1

A New World Order?

The British Response to Genocide in Bosnia

and Rwanda

By Eleanor Walsh

2

Contents

Introduction

- 3

Chapter I

The British Media and Genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda

- 8

Chapter II

‘Britain’s Unfinest Hour Since 1938’: the British Government and Genocide in

Bosnia and Rwanda

- 17

Conclusion

- 29

Bibliography

- 32

3

Introduction

In the aftermath of the Second World War, and in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, the

international community imagined a new world order. In October 1945, representatives from

50 countries signed the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, which would unite the

signatories in an effort to ‘maintain international peace and security’.1 This then paved the

way for human rights implementations such as the Genocide Convention 1948, the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights 1948 and the Refugee Convention 1951. However, an intense

Cold War climate and a desperation to contain Soviet Union influence provided the platform

for Western foreign policies.2 Ernest Bevin assumed his role as Foreign Secretary in the late

1940s resolute on preserving British values, and told Hastings Ismay as he arrived at the

Potsdam Conference, ‘I’m not going to have Britain barged out’.3 A power-struggle mentality

was evident in the post-war era and was prioritised over other foreign issues, such as human

rights. Even the Genocide Convention was not effective in protecting minorities after 1945

from the threat of violence, and the promises put forward at the close of the Second World

War to protect those at risk appeared to have been forgotten.4 So when the Cold War came to

an end at the beginning of the 1990s, the world envisaged a new post-Cold War world order.

The United Nations Security Council would be expected to reinforce Chapter VII of the

Charter by initiating collective procedures for intervention to protect those at risk of genocide

and other crimes against humanity.5 Britain was greatly involved in the propaganda circulated

on this new vision of human rights which appeared with the end of the Cold War. In January

1992, The UN Security Council held its first summit level meeting, a meeting billed as ‘an

unprecedented recommitment…to the purposes and principles of the Charter’, which was

claimed to be a British initiative.6 However, this dissertation will argue that British foreign

policies of maintaining its national self-interest continued. Safety of troops, preservation of

1 The United Nations, ‘Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice’, 24

October 1945, accessed at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf 2 Curtis, Mark, The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1995),

pp. 182 3 Weiler, Peter, ‘British Labour and the Cold War: The Foreign Policy of the Labour Governments, 1945-1951’,

Journal of British Studies, vol. 26, no. 1 (1987), pp. 57 4 Mazower, Mark, No Enchanted Palace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 147 5 Benedic, Wolfgang, Human Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina After Dayton: From Theory to Practice

(Cambridge: Kluwer Law International, 1999), pp. 95 6 Melvern, Linda, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London: Zed Books Ltd,

2000), pp. 74

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great power status and financial miserliness remained above international human rights in

Britain’s priorities. This will be illustrated using the cases of the Bosnian and Rwandan

genocides, where the British government failed to intervene effectively in large-scale human

rights abuses and often impeded on other states’ attempts at intervention. Britain’s inaction

was sustainable due to rhetoric within Britain relating to the religion, geography and history

of both the victims and the aggressors in the genocides.

In October 1990, a civil war broke out in Rwanda following an invasion of Rwanda

by the Royal Patriotic Front (RPF), which was made up predominantly of Tutsis who had fled

to Uganda following previous Hutu violence. In April 1994, President of Rwanda, Juvénal

Habyarimana’s plane was shot down for reasons which remain unknown. This left the

political situation in Rwanda extremely unstable and genocidal killings of Tutsis and

moderate Hutus began the following day. The United Nations Assistance Mission for

Rwanda (UNAMIR) had been present in Rwanda since October 1993, assisting the Arusha

Peace Agreement. But when genocide occurred in 1994, the United Nations showed

reluctance to take decisive action against the killings and UNAMIR’s strength was reduced

drastically. Britain was central in the negotiations leading to the UN’s failure to prevent

genocide in Rwanda. Only one year after this genocide ended, another began in the former

Yugoslavia. Within days of Bosnia declaring its independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, the

Bosnian Serbs and Croatians began competing for Bosnian territory which they hoped would

become Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia. The JNA, Yugoslavia’s army, fell apart and

became a largely Serb-dominated force. This led to the systematic ethnic cleansing and

genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Žepa and Srebrenica in 1995. Once again, the UN and the

United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) failed to protect victims of large-scale

human rights atrocities. Like Rwanda, the case of Bosnia highlights Britain’s failure to

commit to the ‘new world order’ that had been foreseen by the end of the Cold War.

The events which took place in both Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s indicate that the

global rhetoric of a new world order was illusory. Britain’s role in Bosnia is significant as

Britain held EC presidency through the most critical period of the Bosnian war (July-

December 1992) and ‘tried to secure the maximum advantages offered by this role’.7

Additionally, Britain came to be seen by many as the greatest obstacle to collective action in

7 Conversi, Daniele, ‘Moral Relativism and Equidistance in British Attitudes to the War in the Former

Yugoslavia’, Thomas Cushman and Stjepan Mestrovic (ed.), The Time We Knew: Western Responses to

Genocide in Bosnia (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 245

5

Bosnia.8 Britain’s contribution in the Rwandan conflict was equally significant as the British

government (more than any other) displayed a more troubling indifference towards the

killings, and there is a general consensus across the historiography that it was a key force of

inaction. This dissertation contends that self-interest provided the platform for foreign policy

towards both Rwanda and Bosnia at this time and therefore led to a reluctance to use forceful

action to prevent human rights abuses. Although one-sided, Brendan Simms’ Unfinest Hour

provides a ground-breaking and authoritative account of Britain’s failures to deter Serb

aggression and will be used on numerous occasions throughout the dissertation. Simms

describes Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind as a man of ‘formidable forensic ability’ and

Douglas Hurd as a ‘rolls-royce’ of a Foreign Secretary.9 This indicates that Britain’s inability

to protect victims in Bosnia and Rwanda was not down to mere incompetence. This

dissertation will argue that in fact it was down to inaccurate and improper media coverage of

the events throughout both genocides, which failed to rouse enough public support to push

for a military intervention. It will also argue that it was down to a priority of self-interest

above all moral concerns.

The lack of action on the part of the international community is well-known amongst

historians of the events in Bosnia and Rwanda, but much of this historiography has focused

on the failure of the UN as a whole, rather than Britain’s role in that failure. The first chapter,

discussing the British media’s response to the genocides, will use primary sources such as the

accounts of news reporters like Martin Bell and Mark Doyle, who were on the ground in

Bosnia and Rwanda when the killings took place. It will also use British newspaper reports

from the period to shed light on how the British media influenced public opinion on the

conflicts and therefore government action. Maria Todorova’s cutting-edge study of

Balkanism will be a useful source in emphasising the effects of distorted Western perceptions

on public opinion and humanitarian intervention. The second chapter, examining the role of

the British government in the Bosnian genocides will use primary sources such as

parliamentary debates, the memoirs of the key players in British decision making at this time,

and government and UN documents. Alongside Simms, Linda Melvern has been amongst the

few to conduct extensive research on the British failure to prevent genocide, focusing

particularly on Rwanda with works such as Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide,

A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide and an article written with

8 Simms, Brendan, Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2002),

pp. 5 9 Simms, Unfinest Hour, pp. 3

6

Paul Williams, ‘Britannia Waived the Rules: The Major Government and the 1994 Rwanda

Genocide’. These sources have been valuable in the research undertaken to produce this

dissertation, but none answer the question of how the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides

together shed light on the importance placed on British interests, which this essay aims to do.

Further, none have analysed the relationship between the British media and government in

relation to the genocides and how this relationship may have contributed to Britain’s inaction.

The foreign policy agenda is often driven by media and public opinion. The first

chapter will discuss moral relativism, the concept of tribalism and the depiction of the

genocides as deeply rooted civil wars in the press. Todorova’s Balkanism will be applied to

perceptions of the Balkans in the West and how this contributed to public apathy towards the

killings. This view was contrasted with the belief that the Bosnian victims were fellow

Europeans and therefore more sympathy was provoked in the British public than it was in

Rwanda’s case. BBC Newsnight will be discussed, which failed to accurately cover the

events in Rwanda and instead censored much of its footage. According to reporter Martin

Bell, the failure of the media during the genocides lay in its stance of objectivity, which

prevented reporters from aligning themselves with a particular side. It will finally be argued

that the British media placed more emphasis on the refugee crisis which occurred as a

consequence of the genocide, as more humanitarian aid was provided here. The second

chapter will discuss Prime Minister John Major’s political ideology and how this helped to

form his position on the genocides. The British government were reluctant to use the term

genocide and imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia, leaving Bosnia incapable of

protecting itself. This actually facilitated Serbian aggression towards Bosnia. This decision

was compared to the Munich Agreement in parliament by opponents of the arms embargo.

