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The United Nations war crimes tribunal investigating the butchery in Rwanda has convicted three Rwandan media executives of genocide in a case that will set a precedent for the new International Criminal Court.

The three men were convicted of using words as weapons. "You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the radio -- the medium of communication with the widest public reach -- to disseminate hatred and violence," wrote presiding Judge Navanethem Pillay in sentencing to life in prison Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of Radio Television des Mille Collines. "Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians."

More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in a three-month killing spree carried out by thousands of Rwandans against their neighbors. The seeds of the genocide, prosecutors say, were sown by news outlets like Kangura and Radio Machete.

Human rights advocates praised the verdict.

"This is the first time that journalists have been convicted for their participation in genocide, and I think it's a wake-up call to hatemongers everywhere that they can't incite people to commit genocide or ethnic cleansing," said Reed Brody, legal counsel to Human Rights Watch. "If you fan the flames, you'll have to face the consequences."

Karin Karlekar, the managing editor of Freedom House's annual survey of press freedom, praised the convictions but warned that some governments might use the verdict as a justification to clamp down on media in their own countries.

"Rwanda has already begun doing it," she said. "These guys were way over the line, but it's the gray area [of public speech] that is endangered, especially in countries with racial or ethnic tension."

The convictions mark the first time since the Nuremburg Trials in 1945-46 that hate speech has been prosecuted as a war crime.

If ever there was any case in which somebody deserved to be prosecuted for hate-speech, it’s this one. And that is what makes the case so complicated. The hate speech law under which the Rwandan media executives were convicted has been on the books for fifty years, but this is the first time it has ever been invoked.

Here is a little background: The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was passed following the Holocaust. It was championed by a Holocaust survivor who lost his whole family to the Nazis.

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish Jewish professor of international law who coined the word ‘genocide’ by linking the Greek word for race and the Latin root word for killing. The convention, in force since Jan. 12, 1951, defines genocide as the committing of certain acts with intent to destroy, wholly or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group and deems it a crime under international law, whether committed in war or peace.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was drafted in May, 1948, and adopted by a vote of 55-0 at a meeting of the U.N General Assembly in Paris on December 9, 1948. Three days later, on December 12, President Harry Truman signed it, although it took another forty years for the treaty to be ratified by the Congress.

Speaking of the Rwanda case, Secretary General Kofi Annan said this week, (from Paris, naturally), "Our time -- this decade, even -- has shown us that man's capacity for evil know no limits . . . Genocide -- the destruction of an entire people on the basis of ethnic or national origins -- is now a word of our time too, a stark and haunting reminder of why our vigilance must be eternal.''

Ahem.

Despite the genocide treaty, there’ve been plenty of certifiable cases of genocide that have occurred over the last fifty years. And the tyrants that committed them have, in many cases, been fawned over and even feted by the UN General Assembly.

Pol Pot murdered 1.7 million Cambodians – half the population – during the 1970’s. He never stood before a UN tribunal. There is, of course, Yasser Arafat, who has advocated genocide against the Jews. The UN wants to grant his government official statehood and has already granted the PLO observer status at the UN.

The UN said and did NOTHING when the combined armies of the Arab world launched FIVE wars of aggression aimed at destroying Israel and wiping out as many Jews as possible for the ‘crime’ of being Jews.

Individual acts of genocide – efforts to kill on account of ethnicity – are committed against Jews on a daily basis by Arab terror groups.

And the UN fought tooth and nail to keep Saddam Hussein in power. Even though the UN knew how brutal the Ba’athist regime actually was.

The UN knew BEFORE US troops arrived about Uday and Qusay and the shredding machines and torture chambers and killing fields. The UN knew that Saddam routinely ordered entire villages of ethnic Kurds wiped out – simply for being Kurds.

The Rwandan media executives were convicted under Article 2, paragraph (b) of the treaty. Article 2 defines genocide and has three distinctions. First, it must be against a ‘national, ethnical, racial or religious group’ and it consists of two sub-elements. Killing members of the group is genocide, according to paragraph (a).

But paragraph (b) includes causing ‘mental harm’ to an identifiable group as ‘genocide.’ Now you know why it took forty years for the Congress to ratify the treaty.

The Rwandan convictions make sense, given the evidence and the wording of the genocide treaty, and the treaty seemed to have worked as it was designed – although it is somewhat selectively applied, as we’ve seen.

“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” It was such an important principle that God inspired it to be written twice. Proverbs 14:12 and Proverbs 16:25 are identically worded.

The Bible says that in the last days, the antichrist will launch an all-out assault on Christianity. “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” (Revelation 13:7)

Christianity is a genocidal religion, according to the United Nations. The UN has previously ruled that telling people that Jesus is the only way to heaven causes serious mental harm to other religions. If Jesus is the only way, then Christianity is saying all the rest of the religions will lead people to hell.

It was for that reason that the Roman Empire persecuted Christians. Not because Rome didn’t have room for another god – they were up to their armpits in gods already. But if Jesus is Lord, the other gods are worthless, and consequently, their worshippers are condemned. To the Romans – and to the UN, that constitutes ‘hate speech.’

The Bible has already been declared ‘hate speech’ in Canada and Christians have been prosecuted for preaching from certain parts of it.

Virtually all of the tools of the antichrist’s eventual government came together at a single point in history, coinciding with the rebirth of Israel. The genocide treaty, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the founding of the Marxist World Council of Churches all took place in 1948.

The beginning of the ultimate ‘rumor of war’ – the Cold War – began with the Berlin Blockade of 1948. The official birth of the Computer Age is marked by the 1948 invention of the transistor by Bell Labs.

The General Agreement on Tarrifs and Trade, (GATT) which grew into the World Trade Organization, was signed in 1948.

North Korea’s Communist government that now threatens nuclear war was formed by Kim Il Sung in 1948. These are only a couple of examples out of hundreds.

Run a Bible search on 'fig tree'. See how many verses AREN’T referring to Israel.

For example, Joel 1:6-7 says, “For a nation is come up upon MY LAND, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. He hath laid MY vine waste, and barked MY FIG TREE: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white.”

Jesus told His disciples, “Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. . .”

And then the ‘kicker’ verse. . “Verily I say unto you, THIS generation SHALL NOT PASS, till all these things be fulfilled.” (Matthew 24:34-36)

Coincidence?

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