Push to classify Gukurahundi as genocide

A total of 18 candidates competed for the board. The decision was taken by secret ballot. The grouping – whose pronouncements on mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide are followed closely by both the United Nations and the International Criminal Court at the Hague – was formed in 1994 and has been dominated by academics and political analysts from the USA and Europe. The IAGS led the push to send former Yugoslav strongman Slobidan Milosovic and Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to The Hague. Hill, who has repeatedly called for the Gukurahundi massacres to be officially classified as genocide, said he would demand that African crimes against humanity gained the same status as those of the Nazi Holocaust and Cambodia. “People now accept the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda as genocide, but the previous attacks on Tutsis in that country, plus the Nigerian atrocities in Biafara in the 1960s and Gukurahundi have been ignored,” he said. Hill said that he had already started lobbying within the IAGS for a pronouncement to be made on Gukurahundi. “Once it is officially recognised as genocide, it will be easier to gain support for prosecution of those who carried out the killings,” he said.