Weight was added to this by Britain’s failure to fully implement an arms embargo on the

aggressors in the Rwandan genocide. British contribution to UNPROFOR and UNAMIR was

poor, with Britain reluctant to provide resources due to cost. Like the media, the British

government incorrectly portrayed the genocides as equal-sided civil wars. It will finally be

argued that a British national identity based on Christian principles contributed to Britain’s

unwillingness to protect Bosnian Muslim victims. This dissertation will contend that the

British media and the British government combined to form a policy of dismissal towards

genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, prioritising national self-interest over victims of human

rights atrocities, highlighting the failure of a post-Cold War new world order.

It is still debated today what impact the media has on the decisions made in

parliament and vice versa. In regard to the Rwandan genocide, Linda Melvern has stated

7

‘there is secrecy in Government and a lack of interest in the media’, which would suggest that

if the government was more open about the realities of genocide, more interest would be

aroused in the media.10 However, the evidence shows that both are equally as influential as

each other. Throughout the genocides, references were made in parliament to the media and

public opinion. For example, one government document cites public opinion as a very

powerful source of pressure for intervention, however it goes on to reject military

intervention regardless.11 It is undoubtable though that British politicians were affected by

what was going on in the media. Douglas Hurd’s colleagues allegedly resorted to telling him

what they had seen of Rwanda on CNN that day, which Allan Thompson claims was

Britain’s main source of information.12 This is now widely known as the ‘CNN effect’ – the

belief that ‘foreign policy is reactive to news content, the key decisions are those made by

reporters, producers and editors’.13 This dissertation will not attempt to answer the question

of who influences whom, as this may not be possible. It will simply highlight that both the

media and the government in Britain worked together and influenced each other into an

agenda consisting of indifference towards the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides.

10 Melvern, A People Betrayed, pp. 230 11 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘The Case Against International Military Intervention in Bosnia’, The

Former Yugoslavia: Briefing Note, October 1992, FO973/700, The National Archives 12 Dowden, Richard, ‘The Media’s Failure: A Reflection on the Rwanda Genocide’, Allan Thompson (ed.), The

Media and the Rwanda Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 251 13 Robinson, Piers, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention (Oxon: Routledge,

2005), pp. 21

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Chapter I

The British Media and Genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda

One of the greatest causes of British inaction in the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides

was the lack of accurate media coverage of the events available to the British public. Noam

Schimmel claims that ‘without offering audiences the opportunity to witness, they are

disempowered from taking action’.14 This chapter will look at the undertones of moral

relativism within British media coverage of the genocides, where the massacres were

dismissed as acceptable in the context of the particular cultures and therefore supposedly did

not require Western action. Both of the conflicts were depicted as ethnic blood feuds and civil

wars consisting of equal warring factions. Maria Todorova’s study of Balkanism suggests

that in the Western perception, the Balkans are too close to the Orient to be considered

wholly European and evidence of this can be found in newspaper reports from the period.

This was contrasted with a rhetoric which advocated the Balkans as fellow Europeans,

therefore more deserving of Britain’s help than the Rwandans. BBC Newsnight adds further

weight to the argument of this chapter, due to the disproportionate amount of research

conducted in the past on print media. Despite having full access to intelligence on the

genocide taking place in Rwanda, Newsnight chose not to cover the conflict as a genocide but

a civil war. Impartiality in journalism has been blamed for the media’s failure during the

genocides, as this meant that reporters did not identify a side at fault. Finally, the British

media were preoccupied with the refugee crisis which emerged as a consequence of the

genocide in Rwanda, as more humanitarian aid was provided here than it was where the

genocide was actually taking place. Using these arguments, this chapter will contend that the

British media contributed to a general policy of indifference towards the genocides in Bosnia

and Rwanda.

During the genocides, the British media adopted a stance which social scientists have

termed ‘moral relativism’. Shashi Motilal states that a moral relativist believes ‘there is no

single, overarching standard of morality and that what is right and what is wrong varies from

one society to another without reference to any universal moral principle’.15 The media

showed reluctance to acknowledge the true brutality of the killings and instead dismissed the

14 Schimmel, Noam, ‘An invisible genocide: how the Western media failed to report the 1994 Rwandan

genocide of the Tutsi and why’, The International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 15, no. 7 (2011), pp. 1126 15 Motilal, Shashi, ‘Moral Relativism and Human Rights’, Shashi Motilal (ed.) Applied Ethics and Human

Rights: Conceptual Analysis and Contextual Applications (London: Anthem Press, 2011), pp. 68

9

events as a display of tribalism. Scott Straus points out that the weapons used by the

perpetrators (e.g. machetes, clubs and whatever else they could improvise) and where the

massacres took place (such as churches, schools and other public building where victims had

gone to hide) marked out the violence as ‘elemental and primitive’.16 He also states that these

images along with a lack of knowledge of African history meant that witnesses jumped to the

assumption that this was a result of tribal hatred.17 In April 1994, just as the genocide had

begun in Rwanda, the Daily Mail displayed the headline ‘Is tribal conflict now the world’s

greatest threat?’, presenting an image of a Rwandan with a machete and the caption

‘Africa…where the protesters wield tribal weapons’.18 This sweeping statement suggests that

Africa is the threat, rather than the aggressors in Rwanda. This article demonstrates the lack

of importance given to human rights issues, by suggesting that Rwanda’s ‘tribal conflict’ is

only a concern of Britain’s when it becomes a threat to British national security. Labour MP,

Tony Worthington stated in the Commons in May 1994 that in the press ‘there has been a

terrible tendency to dismiss the events as just tribalism with ‘what can you expect from the

Africans?’ as the subtext. By calling this tribalism, we are, in effect, blaming all the people of

Rwanda.’19 Worthington recognises the danger of this rhetoric in the press. He argues that the

press were not identifying victims in the atrocities, as due to the Rwandans having a very

different moral compass, the massacre is acceptable and no business of the British public’s.

Adrian Gallagher has argued that genocide is so innately immoral that it discredits

moral relativism.20 However, the conflict in Rwanda was not depicted as a genocide, thereby

validating a moral relativist rhetoric. It takes the crimes which ‘shock the conscience of

human kind’ to bring the public to call for military intervention, but this was unlikely to

happen for a conflict which allegedly had no victims.21 The Observer reported in April 1994,

after the genocide had begun, that there were fears of a ‘full-scale civil war in Rwanda, where

the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi tribes have a long history of rivalry’, without any

mention of Hutu aggression.22 In the 1960s and the very beginning of the 1990s, Tutsi

16 Straus, Scott, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda (New York: Cornell University Press,

2006), pp. 18 17 Straus, The Order of Genocide, pp. 19 18 Wheatcroft, Geoffrey, ‘Is tribal conflict now the world’s greatest threat?’ Daily Mail Historical Archive, 11

April 1994, pp. 8 19 Worthington, Tony, in Hansard Parliamentary Debates (House of Commons), 24 May 1994, vol. 244 20 Gallagher, Adrian, Genocide and its Threat to Contemporary International Order (London: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2013), pp. 78 21 Gallagher, Genocide, pp. 78 22 Milsum, Liindsey, and Huband, Mark, ‘Rwanda rebels draw close to carnage city’, ProQuest Historical

Newspapers (The Observer: London, UK), 10 April 1994

10

refugee insurgents had initiated numerous attacks against the country, so on the eruption of

genocide by the Hutus on 6 April 1994, Western reporters covered the violence as a

resumption of a long lasting and intermittent civil war. Mark Doyle was a BBC journalist

from 1986, and was its East Africa correspondent between 1993 and 1994. He spent most of

the genocide in Rwanda and was often the only Western reporter in Kigali. He is therefore an

vital source of information on what was happening inside Rwanda at this time, particularly in

relation to media coverage. He confesses that he initially mistook the events as a war of equal

footing but ‘within little more than a week of the beginning of the killing […] there were

clear references to government-backed massacres of ethnic Tutsis and Hutu opponents of the

regime’.23 Doyle indicates that the British media were to some extent aware of the realities of

the genocide yet made the decision to not cover it in this light. In April, 1994 when in Kigali,

he told a BBC presenter in London, ‘there are two wars going on here[…]a shooting war and

a genocide war[…]In the shooting war, there are two conventional armies at each other, and

in the genocide war, one of those armies[…]is involved in mass killings’.24 Doyle indicates

that he himself had informed the BBC that a genocide was taking place, but this did little to

influence its media coverage.

