Unexpected Tribute

A very unexpected and gracious tribute to Romeo Dallaire, my personal greatest Canadian, was entered this evening as a reply to a post I made on my blog last January. Please go read it.

Update: these two articles in French indicate that there was a Senegalese intellegence officer by the name Amadou Démé in Rwanda at the time.   [My French is poor as is the Google translator so if anyone can identify more information about this, please do.]   In January 1994, he apparently uncovered arms caches of the Interhamwe (also known as the Interahamwe) militia which played a major role in the Rwandan genocide in the spring of 1994.   In 1994, Senegal sent a battalion-sized force to Rwanda to participate in the UN peacekeeping mission there.   Dallaire commanded that mission.

2 thoughts on “Unexpected Tribute”

  1. [Original comments…]

    Dr_Funk – September 11, 2004 2:26 PM
    http://canadianfunk.blogspot.com
    Dallaire refers in his book, Shake Hands with the Devil, to Captain Deme as part of a two man intelligence gathering unit that he had created to watch the government security forces starting around December 1993. The other member of the team was Frank Claes, a Belgian officer. Deme was made the commander of the intel unit after Frank Claes was withdrawn by the Belgians in April. Dallaire also mentions Deme as entering a cache of weapons belonging to one of the genocidaire organizations in the company of an informer. If that’s really Deme, its pretty cool that he would comment like that.

    Arthur – September 11, 2004 9:24 PM
    http://hoogervorst.dyndns.org/~arthur/weblog
    Maybe Alan should look up the IP address in his logs, so we can trace down where it was sent from?

    Alan – September 11, 2004 9:40 PM
    I did but am keeping it privat-ish given the integrity of the folks involved.

    Arthur – September 12, 2004 12:43 AM
    http://hoogervorst.dyndns.org/~arthur/weblog
    Well, then, if you still have the urge to find out for yourself, here’s how (running Windows 2000 or higher):
    – Start | Run…
    – type in: ‘cmd’ (no quotes)
    – After the prompt, type in ‘nslookup the.ip.address.here’ (no quotes).

    SayNay? – September 13, 2004 6:39 PM
    Wonderful tribute from Capt. Deme.

    The whole Rwandan genocide is a horror unimaginable in history. But it happened, and it happened on our watch. For it, and many other horrors in the last generation, we have much to answer for to history. If fear, like Belshazzar, we will be “weighed in the balance and found wanting”.

  2. [Further research done at the time in late 2004…]

    1. Information from the Admin.
    Permission Denied
    /archives/2004/january/permiss…
    9:07 PM ADT September 10th search.yahoo.com search.yahoo.com/search?p=emai…
    User: com.mx

    Search string was “email address of romeo dallaire”

    http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=email+address+of+general+romeo+dallaire&ei=
    at 9:23 pm the post is made from remote IP address 201.135.10.212, which is registered to a Mexican IP located in Mexico City.
    The email address provided is hotmail and the domaine is large common mexican domain.

    2. From the web

    From the UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION CONVENTION CONCERNING THE PROTECTION OF THE WORLD CULTURAL AND NATURAL HERITAGE, Report of the World Heritage Committee, Thirteenth Session at Paris, 11-15 December 1989.

    A delegate from Senegal is listed as:

    M. Amadou DEME
    Ministre, Conseiller
    Délégué permanent adjoint auprès de l’Unesco
    From the UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE WORLD CULTURAL AND NATURAL HERITAGE BUREAU OF THE WORLD HERITAGE COMMITTEE, Report of the Fifteenth session, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, 17-21 June 1991
    A delegate from Senegal is listed as:

    Mr. Amadou Deme
    Minister
    Deputy Permanent Delegate
    Permanent Delegation of Senegal to UNESCO
    1 rue Miollis
    PARIS 75015
    This person appears in two 1988 and 1989 UNESCO documents as well.

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