Genocide

Why make movies about history's most epic failures of humanity, reducing them to some 120 minutes of melodrama, suspense, and tear-jerking? The question has haunted so many Holocaust films, with their portrayals of EZ-to-read heroism set against heart-rending strains of klezmer. HBO's Rwanda-set "Sometimes in April" clearly articulates the best answer after its final credits, with the simple phrase "Never Forget. " Translating the horrors of genocide into fictional stories is a way of embedding them in our cultural memory.

A judge lodged a second genocide charge against a former Guatemalan dictator on Monday accusing him in the massacre of more than 200 villagers. The charge came just months after a similar order to try ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt for the killings of 1,700 Indians. Judge Carol Patricia Flores ruled prosecutors presented sufficient evidence to warrant a trial on the new charge. In the latest case, prosecutors allege Rios Montt was responsible for a military operation that killed 201 farmers in the northern hamlet of Dos Erres.

WASHINGTON - President Obama yesterday refrained from branding the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey a "genocide," breaking a campaign promise while maintaining that his views about the World War I slaughter had not changed. The phrasing of Obama's written statement attracted heightened scrutiny because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the two countries on Wednesday announced a road map for normalizing relations after years of tension. The administration coordinated its statement about the apparent breakthrough with the Turkish government and Swiss mediators.

THE HAGUE - Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander, went on trial here Wednesday facing charges of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity in some of the bloodiest events of the Bosnian war in the 1990s, including the Srebrenica massacre and the siege of Sarajevo. The court heard a prosecutor's recitation of atrocities said to have been committed by soldiers directly under Mladic's command as Bosnian Serb units carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing and, in Sarajevo, directed a "spigot of terror" that could be opened or closed at will against...

ISTANBUL -- Turkish scholars at a twice-canceled conference on the massacre of Armenians in the early 20th century cautiously discussed the politically charged topic yesterday, avoiding inflammatory language as protesters denounced the gathering as traitorous. The academic conference is the first time an institution in the modern Turkish republic has hosted a public event in which speakers will be permitted to openly discuss whether their ancestors committed the first genocide of the 20th century.

CAMBRIDGE -- In "Small Dances About Big Ideas," choreographer Liz Lerman has, in the space of an hour, pulled together the blood and tears and particulate matter that course through the genocide that has ravaged places from Nazi Germany to Rwanda, Darfur to Uganda. Yet her aim is not to tug at our heartstrings, or make us wring our hands. The piece, commissioned for Harvard Law School's conference on the legacy of the Nuremberg trials, exists to address questions at once mundane and profound: How can a Western courtroom, or a tribunal in another culture, be an...

Near the beginning of “The Overwhelming,’’ a white academic named Jack Exley, newly arrived in Rwanda in early 1994, wastes no time in lecturing his hosts about the need to throw off the shackles of history. “We’re the ones that have to be willing to stand up and make a difference,’’ he tells Rwandans during an embassy party, making presumptuous use of the first-person plural. “This is how history moves forward. One pebble redirects the river!’’ A party guest has a question for the glib American: “But what if the river becomes an ocean?

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey warned the French president yesterday against signing a law that would make it a crime to deny that the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constituted genocide, saying such a move would deal a heavy blow to the relations between the two countries. France's Parliament approved the bill late Monday, risking more sanctions from Turkey and complicating a delicate relationship with the rising power. Officials in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government insisted the vote didn't directly target the country.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have appealed the tribunal’s decision not to indict Sudan’s president on charges of waging genocide in Darfur, according to a document released yesterday. The court charged Omar al-Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity in March for allegedly orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape, and forced expulsions in Darfur province. But judges said there was insufficient evidence to merit charging him with genocide.

MOSCOW - Russia issued a DVD and a thick book of historical documents yesterday to dispute claims that the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s amounted to genocide. Russian archivists and historians pressed the Kremlin's case that the Stalin-era famine - which killed millions of people - was a common tragedy across Soviet farmlands, countering efforts by Ukraine's pro-Western president to convince the world that Ukrainians were targeted for starvation. "Not a single document exists that even indirectly shows that the strategy and tactics chosen for Ukraine differed from those...