The perpetrators and victims of the genocide in Bosnia being white and European did

not prevent the events being dismissed in the press as tribalism. There has been a consensus

in the British media that the inhabitants of the Balkans are ‘somehow genetically or

historically fated to kill one another’.25 For example, The Observer wrote in January 1995

that force would be futile in ‘such a volatile region as the Balkans’.26 This is strongly

connected to the moral relativist stance that culture decides fate, and we cannot intervene in

other cultures. Slavoj Žižek argues that the attitude of the West was that it would only be

possible to achieve peace in Bosnia if one side of the conflict was not castigated;

accountability must be equally dispersed and the West must adopt the role of mediator.27

Moral relativism in the Western reaction to the genocide manifested itself, according to

Daniele Conversi, as ‘an underlying current of public opinion that, even at the peak of

Serbian atrocities and ethnic cleansing, was determined to view all parties in the conflict as

23 Doyle, Mark, ‘Reporting the Genocide’, Allan Thompson (ed.) The Media and the Rwanda Genocide

(London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 145 24 Doyle, ‘Reporting the Genocide’, pp. 145 25 Davis, G. Scott, Religion and Justice in the War Over Bosnia (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 41 26 Porteons, Peter, ‘War in Bosnia cannot be ended by force’, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (The Observer:

London, UK), 8 January 1995: pp. 18 27 Žižek, Slavoj, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), pp. 17

11

‘warring factions’ engaged in a ‘civil war’’.28 Like in the case of Rwanda, the conflict in

Bosnia was depicted as victimless. It would be impossible to shake the conscience of the

public when both sides of the conflict are supposedly to blame. The Daily Mail reported in

May 1995 that ‘spring by tradition triggers the seasonal return of tribal fighting’, which

implies that violence is an inherent aspect of Balkan culture making them fundamentally

alien to the democratic West.29 This meant that a sense of grief towards the atrocities was not

provoked amongst the British population and therefore there was no public pressure for a

government intervention.

The perception of the Balkans in Western Europe has been identified by Maria

Todorova as ‘Balkanism’, a variation of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Todorova claims that it

is common knowledge that the Balkans are considered the ‘other’ of Europe, and that ‘its

inhabitants do not care to conform to the standards of behavior devised as normative by and

for the civilized world’.30 The earlier violence which took place during the Balkan wars of

1912-13 resonated widely within Europe and began to threaten the peace developments

which were taking place here.31 Balkanism such as this can also be identified in the British

response to the conflict in Bosnia in the 1990s. Benjamin Žohar argues that this allowed

reporters to present the events in a simpler format, but also created a ‘misrepresentation of

reality’.32 The press had a tendency to focus on aid to Bosnia from Islamic states such as Iran,

circulating the message that ‘fundamentalists could use the war in Bosnia to gain a foothold

in Europe’.33 Although this may have been true, it was not necessarily something that could

have been helped by the Bosnians. It was particularly poisonous as the Bosnian Serbs had

claimed that the reason for their aggression towards Bosnia was to avoid a European Islamic

state, giving the Serbs some justification for their violence. 34 By placing emphasis on the

religion of the Bosnian victims, a greater rift was created between Europe and the Balkans in

the minds of the British public. As a result, ‘the idea of western military intervention had only

minor public support’.35 It has also been argued that the public were convinced by the press

28 Conversi, ‘Moral Relativism’, pp. 245 29 Anonymous, ‘Victory in Europe and war in Bosnia’, Daily Mail Historical Archive (Daily Mail: London,

UK), 2 May 1995: pp. 8 30 Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 3 31 Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, pp. 5 32 Žohar, Benjamin, ‘Misrepresentation of the Bosnian War by Western Media’, Journal of Comparative

Research in Anthropology and Sociology, vol. 3, no. 2 (2012), pp. 98 33 Pukas, Anna, ‘Fears of a foothold for the Islamic fanatics’, Daily Mail Historical Archive (Daily Mail:

London, UK), 10 August 1992: pp. 2-3 34 Pukas, ‘Fears of a foothold’, pp. 2-3 35 Žohar, ‘Misrepresentation of the Bosnian War’, pp. 98

12

that the Balkans are geographically and historically too close to the Orient to be wholly

European.36 The Balkans were considered to be an alien who threatened the ‘Western project

of modernity’; like the Rwandans they are considered to be uncivilised and morally inferior,

both the victims and the aggressors.37 They were perceived with the same suspicions as any

non-Christian state, as traditionally, Christianity has been associated with civilisation. This

representation of the Balkans as ‘the other’ allowed both the British media and the

government to neglect the massacres more easily.

These views, however, were contrasted with the opinion that those in the Balkans

were ethnically similar to the British and therefore more deserving of British help. Bridget

Robison quotes the Independent: ‘they were so like us, both the killers and the victims, good

Europeans one and all’, and argues that language such as ‘people like us’ highlights that

politicians were condemned by the media for their neglect of a fellow European country.38

This would imply that it was being a white and European state which gained the Bosnian

genocide more attention in Britain than the Rwandan genocide, though still not enough to

push for an intervention. As early as 1992, the Serbian community in the UK were accusing

the British media of displaying an anti-Serbian bias in its coverage of the crisis.39 If this is

true it would indicate that the British public did form an emotional attachment to the victims

in Bosnia based on a shared European identity. The Guardian described the suffering of

Bosnian Muslims in great detail, using rhetoric such as ‘many are suffering from malnutrition

and dehydration […] many of them haven’t eaten for at least 48 hours and they’re completely

worn out’.40 This would have provoked a good deal of empathy amongst the public as the

victims were depicted as other humans, rather than a particular ethnic group. Moreover, it

was claimed that the Bosnian Serb Commander, General Ratko Mladić, ‘strode into the east

Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica to survey his latest conquest’, indicating to Britons

that the Bosniaks were completely at the mercy of Mladić. This prompts an image painfully

reminiscent of the Nazi holocaust. A European and white identity as a platform for sympathy

36 Sells, Michael Anthony, The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (California: University of

California Press, 1998), pp. 126 37 Cushman, Thomas, ‘Collective Punishment and Forgiveness: Judgements of Post-Communist National

Identities by the ‘Civilised’ West’, Stjepan G. Meštrović (ed.) Genocide After Emotion: The Postemotional

Balkan War (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 185 38 Robison, Bridget. ‘Putting Bosnia in its place: Critical Geopolitics and the Representation of Bosnia in the

British Print Media’ Geopolitics (2004), vol. 9, issue 4, pp. 378-379 39 Wybrow, Robert J, ‘British Attitudes Towards the Bosnian Situation’, Richard Sobel, Eric Shiraev, Robert

Shapiro (ed.), International Public Opinion and the Bosnia Crisis (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing

Group, 2003), pp. 58 40 Traynor, Ian, ‘Serbs bus refugees to frontline: horror of ethnic cleansing returns’, ProQuest Historical

Newspapers (The Guardian: London, UK), 13 July 1995: pp. 1

13

towards the Bosnian victims in the media demonstrates that the British were influenced in

their response by a deeply rooted racial prejudice. The evidence presented here seems to

imply that the indifference towards the Rwandan genocide was partly down to the fact that

the victims were black. Regardless, the human rights violations were not what was being

propagated by the media, but how alike the British population was to the victims in Bosnia.

