points out that the United Nations says states areresponsible for protecting their own citizens from mass murder, mass rape andstarvation, ?but when they are unwilling or unable to do so, the responsibilitymust be borne by a larger outside force. That?s what I agree with, that thelarger force has to be an international force and it has to be (well) armed?. andpowerful.? Montgomeryadds, ?If nothing else, the years between 1915 and 2008 have borne out to usthat human rights have to be legalized in some form, where we get aninternational force to punish genocide, where they can make arrests?. They canuse helicopters, they can use rifles; they can put people in prison cells. Butwe do none of that?. We just talk.? Montgomery does, however, laud the recent lengthy prison sentences given bythe International Criminal Court to some of the masterminds of the Rwandangenocide, including Theoneste Bagosora and two senior military officers who thetribunal found had organized, trained and armed the militia members responsiblefor most of the killing. Whileshe also commends the international activists she says are ?doing their best?to enlighten the world about what?s happening in Darfur and to pressure theSudanese authorities to halt the violence, she?s convinced that the advocacymovements have ultimately been ineffective in stopping the killings. ?Ithink ?save Darfur? has become a mantra in America that has been going on forso long that it?s now like ?stop at a red light.? It just means that much,?Montgomery quips, before adding, ?I don?t know what else we can do other thanwhat I keep saying, that we need an international armed force to go in and stop(mass murder).? Containedin Never Again, Again, Again is a stark warning from Romeo Dallaire, theCanadian general who led the UN mission in Rwanda during the genocide there. Hewrites, ?The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in thechildren of the world, the result is rage. It is the rage I saw in the eyes ofthe teenage Interhamwe militiamen in Rwanda?. Human beings who have norights, no security, no future, no hope and no means to survive are a desperategroup who will do desperate things to take what they believe they need anddeserve.? Montgomeryacknowledges this desperation among Africans in certain countries on thecontinent, but says it?s time also for the international community to ?getdesperate? and embark on harsh measures to stop the mass killings in placeslike Darfur and the DRC. Otherwise, she warns, there?ll be plenty of books likehers lining library shelves in the near future.