Campbell says he was told by villagers that all forces had committed some abuses, including theft, beatings, and rape. The ADFL and RPA, however, had perpetrated greater crimes. Using knives, machetes, and bayonets, the troops had killed civilian refugees—perhaps hundreds in this small area—mainly men, women, and children too weak to flee. Campbell photographed the fresh depressions that marked the mass graves, and the remains of still-unburied bodies on the roadside.  Upon returning to New York, Campbell drafted a report on his mission, "What Kabila Is Hiding," that drew media attention around the world. Campbell believes that the evidence he had gathered pushed the U.N. not to give up its own planned investigation of the massacre and forced the international community to re-evaluate and ultimately withdraw the support it had begun to offer to Kabila's government. The U.N.'s subsequent abandonment of its investigation makes it likely that Campbell's report will long remain the most definitive account of this monstrous time. He is the first to admit, however, that despite his mission's significance, it represents but a microcosm of much larger, more complex, and chronically unresolved political circumstances. As a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic in 1986 and later, working for Doctors Without Borders, in the summer of 1994 while finishing his master's in international policy at Columbia, Campbell was introduced to a grim byproduct of the Rwandan genocide: one of the world's most infamous refugee camps in Goma, Zaire. Within several months he was appointed Goma Coordinator of the International Human Rights Law Group's Zaire Empowerment Project—a low-profile, "behind-the-scenes," project that sought to empower Zairians to promote and protect their own rights and work toward a democratic state. Though much of what transpired during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 is unfathomable to those who live in relatively stable societies, the aftermath of this initial horror—the cycle of genocide and counter - genocide, of gross human rights violations followed by impunity, of totalitarian regimes that nurture instability as a means of survival—is in some ways even more unbelievable. During interviews with the New York Times and Washington Post and on CNN, the BBC, NPR, and Public Television's News Hour, Campbell has repeatedly implored the international community to pay more attention to the region. Campbell is heartened to see the current international outpouring of relief for those who have been persecuted in Kosovo, but finds it frustrating "when we try to draw attention to tragedies of similar dimension in other parts of the world, especially Africa and Asia, that get much less reaction from governments, the United Nations, or the media. And I don't think we should be shy about facing the fact that Kosovo has received relatively more international attention and support because it's in Europe and the people affected are largely white. Drawing attention to the 600,000 or so Sri Lankans displaced by their 17-year-old civil war, or the half million refugees in Guinea, for example, are much more difficult battles." Despite the grave and often disturbing subject matter of his research, Campbell feels fortunate to have work that can truly make a difference. "It's nice to be able to see clear results, in the form of governments (including our own) that react to our recommendations, and most importantly, appreciative victims ... I view it as very similar to what I did as an ESSO (Exeter Social Service Organization) volunteer when at PEA, or what my brother Tim '89 was doing the past couple of years at a treatment center for kids with serious emotional and legal problems, or the way that my friend Uwe Brandes '84 goes about his socially conscious urban planning. It's all the same—it seems that often it's more the way we do things rather than what exactly we are doing that matters. Exeter empowered us in many ways to make choices to do whatever it is that we find rewarding." —Partridge Boswell Partridge Boswell is executive director of the Lebanon Opera House in Lebanon, N.H. |
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