Current affairs television programme Newsnight is of particular importance. In

previous studies of the media’s role in covering the Rwandan genocide, the focus has been

disproportionately on print media, rather than news programmes such as Newsnight.41 David

Belton was in Rwanda reporting the massacres for Newsnight and on occasions the violence

became so threatening that Belton and his crew were forced to find shelter, as the Hutu

extremists became increasingly apprehensive of their presence.42 Newsnight reporters were

witnesses to the violence on the ground in Rwanda which suggests that Newsnight footage

was censored for the benefit of viewers. According to BBC reporter Tom Giles, a few months

before the genocide in Rwanda had begun, the BBC had reported a smaller massacre in

Burundi in great detail which had triggered a barrage of complaints.43 This explains why the

BBC would feel the need to censor footage shown on Newsnight. BBC correspondent Martin

Bell accused the corporation of ‘glamourising war through its refusal to show the full extent

of human suffering and destruction in war zones’.44 Giles explains that the majority of the

raw footage showing the full scale of the brutality was sent to England at the beginning of

April when the desperation to grab the world’s attention was at its greatest, however the

whole feature was cancelled and deemed ‘too graphic for British viewers’.45 It is clear, then,

that the BBC failed to accurately report the events in Rwanda by self-censoring real footage

of human rights abuses. And in doing so, gave viewers a misleading account of the events

taking place in Rwanda, which in turn led to a failure to arouse public support for a more

forceful intervention.

It has been argued that the failure of the British media to accurately report genocide

lies in its stance of objectivity. According to Howard Tumber and Marina Prentoulis,

41 Holmes, Georgina, ‘Did Newsnight Miss the Story? A Survey of How the BBC’s “Flagship Political Current

Affairs Program” Reported Genocide and War in Rwanda Between April and July 1994’ Genocide Studies and

Prevention: An International Journal, vol. 6, Issue 2, Article 7 (2011), pp. 175 42 Bartrop, Paul Robert, A Biographical Encyclopedia of Contemporary Genocide: Portraits of Evil and Good

(California: ABC – CLIO, LLC, 2012), pp. 61 43 Giles, Tom, ‘Media Failure Over Rwanda’s Genocide’, Allan Thompson (ed.) The Media and the Rwanda

Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 236 44 Frean, Alexander, ‘Martin Bell accuses BBC editors of glamourising war’, NewsBank (The Times: London,

UK), 13 November 1995 45 Giles, ‘Media Failure’, pp. 236

14

‘objective reporting’ is a way of reporting news to convey it ‘in a detached, impersonal way

free of value judgements’.46 However, this resulted in the conductors of the genocides being

viewed not as aggressors, but simply another side in the conflict. This ethic in war reporting

has emerged from an ideology of objectivity, which is no longer so much about aiming to tell

the truth, but forming a relationship of trust between the ‘addresser and addressee’. 47 There

is an expectation of impartiality from the audience, even if it means an inaccurate

representation. BBC war correspondent during the Bosnian conflict, Martin Bell, stated in

his memoir, In Harm’s Way: Bosnia: A War Reporter’s Story, that ‘it isn’t involvement but

indifference that makes for bad practice […] Old BBC reporting habits of distance and

detachment were early and instant casualties’.48 Bell believes that a stance of objectivity

meant that British viewers did not see an accurate portrayal of genocide, therefore were

unable to form an emotional attachment to the victims of the aggression. The Times reported

in July 1994 that ‘the mere fact that large audiences are being told about these things is

usually enough to goad governments into taking action’.49 However, when the full reality of

the massacres is being concealed from these large audiences, this is unlikely to happen. BBC

foreign correspondent Fergal Keane has expressed his own remorse at his stance of

objectivity throughout the Rwandan genocide and has stated: ‘it would be irresponsible for

the government to allow anybody to write exactly what they want. But what happens when

that argument is used to silence legitimate debate or questioning of the ruling elite? The

powerful will always find reasons to justify silencing those who threaten their power’.50 This

would suggest that the British government encouraged objectivity in the media to avoid a

public call for an intervention that was not in national interests. By promoting an unbiased

stance within the British public, the media deterred pressure for a military intervention to

prevent the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Despite the genocide taking place within Rwanda, the British media became

preoccupied with the refugee crisis which occurred as a result of the political situation in

46 Tumber, Howard and Prentoulis, Marina, ‘Journalists Under Fire: Subcultures, Objectivity and Emotional

Literacy’, Daya Kishan Thussu and Des Freedman (ed.) War and the Media (London: SAGE Publications Ltd,

2003), pp. 216 47 Hartley, John; Montgomery, Martin; Brennan, Marc, Communication, Cultural and Media Studies; The Key

Concepts (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 167 48 Bell, Martin, In Harm’s Way: Bosnia: A War Reporter’s Story (London: Icon Books Ltd, 2012), pp. 138 49 Simpson, John,‘When reporters act on their conscience – Rwanda’, NewsBank (The Times: London, UK), 25

July 1994 50 Pottier, Johan: Hammond, Laura: Cramer, Christopher, ‘Navigating the Terrain of Methods and Ethics in

Conflict Research’, Pottier, Hammond and Cramer (ed.) Researching Violence in Africa: Ethical and

Methodological Challenges (Leiden: Koninklijk Brill NV, 2011), pp. 11

15

Rwanda. More foreign aid and foreign aid workers rushed to the Kivu refugee camps than

actually went to Rwanda.51 It is also much simpler to provide aid than try to actively stop a

genocide, so the lack of coverage on the genocide and wider coverage of the refugee camps

facilitated the government’s attempts to appear to be doing what they can.52 Lindsey Hilsum

argues that ‘one of the major outcomes of the imbalance in reporting of different aspects of

the story was that governments were able to hide behind a humanitarian screen’.53 Likewise,

Mel McNulty concurs that the ‘images of mass movements of ‘refugees’ in Rwanda

suggested that these were the victims, rarely that many of them were the perpetrators of

genocide (now fugitives from justice), accompanied by a terrified and intimidated ‘human

shield’ of real refugees’.54 Circulating images of the refugee crisis with Western aid workers

misled the British public into believing that Britain was involved in a humanitarian

intervention to stop the killings, rather than just to deliver aid. The Observer declared in July

1994, towards the end of three months of genocidal killings, ‘at long last, the world is moving

to the aid of Rwanda’s refugees’.55 As television news programmes often contain stories

which have relevance to the target nation, they tend to feature dramatised spectacles. The

genocide in Rwanda, along with its civil war, was a complex and multifaceted story in a

country unheard of to many Britons. The refugee crisis was at least a more palatable issue.56

It has been argued that as Rwanda was not in Britain’s sphere of interest, the refugee crisis

would quite possibly have also been ignored had it not been for ‘the dramatic media spectacle

of mass human suffering’.57 By promulgating images of the refugee crisis and Western aid to

it, not only did the British media draw attention away from the original issue in Rwanda, but

it also misled the British public into believing that the British government was doing all it

could to help. Public pressure for an intervention would be impossible as the Britons already

believed one was taking place.

51 Caplan, Gerald, ‘Rwanda: Walking the Road to Genocide’, Allan Thompson (ed.) The Media and the Rwanda

Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 32 52Hilsum, Lindsey, ‘Reporting Rwanda: The Media and the Aid Agencies’, Allan Thompson (ed.) The Media

and the Rwanda Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 169 53 Hilsum, ‘Reporting Rwanda’, pp. 169 54 McNulty, Mel, ‘Media Ethnicization and the International Response to War and Genocide in Rwanda’, Tim

Allen, Jean Seaton (ed.) The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence

(London: Zed Books Ltd, 1999), pp. 270 55 Anonymous, ‘Rwanda shows aid is not enough’, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (The Observer: London,

UK), 24 July 1994: pp. 26 56 Giles, Tom, ‘Media Failure Over Rwanda’s Genocide’, Allan Thompson (ed.) The Media and the Rwanda

Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 237 57 Stevenson, Nicholas, The Transformation of the Media: Globalisation, Morality and Ethics (New York:

Routledge, 2013), pp. 149

16

The British media failed to report accurately and effectively on the Bosnian and

Rwandan genocides. This meant that the British public were not fully aware of the events that

were taking place in these countries, or Britain’s true role in it, therefore no pressure was

placed on the British government to intervene. Media representation in cases like these are

extremely important, as governments use humanitarian intervention in a narcissistic bid to

create a good image of its state.58 The media are instrumental in creating this image, and by

claiming that what is moral to the West is not necessarily moral in the Balkans or Africa; by

portraying the events as tribalism; by equating aggressor and victim so that no one was to

blame; by using Western perceptions to play on the idea that the Balkans were not really part

of Europe; by censoring coverage to ensure that viewers did not see the reality of the

massacres; by taking a stance of objectivity and refusing to take sides, despite clear evidence

of Hutu and Serb aggression; and by emphasising the aid being delivered to refugee camps to

give the impression that Britain was doing all it could, the British public were manipulated

into believing that nothing more needed to be done.

