Ten Years Later: Women are Dying and the World is Still Watching

Do you remember April 1994? Rwanda was in the grip of Genocide. The Tutsis and some moderate Hutus were being killed - no, not just killed; they were hacked to death with machetes or clubs studded with nails; burned alive; thrown and buried alive or dead in pit latrines or mass graves. A million people were slaughtered in a hundred days of genocidal frenzy. Women, who weren't murdered, were forced to watch their families being killed, and were then systematically raped and kept as sex slaves, or sexually mutilated as a strategic weapon of war.
What did the world do? You got it; zip; zilch; nada; not a damn thing.

The London-based Survivors' Fund SURF have launched a campaign for reduced-cost AIDS drugs for Rwandan genocide survivors. Thousands of survivors are now dying of AIDS ten years later. The gang-rape during the massacres left 70% of Rwandan widows HIV positive.

Blair states that if Rwandan genocide was to be repeated then western nations would have an obligation to intervene, but what is being done NOW to help those who are still dying as a result of the genocide?
You got it.

The official channel for American aid USAID particularly mentions prisoners convicted or suspected of participating in the genocide as a target group for HIV testing and counselling. Even the leaders of the genocide who are facing justice at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania, routinely receive antiretroviral treatment. The British government has pledged £200 000 over two years to treat genocide witnesses with AIDS but has not offered treatment to the wider population of rape victims.

If you want to help then please sign the petition on the SURF website.