World can no longer ignore genocide, warns Geldof

IRISH rock star Bob Geldof yesterday gave a moving speech about the dangers of human indifference to genocide, warning “words without actions are no good to dead people”.

The former Boomtown Rats singer was in Nottinghamshire to introduce the world’s first genocide centre, which it is hoped will help prevent future atrocities internationally.

The £10 million Aegis Institute, to be built next to the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Laxton, will become the permanent home of the Genocide Prevention Institute, which was launched in London two years ago.

At the launch Geldof said it was vital to create a centre to help stop genocide from happening all over the world.

He said that in Africa whole cultures were being wiped out not only by acts of atrocity, but by Aids and by developed countries not doing enough to help: “In northern Mali, 350 languages have been wiped out in the last year that we have no knowledge of, that we will never know again.

“Unless we are confounded in the most brutal way in the most shameful language, then we become northern Mali and all those lights of human genius just wink out.

“If you say ‘never again’ you have to show you mean it. Words without actions are no use to dead people.

“The Aegis Centre wishes to challenge our assumptions and indifference.

“It raises issues of politics, ideology, poverty, the environment, and most importantly, the international will to act.”

The new centre will be built by 2005 to house an exhibition on the causes and consequences of genocide as well as provide education, conference and research facilities.

As the Aegis Institute is built in Britain, a centre is also being built in Rwanda to commemorate the one million people who died in the genocide of the 1994 civil war.

One of the project’s creators, Stephen Smith, said: “We started this project because we felt it was important that people in Britain see that the holocaust is not a detached event in the past but that people really think about its meaning in history and its challenge to our society.”

The centre is a response to the increasing recurrence of genocide, including the killings in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing and ideologies such as those that spawn international terrorism.