58 Hammond, Philip, ‘The Media and Humanitarian Intervention’, Josef Seethaler and Matthias Karmasin (ed.)

Selling War: The Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the “War on Terror”’

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 255

17

Chapter II

‘Britain’s Unfinest Hour Since 1938’:59

The British Government and Genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda

This Chapter will examine the role of the British government in the Bosnian and

Rwandan genocides. Regarding the end of the Cold War, Mark Curtis claims that ‘In the

current era, British foreign policy remains consistently opposed to the grand principles – such

as promotion of human rights and economic development in the Third World – widely

assumed to be consistent with it’.60 But British responses to the massacres in Bosnia as well

as Rwanda have indicated that the British government’s apathy towards human rights

violations is evident much closer to home than the Third World. This chapter will argue that

the British government avoided intervention to prevent human rights atrocities unless it

coincided with national self-interest, therefore failing to commit to the post-Cold War ‘new

world order’. This will be argued firstly by looking at the ideologies of the key player in the

decision-making processes, John Major; the legal obligation of the Genocide Convention and

the refusal of the British government to acknowledge this; Britain’s central role in the

implementation of the arms embargo on the whole of Yugoslavia, intensifying the military

imbalance between the Bosniaks and the Bosnian Serbs; appeasement of the aggressors in the

Bosnian genocide which has been compared to the Munich Agreement of 1938; failure of the

British government to fully implement an arms embargo on Rwanda, allowing the genocidal

government continued access to weapons; reluctance of the Major government to contribute

sufficiently to the UN assistance missions despatched in both conflicts; the habit within

parliament, like in the British media, of portraying the genocides as civil wars containing

equal warring factions; and finally, a British Christian identity causing the Muslim identity of

the Bosnian victims to interfere with Britain’s desire to intervene. This chapter will use the

issues outlined to argue that the British government prioritised national interest before the

maintenance of human rights in what Brendan Simms has called ‘Britain’s unfinest hour

since 1938’.61 Further, it will identify a relationship between government and media rhetoric

towards the genocides.

59 Simms, Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia, pp. 2 60 Curtis, Mark, The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1995),

pp. 181 61 Simms, Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia, pp. 2

18

Examining the political ideology of Britain’s first post-Cold War Prime Minister,

John Major, is a useful way of understanding his response to genocide in Bosnia and

Rwanda. Major was open about his approach to international relations, and wrote in his

autobiography: ‘of all the roles in government, the Foreign Office…was the one for which I

was least prepared’.62 But the Major government had publicly declared its commitment to the

Human Rights Charter, stating in their election manifesto for 1992 that overseas aid will be

used to promote ‘crucially – respect for human rights and the rule of law’, which he failed to

adhere to.63 Major’s failure to help to protect the victims of genocide has been attributed to

his practice of Realpolitik, the belief that ‘a nation’s foreign policy should be based upon its

interests, and not upon moral principles’.64 Therefore, Major’s commitment to global human

rights was in fact conditional on whether it was compatible with Britain’s national interests.

C.G. Schoenfeld argues that Major, as a practitioner of Realpolitik, ‘would presumably have

felt obligated to pursue these interests vigorously and at the expense of moral principles and

concerns’.65 Major aimed to stop the atrocities using diplomacy and arbitration, and insisted

on offering only superficial support for adjudication.66 Given the extent of the aggression

displayed by the Hutus and the Bosnian Serbs, it was clear to the United Nations and the

international community, including Britain, that diplomacy alone would not be effective. This

was the only way Major could adhere to his principles of maintaining national interest, whilst

appearing to contribute to international efforts to halt the killing.

The refusal of government officials in the case of Rwanda to use the term genocide,

knowing that it would result in an obligation to intervene, highlights that the UK’s

commitment to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

1948 was not genuine. UK representatives at the UN refused to use the term genocide when

negotiating Rwanda,67 and in a Cabinet meeting regarding Rwanda in July, 1994, Hurd

allegedly slammed his hand down on the table and said ‘we will not call this genocide’.68 By

62 Major, John, The Autobiography (London: HarperCollins, 1999), pp. 111 63 Conservative Party Manifesto, March 1992, accessed at: http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page86.html,

07/04/2015 64 Schoenfeld, C.G. ‘Psychoanalytic Dimensions of the West’s Involvement in the Third Balkan War’, Stjepan

Meštrović (ed.) Genocide After Emotion: The Post-Emotional Balkan War (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 169 65 Schoenfeld, ‘Psychoanalytic Dimensions’, pp. 170 66 Forsythe, David P. Human Rights in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012),

pp. 127 67 Dallaire, Roméo, and Manocha, Kishan, ‘The Major Powers and the Genocide in Rwanda’, Ralph Henham

and Paul Behrens (ed.) The Criminal Law of Genocide: International, Comparative and Contextual Aspects

(Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007), pp. 70 68 Cameron, Hazel, Britain’s Hidden Role in the Rwandan Genocide: The Cat’s Paw (Oxon: Routledge, 2013),

pp. 105

19

July, the massacres had been taking place for three months, and Hurd had ample evidence to

suggest that it was a genocide that was taking place. Linda Melvern has argued, along with

others, that the term ‘genocide’ is most strongly associated with the holocaust, and in the

minds of the British government ‘to make a comparison is insulting to the memory of its

victims’.69 Likewise, Karen Smith argues that the use of the term ‘genocide’ ‘could be seen as

debasing the experience of the holocaust’.70 However, this implies that the British

government were not aware of the full extent of the genocide, when the evidence states

otherwise. Article II of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of

Genocide defines genocide as ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,

racial or religious group’.71 Two days after the killings had begun, Lieutenant-General

Roméo Dallaire, Canadian commander of UNAMIR on the ground in Rwanda, sent a

telegram to the UN warning of a ‘campaign of terror, well planned, organized, deliberate,

orchestrated’ and aimed at ‘particular ethnic groups’.72 Dallaire was clearly describing to the

UN a case of ethnic cleansing and genocide, as defined by the Genocide Convention, very

early on in the crisis. As an important member of the Security Council, it is unlikely that the

British government would not have had access to this intelligence. British Ambassador for

the UN, David Hannay, feared that the Security Council might become a ‘laughing stock’ if it

labelled the events as a genocide and then failed to intervene.73 This would suggest that

Britain’s reluctance to use the word genocide lay solely in the fact that it would result in an

obligation to intervene, which was not in Britain’s interests.

In Bosnia, the efforts of the European community to ease the hostility by mid-1991

became unsuccessful and on 25 September 1991, the Security Council unanimously adopted

Resolution 713, calling on the member states to ‘implement a general and complete embargo

on all deliveries of weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia’.74 Britain was central in

the push for an arms embargo on Yugoslavia and it became a ‘central pillar’ in British foreign

69 Melvern, A People Betrayed, pp. 4 70 Smith, Karen E, Genocide and the Europeans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 244 71 The United Nations, ‘The Genocide Convention’, 9 December 1948. Accessed at:

https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf 72 Khadiagala, Gilbert M, ‘Implementing the Arusha Peace Agreement on Rwanda’, Stephen John Stedman,

Donald S. Rothschild, Elizabeth M Cousens (ed.) Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements

(Colorado: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 2002), pp. 489 73 Barnett, Michael, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (New York: Cornell University

Press, 2003), pp. 135 74 United Nations Security Council, ‘Resolution 713’, 25 September 1991, accessed at: http://daccess-dds-

ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/596/49/IMG/NR059649.pdf?OpenElement

20

policy in the Balkans.75 Certain members of the United Nations, particularly Britain, believed

that any more weapons being made available to the warring factions in the Balkans would

simply exacerbate the fighting and allow it to spread further. Tom Gallagher argues that

Britain did not seem to have much of an excuse for maintaining the arms embargo, but

officials in the British government saw it as the most efficient way to bring the conflict to a

halt.76 However, this had a shattering effect on Bosnia’s ability to defend itself. R. Gerald

Hughes quotes that the EC conducted ‘misguided negotiations…at which the weaker party

was urged to make concessions to the bully, instead of being helped to stand up to

intimidation’.77 There is evidence to show that the British government were aware of the

consequences this would have on the Bosnian government’s ability to defend itself. Douglas

Hogg of Britain’s Foreign Office confessed in 1992, early on in the implementation of the

embargo, that ‘the Bosnian-Serbs are already well-equipped. Further supplies from Serbia

would be unlikely to have a significant effect on their military capacity’.78 Additionally,

Labour MP, Kate Hoey seemed to be forced to point out the obvious to the Commons in

November 1992, when she stated that ‘an arms embargo when Bosnians do not have arms

and the Serbians do must mean that those who already have arms will use them to massacre

the minority of the people in Bosnia who have no arms and have not been allowed to acquire

them by the international community’.79 This indicates that other officials within parliament

were also aware of the consequences the embargo would have for the Bosnian victims. As the

British government would rather have left the Bosnian government to defend themselves

without an equal amount of arms to the Serbs than let the conflict spread indicates firstly that

protection of human rights was not a priority, but it also indicates that the British were aware

that there was more chance that they would be forced to intervene if the fighting spread

further. This adds weight to the argument that national self-interest was prioritised over

human rights abuses.