Twenty years after his troops began brutally ethnically cleansing Bosnian towns and villages of non-Serbs, Gen. Ratko Mladic went on trial Wednesday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal accused of 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ailing 70-year-old Mladic's appearance at the U.N. court war crimes tribunal marked the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. The trial is also a landmark for the U.N. court and international justice — Mladic is the last suspect from the Bosnian war to go on trial here.

The president of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal on Tuesday rejected a bid by former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic to replace the Dutch presiding judge in his trial and delay the start of the case. Mladic's long-awaited trial on 11 charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes is scheduled to begin Wednesday morning. The 70-year-old former general argued that judge Alphons Orie is biased because of his Dutch nationality in charges linked to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which Dutch U.N. peacekeepers have been accused of...

Rwanda's highest court on Friday rejected an appeal by an opposition politician who was convicted for organizing an illegal gathering, inciting ethnic division and threatening state security. Bernard Ntaganda, a former leader of Rwanda's PS-Imberakuri party, was not in court when the ruling was made to uphold his four-year jail sentence. He was arrested in July 2010 and convicted in February 2011. Ntaganda, a Hutu, was accused of describing the government of President Paul Kagame as Tutsi-dominated and then calling for a power-sharing agreement...

Rwanda's highest court says the case against a political opposition leader will proceed after she withdrew from the case. Wednesday's ruling means the prosecution will present its case Monday against Victoire Ingabire, who faces charges related to threatening state security, genocide denial and promoting ethnic division. Ingabire announced this week that she will no longer report to court to answer to charges she alleges are politically motivated. Her trial, along with that of her four co-accused, began in September.

Next Sunday at 3:15 p.m., the Armenian Library and Museum of America is holding "Joint Commemoration of Three Genocides," a free event that commemorates the Armenian genocide as well as the Irish famine of the 1840s and 1850s, and the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians under the rule of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. In addition to a brief talk on the three events, a priest will lead a service with the help of a Ukrainian choir. The event will be in the third floor gallery of the museum at 65 Main St. in Watertown.

CONCORD, N.H. - A New Hampshire woman who prosecutors say lied about her role in the Rwanda genocide to obtain citizenship will go on trial for the second time after a jury failed to reach a verdict in her case last month. Beatrice Munyenyezi of Manchester, 42, has been in custody since her indictment in June 2010 on two charges of lying on immigration and naturalization papers. Prosecutors said she commanded extremist Hutu militia and ordered the rapes and killings of Tutsis in Butare in 1994.

MOSCOW - The 1930s famine that killed millions of peasants, mainly in Soviet Ukraine, should not be considered genocide, Russia's lawmakers said in a resolution yesterday. Renowned writer and Soviet-era dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn backed the Kremlin line on the divisive issue, dismissing Ukrainian assertions that the famine was genocide as a "fable. " The 370-56 vote in Russia's lower parliament house, and the rare comment from the 89-year-old Solzhenitsyn, were a pointed rejection of contentions by Ukrainian leaders that the Soviet authorities engineered the famine to target...

GUATEMALA CITY - German Chupina, a former Guatemalan police director wanted in Spain for crimes against humanity, died Sunday of health problems related to old age, family members said. He was 86. Mr. Chupina, police director from 1978 to 1982, was arrested in November 2006 after Guatemalan Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu levied charges of genocide, torture, and state terror in a Spanish court against him and seven other former military and government officials. Human rights groups accused Mr. Chupina of the nation's worst...

A play about a genocide I read with interest Jeffrey Gantz's review about the play "Deported," not least of all because I am Armenian and a child and grandchild of victims of the genocide ("‘Deported' veers from harsh realities to stark dreams," g, March 12).The review was accurate and well researched about Ottoman Turkey's perpetrated genocide. Thank you. LUCINE ZADOIAN KOUCHAKDJIAN Arlington Munch and the musical pantheon I want to thank Jeremy Eichler for two outstanding pieces lately in the Globe.

A federal judge has declared a mistrial in the case of a woman accused of lying to obtain US citizenship by denying her role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Jurors had failed to reach a verdict. Beatrice Munyenyezi, 41, became a US citizen in 2003 and moved to Manchester. She faced deportation to Rwanda upon conviction. Authorities say Munyenyezi was an extremist Hutu who killed and enabled the rapes of untold Tutsi victims. Prosecution witnesses testified they saw her direct rapes and killings, but her relatives testified they never saw her do so. (AP)