Samantha Power breaks down after visiting Rwandan genocide memorial
Philip Weiss on October 25, 2013
This is moving. From Samantha Power’s twitter feed. The US ambassador to the UN visited the memorial to the Rwanda genocide in Kigali two weeks ago and broke down afterward, speaking to local media (and posted by this human rights organization). Note the humility in her comments, putting herself in the company of citizens and churchgoers. Excerpts:
My name is Samantha Power, I’m the US ambassador to the United Nations. I have just come out of the memorial, and I honestly need time to recover. This is very soon to be talking to all of you… This is my third time visiting Rwandan memorials, it is almost 20 years after the genocide, and the power of not only what happened here in 1994 but the strength of the Rwandan people as they seek to move forward is immensely moving to me and to my colleagues. I am here as part of a mission from the United Nations Security Council, and of course we all know what the United Nations failed to do back in 1994 for the Rwandan people. But the international community is determined to stand with the Rwandan people in the same way that our guides today have, who were themselves 13-year-old boys at the time of the genocide– I’m sorry– and they tell their stories so that diplomats like me, journalistis, citizens, churchgoers, everyone in the world can know what happened here so that it never happens again in Rwanda and it never happens again anywhere else in the world… Nobody who comes to this memorial site is ever the same when they leave. People who come to this site dedicate themselves with new passion… to the broader cause of preventing genocide forevermore.
Power, who made her name writing about genocide, has of course defended militarist policies in the Middle East. I went to Power’s feed seeing if she had anything to say about her mentor on Middle East issues, Shmuley Boteach, countenancing Sheldon Adelson’s call for Obama to strike Iran with a nuclear weapon. Zilch.
P.S. Boteach reported that Power cried when she met with Israel lobbyists to defend herself from accusations that she doesn’t like Israel.