It seems odd, then, that the British government still allowed weapons to reach the

Rwandan genocidal government and ‘failed to implement all the requirements of a United

Nations arms embargo on Rwanda’, allowing Mil-Tec, a UK company, to provide weapons to

75 Hughes, R. Gerald, The Postwar Legacy of Appeasement: British Foreign Policy Since 1945 (London:

Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), pp. 155 76 Gallagher, Tom, The Balkans After the Cold War: From Tyranny to Tragedy (Oxon: Routledge, 2003), pp.

131 77 Hughes, The Postwar Legacy, pp. 139 78 Gallagher, The Balkans, pp. 132 79 Hoey, Kate, in Hansard Parliamentary Debates (House of Commons), 16 November 1992, vol. 214

21

extremist Hutus.80 On 17 May 1994, after recognising that a genocide was taking place in

Rwanda, the Security Council called for all member states to issue an embargo on the ‘sale or

supply of arms to Rwanda from their territories, or using their ships or aircraft’.81 In

November 1996, it became clear that Mil-Tec had brokered arms sales from Israel and

Albania to the genocidal government.82 The Independent reported in November 1996 that

fleeing Hutu perpetrators had discarded incriminating papers showing that they had been sold

£3.3million of arms by Mil-Tec even in July, three months after the arms embargo was

implemented.83 It is significant that two of the men who had been connected to Mil-Tec were

Kenyan, as it was in Nairobi that meetings of prominent military personnel and Hutus took

place and money was collected for a Hutu invasion, which would pay for the delivery of

weapons from Israel, Albania, Spain and Ukraine by Mil-Tec.84 Mil-Tec was registered in the

Isle of Man, therefore Mil-Tec officials could not be prosecuted as the UN embargo failed to

cover the Crown dependencies such as the Channel Islands.85 A Whitehall committee,

established after the Mil-Tec deals were revealed, determined a lack of any provisions in

place to ensure prompt and accurate implementation of the arms embargo on Rwanda.86 In

the case of Bosnia, Britain secured an arms embargo which set in place a military imbalance

in which the Bosnian Serbs had arms and the Bosnian Muslims did not. In Rwanda, Britain

failed to fully implement an arms embargo, allowing weapons to reach the Rwandan

government through a UK company. It can be concluded that Britain essentially assisted and

prolonged genocide in both cases. The negotiations and council meetings regarding what to

do in Rwanda and Bosnia took place away from the public eye, rather than in public as they

used to be.87 The individual policies of each member government were absolved from the

scrutiny of their populations.88 The British public were not aware of Britain’s decisions on

what to do in Rwanda and Bosnia. They were not aware of the arms embargoes, or lack of,

80 Dallaire, ‘The Major Powers’, pp. 70 81 Travis, Hannibal, ‘The International Arms Trade and the Prevention of Genocide: The Law and Practice of

Arming Genocidal Governments’, Samuel Totten (ed.) Impediments to the Prevention and Intervention of

Genocide (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers 2013), pp. 202 82 Dallaire, ‘The Major Powers’, pp. 70 83 Boggan, Steve, ‘Bloody trade that fuels Rwanda’s war: operation insecticide’, The Independent Online, 23

November 1996, accessed at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/bloody-trade-that-fuels-rwandas-war-

1353751.html 84 Boggan, ‘Bloody trade’, 1996 85 Phythian, Mark, The Politics of British Arms Sales Since 1964: ‘to Secure Our Rightful Share’ (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 2000), pp. 315 86 Melvern, A People Betrayed, pp. 185 87 Melvern, Linda, ‘Missing the Story: the Media and the Rwanda Genocide’, Allan Thompson (ed.) The Media

and the Rwanda Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 203 88 Melvern, ‘Missing the Story’, pp. 203

22

and therefore could not form an opinion. This explains the lack of outrage in the British

public on policy towards Bosnia and Rwanda, as even the media were unaware of the

resolutions which were being formed in secrecy.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was established in

October 1993 to assist the country in implementing the Arusha Peace Agreement, which was

signed by the Rwandan parties on 4 August. However, the Arusha Peace Agreement was not

successful in resolving the dispute and UNAMIR was established with a very strict mandate,

ill-equipped to deal with the ensuing violence. Sir David Hannay, the UK ambassador to the

United Nations, played a central role in the review of UNAMIR’s mandate on 21 April 1994

and therefore Resolution 912, which severely reduced UNAMIR’S strength in Rwanda to just

270 troops.89 And it was he who advised the Security Council that updating UNAMIR’s

mandate to include peace enforcement would be unwise as it may result in a recurrence of

what had happened in Somalia, a failed and humiliating intervention in Mogadishu which had

cost the lives of 18 American troops and between 300 and 1,000 Somalis.90 Dallaire stated in

the same telegram as mentioned above that the predicament ‘would be a good deal worse

without the presence of UNAMIR’, yet Gilbert Khadiagala points out that subsequent

negotiations at the UN headquarters was on the priority of getting UNAMIR out, and the UK

government was paramount in the these discussions.91 American lawyer and United States

Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, David Scheffer concurs that Britain supported

minimal presence of UNAMIR to protect troops on the ground.92 So although Hurd allegedly

viewed the mission in Rwanda as hopeless, it appears that the real cause of Britain’s

reluctance to contribute fully to UNAMIR lay in the desire to protect its own troops.93 It was

Ambassador Hannay who lobbied, with the approval of the U.S, for the reduction of the

protection of the victims of genocide to a small ‘skeletal’ force of 270 troops.94 The British

government prioritised the safety of armed troops over the protection of unarmed civilian

Rwandans, indicating that human rights principles outlined at the end of the Cold War were

not considered.

89 Cameron, Britain’s Hidden Role, pp. 91 90 Melvern, Linda and Williams, Paul, ‘Britannia Waived the Rules: The Major Government and the 1994

Rwanda Genocide’, African Affairs, 103 (2004), pp. 6; Cameron, Britain’s Hidden Role, pp. 91 91 Khadiagala, ‘Implementing the Arusha’, pp. 489 92 Scheffer, David, All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals (New Jersey:

Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 56 93 Bartrop, A Biographical Encyclopedia, pp. 133 94 Piiparinen, Touko, The Transformation of UN Conflict Management: Producing Images of Genocide from

Rwanda to Darfur and Beyond (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 62

23

The UK demonstrated its indifference towards the killings once again over UNAMIR

II, supporting US efforts to ‘block and stall the deployment’ of a stronger military presence in

Rwanda, even in the midst of massacre.95 Dallaire speaks of the British military contribution

to UNAMIR in his memoir Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in

Rwanda. He claims that both the US and Britain showed indifference towards the role that

UNAMIR played in Rwanda, and was not particularly charitable when it came to finances,

insisting that their APCs could not be donated to the peacekeeping mission but leased, and for

a ‘price of $4 million, which they insisted had to be prepaid’.96 This again shows that self-

interest was prioritised in the British policy towards UNAMIR. Further, Dallaire states that:

‘The British offered fifty Bedford trucks [to Dallaire] – again for a sizable amount to

be paid upfront. The Bedford is an early Cold War-era truck which in 1994 was fit only to be

a museum relic. When I was told of this “most generous” offer, I sarcastically asked, “They

do work, don’t they?” I was answered first with silence and then: “I’ll check and get back to

you.” The British later quietly withdrew their request for payment and provided some of the

vehicles, which broke down one at a time until there were none left’.97

Dallaire’s presence in Rwanda during the conflict and his role in UNAMIR makes

him an invaluable source on what exactly the British contribution to UNAMIR was. He

suggests that the British were aware that the Bedford trucks were not in working condition,

and were not of the standard required for Dallaire to carry out his mandate. Dallaire’s

statement indicates that the British were not willing to spend too much on the mission in

Rwanda, and chose the least expensive options.

British contribution to the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the

former Yugoslavia was more noticeable. Between 1992 and 1995, UNPROFOR was made up

of approximately 38,000 men of which Britain had contributed 3,500, and this was reinforced

after spring 1995 by 4,900 Rapid Reaction troops, which made Britain the largest contributor

to UNPROFOR.98 It was in British interests that the mission continue as to withdraw UN

troops would mean there would be no clear reason to maintain the arms embargo, as

95 Dallaire, ‘The Major Powers’, pp. 71 96 Dallaire, Roméo, Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (London: Arrow Books,

2004), pp. 376 97 Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil, pp. 376 98 Sharp, Jane M. O. Honest Broker or Perfidious Albion?: British Policy in Former Yugoslavia (London:

Institute for Public Policy Research, 1997), pp. 17

24

peacekeepers safety would not be at risk, and there would be no reason to oppose strategic

airstrikes.99 This means that the British contribution would be limited to what lay in the

state’s self-interest and would not exceed this. UNPROFOR’s mandate was restricted to self-

defence, despite the call from the UN asking states to ‘take all necessary measures’ to ensure

the delivery of humanitarian relief. Like Britain’s allies who also had troops on the ground in

the Balkans, the British government made decisions based on what would have the safest

outcome for its troops, not on what would be the most effective in ending war. The US (who

did not contribute troops to UNPROFOR) were more inclined to choose military action.100

British Commander of UNPROFOR, General Sir Michael Rose, states in his memoir

Fighting for Peace that on one side, the US and the Muslims wanted UNPROFOR to be used

as a war-fighting force, on another side Russia and Greece supported a more pacifying

approach to the Serbs, and ‘in the middle, trying to balance the debate, stood Britain and

France, who had the largest number of troops on the ground’.101 This indicates that the

member states who had troops on the ground, including Britain, opted for the directions

which offered the most safety for their own troops. Major did refer to public opinion when

discussing these decisions, stating in a letter to David Owen in 1991 that he did not expect

‘any support in parliament or in public opinion for operations which would tie down large

numbers of British forces’.102 Yet, a Foreign and Commonwealth briefing note on Bosnia

from 1992 claims that the British population ‘believe that armed force could quickly and

easily separate the warring factions and achieve peace’ but goes on to state that Britain will

not be involved in an armed intervention anyway, as it ‘would be unlikely to stop the

fighting’.103 The British government evidently did not actually know what public opinion

wanted, but used it as a basis for their decisions regardless. So although Britain contributed

the most troops, they did not actually facilitate them in helping to end the conflict or protect

the victims in Bosnia. Whilst they used public opinion as the main excuse for this, the real

aim was to maintain the safety of their armed troops on the ground in Bosnia.

99 Hodge, Carol, Britain and the Balkans: 1991 Until the Present (Oxon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 68 100 Kaufman, Joyce P, NATO and the Former Yugoslavia: Crisis, Conflict and the Atlantic Alliance (Oxford:

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, INC, 2002), pp. 80 101 Rose, General Sir Michael, Fighting for Peace (London: The Harvill Press, 1998), pp. 14 102 Wybrow, Robert J, ‘British Attitudes Towards the Bosnian Situation’, Richard Sobel, Eric Shiraev, Robert

Shapiro (ed.), International Public Opinion and the Bosnia Crisis (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing

Group, 2003), pp. 61 103 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘The Case Against International Military Intervention in Bosnia’, The

Former Yugoslavia: Briefing Note, October 1992, FO973/700, The National Archives

25

Britain’s policy towards the former Yugoslavia was operated mainly by Hurd and

Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, and when negotiating with fellow European leaders,

Hurd was considered the leading voice opposing military intervention to protect the Bosniaks

so as not to spread the fighting further.104 Likewise, Lord Henley (Oliver Eden) told the

House of Lords on 17 December 1993 that ‘if one is providing aid, one has two choices: one

can either get the aid in with cooperation; or one can fight one’s way in. We do not believe

that the right way forward is to try to fight our way in with aid’.105 Jane Sharp points out that

‘when passive peacekeepers are maldeployed into the middle of an ongoing war, not only do

they not hasten the end of the conflict, but they encourage more offensive action from the

strongest belligerent’.106 It was clear to the British government that the aggressors were not

prepared to cooperate, yet British leaders were the most influential in preventing a more

forceful UN response to the hostility. Danish and Swedish peacekeeping troops were

allegedly much more effective in their approach; a Swedish commander threatened Serbs

with violence when they refused to let their convoys through and when a Danish troop was

asked why she had released 700 rounds against the Serbs she responded ‘that’s all I had’.107

The British government dragged their feet with UNPROFOR compared to their fellow

member states. Throughout the Bosnian wars, the British government did not once suggest

that UNPROFOR be terminated, however, they did use the presence of peacekeepers as an

excuse to reject calls for more decisive action.108 Conservative Party member David Congdon

suggested to the Commons that the government must be careful when discussing military

intervention that ‘might put our troops at risk’.109 Although they provided a large amount of

the force, they did so with no intention of putting their lives at stake.

Many have argued that religion has played a large role in the inaction of the British

government regarding the Bosnian genocide. Influential Christian groups and church leaders

opposed the lifting of the arms embargo and Michael Sells claims that ‘the position of many

church groups that the best way to stop the violence was by “tightening” the arms embargo

neglected the fact that the Serb army had enough weapons and weapons factories to last

years’.110 With Bosnia’s independence being recognised by the international community

104 Bartrop, Paul Robert, A Biographical Encyclopedia of Contemporary Genocide: Portraits of Evil and Good

(California: ABC – CLIO, LLC, 2012), pp. 132 105 Henley, Lord, in Hansard Parliamentary Debates (House of Lords), 17 December 1993, vol. 550 106 Sharp, Honest Broker, pp. 18 107 Sharp, Honest Broker, pp. 18 108 Melvern and Williams, ‘Britannia Waived the Rules’, pp. 4 109 Congdon, David, in Hansard Parliamentary Debates (House of Commons), 18 May 1993, vol. 225 110 Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, pp. 129

26

shortly before the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia, G. Scott David posed the

question, would ‘Europe be able to tolerate a flourishing non-Christian cultural entity?’111

This is interesting as Britain was a secular society in the 1990s, with religion playing a very

small part in the thoughts and behaviour of most British people, however Callum Brown

argues that religious conflict in the former Yugoslavia appeared to reaffirm a religious

identity in Britain.112 The religious conflict in the Balkans was seen as a result of their

Islamic identities and a lack of Christian identity. Although Britain was not a religious

country at this time, British civilisation is considered to be a result of Christian history; it is

still a factor of national identity. There was a tendency by NATO powers to use the religion

of Bosnia in an Orientalist fashion, for example diplomats often talked of the ‘Muslim-

dominated government of Bosnia-Herzegovina’,113 as though this information affected the

credibility of the leaders. Serbian propagandists, such as Miroljub Jevtic, depicted Islam as

totalitarian.114 Totalitarianism is generally associated with Stalinism and Nazism, historically

the biggest threat to Europe and resonated as such throughout the continent during the

Yugoslav wars. Davis argues that the decision to withhold arms from Bosnia for fear of the

conflict spreading was grounded solely on a fear of Islam.115 This focus on Islam has also

been seen in the British media headlines at the time of the Bosnian conflict as identified in

the first chapter, suggesting that Brown is correct and that there was a consensus between the

British media and government based on a Christian national identity. However, Brendan

Simms argues that British ‘policies were not obviously driven by Islamaphobia’ and that no

theories can explain Britain’s ‘peculiarly disastrous’ policy towards genocide in Bosnia.116

Further, if this was the case then surely more aid would have been given to Rwanda, a

predominantly Christian state, but there is no evidence to suggest that religion played a role

in Britain’s policy towards Rwanda. The evidence does however suggest that although, as

Simms states, religion was not an obvious feature of British policy towards Bosnia, there was

a pattern of anti-Islamic sentiment in British media headlines and government rhetoric. This

would imply that the new world order would apply only to desirous parts of the world, such

as Christian states.

111 Davis, Religion and Justice, pp. 43 112 Brown, Callum, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxon: Routledge, 2014), pp. 2 113 Davis, Religion and Justice, pp. 39 114 Davis, Religion and Justice, pp. 39 115 Davis, Religion and Justice, pp. 39 116 Simms, Unfinest Hour, pp. 3

27

There was a rhetoric towards Bosnia within the British government similar to that of

the media which can be described as Balkanist. After World War II, the Balkans seemed to

have established itself as a ‘homogenous appendix’ of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the

West.117 This manifested itself in Britain as a way of applying a judgement of the Balkans to

the victims in Bosnia. There is a historical image of an abstract East and West, barbarism and

civilisation.118 This perception of Eastern Europe continued in British rhetoric after the Cold

War. John Major described the crisis in Bosnia which was gradually beginning to emerge as a

genocide, as a result ‘of impersonal and inevitable historical forces beyond anyone’s

control’.119 This suggests that certain societies are more vulnerable to violence and genocide

than others, which comes from the assumption that Eastern Europe and the Balkans are

‘wired up’ in this way.120 This attitude is linked to media representations of the Balkans and

the belief that the Balkans are backward and uncivilised. This may go some way to

explaining the arms embargo placed on the whole of Yugoslavia, as though the whole area is

inherently primitive. Rifkind claimed that the history of the Balkans must be examined even

before the 1930s in order to explain the conflict in the 1990s, again reinforcing the concept of

‘ancient ethnic hatreds’ which were culturally determined, rather than a Serbian war of

aggression.121 According to Jean Seaton and Tim Allen, this evaluation ‘enabled the

governments of rich, industrial states to absolve themselves of responsibility for what was

happening’.122 This highlights that British human rights principles were selective of culture

and presumptions about the Balkan mentality prevented the British government from taking

more forceful action against the Serbs.

The evidence presented in this chapter indicates that the British government made

conscious decisions to avoid intervention despite ample evidence to suggest that human rights

abuses were taking place. It is well documented that international bystanders ‘set the

parameters within which the killing could be and was carried out with impunity’.123 And

Britain was heavily complicit in this, responding to atrocities in Rwanda and Bosnia with

national self-interest as a platform. By refusing to acknowledge the Genocide Convention

1948; preventing the Bosnian government from defending itself by imposing an arms

117 Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, pp. 140 118 Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, pp. 13 119 Levene, Mark, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: Volume 1: The Meaning of Genocide (London: I.B.

Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2005), pp. 91 120 Levene, Genocide, pp. 91 121 Gallagher, The Balkans after the Cold War, pp. 96 122 Seaton, Jean, and Allen, Tim, The Media of Conflict: War Reporting and Representations of Ethnic Violence

(London: Zed Books Ltd, 1999), pp. 2 123 Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, pp. 129

28

embargo; failing to fully implement a necessary arms embargo on extremist Hutus in

Rwanda; through reluctance to provide essential resources to UNAMIR and UNPROFOR;

calling for less troops to be deployed in both assistance missions in order to protect their own

troops; and by basing decisions on a traditional Christian and European identity which did not

involve the Bosnian victims, the British government failed to maintain its commitment to

human rights as outlined at the close of the Cold War. This chapter has also identified a

consensus between the British government and the media and patterns across both, indicating

that both institutions have combined to form a policy of indifference towards genocide in

Bosnia and Rwanda.

29

Conclusion

The Bosnian and Rwandan genocides offered a chance for Britain to demonstrate its

new focus on human rights after the Cold War. Without the threat of Soviet influence in

Europe and the Third World, Britain and other UN member states were able to turn their

focus on the maintenance of peace and human rights. However, as Mikhail Gorbachev has

suggested, Western countries were unable to view the world from a moral stance after

communism as they were ‘bound hand and foot by egoistical calculations’.124 This

dissertation has argued that national security and self-interest continued to dominate British

foreign policy in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing. As a result, more than 500, 000

Rwandans and more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed.125 The British media and

the Major government failed to protect the victims of genocide despite its alleged

commitment to world peace and human rights at the close of the Cold War.

.The first chapter has highlighted the British media’s role in the neglect of the

genocides. Through its stance of moral relativism, the genocides were dismissed as an

example of tribalism and none of the West’s business. It was also not portrayed as a

genocide, but an ethnic war, further validating moral relativism. Likewise, the conflict in

Bosnia was depicted as a result of ethnic hatred. Balkanism has also been identified in the

British media at this time, used as an argument against intervention. This was contrasted with

the view that the Bosniaks were neighbours, fellow Europeans who required our help, which

suggests that the Rwandan’s ethnicity impeded on Britain’s desire to intervene. Coverage of

Newsnight has been significant, due to the previous focus on the print media. Newsnight

censored footage for the benefit of its viewers, giving an inaccurate representation of the

conflict in Rwanda. Reporters on the ground during the conflict attribute the media’s failure

to the position of objectivity expected of journalists, as the coverage did not identify a victim

in the conflicts. Finally, the media was preoccupied with the refugee crisis which emerged as

a result of the genocide in Rwanda, which was both simpler to cover and allowed Britain to

be portrayed in a more charitable light. This chapter has argued that these factors meant that

124 Gorbachev, Mikhail, ‘Postscript: From a New Philosophy to a New Politics’, Mikhail Gorbachev and

Daisaku Ikeda (ed.) Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century: Gorbachev and Ikeda on Buddhism and

Communism (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2005), pp. 146 125 Destexhe, Alain, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (London: Pluto Press, 1995), pp. 68; Smith,

Genocide and the Europeans, pp. 108

30

the British public, without accurate media coverage, were unable to form an attachment to the

victims and therefore expressed no interest in a military intervention.

The second chapter has highlighted that the British government placed national self-

interest before human rights which resulted in the neglect of the victims of genocide. John

Major’s political ideology explains his approach to foreign policy and his commitment to

national interest. The refusal of the government to acknowledge the Genocide Convention in

discussions on the Rwandan genocide meant that there was no legal obligation to intervene.

The implementation of the arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia and the failure to fully

implement an embargo on the genocidal Rwandan government have been seen as aiding and

abetting genocide. The British government did not take the peacekeeping missions seriously

in Rwanda and Bosnia, prioritising the safety of troops over the prevention of human rights

violations, by supplying minimal resources. There is also evidence of prejudice towards the

Muslim victims in Bosnia, as can be seen in the media, and of a Christian identity in rhetoric

towards the crisis. As in the media, Balkanist attitudes within government propagated the

view that there was nothing the West could do to help an inherently volatile region such as

the Balkans.

This dissertation has therefore argued that the British media and the British

government shared a rhetoric which formed a dismissive policy towards genocide in Bosnia

and Rwanda. Many of the attitudes that have been identified in the British media towards the

Bosnian and Rwandan genocides can also be seen in British government rhetoric and foreign

policy, and vice versa. Both displayed antipathy towards the fact that the Bosnian victims

were Muslim. Both portrayed the Balkans as a homogenous, backward cultural block. Both

the media and the government were guilty of misrepresenting the conflicts as civil wars in

which both sides were evenly matched, rather than genocides. This meant that the British

population were not accurately informed of the events in Bosnia and Rwanda and therefore

did not form enough of an attachment to push for government intervention. Additionally, the

discussions in parliament and the Security Council happened away from the public eye,

therefore the British population was unaware of the policies made by the British government

behind closed doors. This affected how much pressure was placed on the government to

intervene in the crises. This confirms Melvern’s argument that ‘there is secrecy in

Government and a lack of interest in the media’, as the lack of interest was possibly a result

of the secrecy in government.126 There is no reliable evidence to suggest that one influenced

126 Melvern, A People Betrayed, pp. 230

31

the other more. The primary sources consulted for this dissertation show that the media often

referred to government rhetoric and vice versa. But this dissertation highlights a relationship

between the two which contributed to an overall policy of indifference towards the genocides

in Bosnia and Rwanda.

32

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