11.04.08 - FRANCE/GENOCIDE - NEW WEBSITE ON MASS CRIMES LAUNCHED

Arusha, 11 April 2008 (FH) - The institute of political studies of Paris set up last week a website dedicated to the knowledge of the mass crimes, of which the goal was to gather all information available on the subject.

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The English site is entitled "Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence".

It is a free site (www.massviolence.org), it states to be "first electronic data base of this type in the world". Contrary to a site like Wikipedia, each contribution will have to receive the approval of
qualified specialists.

Initiated in 2004, it was designed and produced by an international team of researchers and data processing specialists brought together around Mr Jacques Semelin, a historian and political economist.

On Rwanda, only a recent, rigorous and detailed chronology is for the moment available.

Mr Semelin, the research director at the National Scientific Research Center in France (CNRS), hopes to "avoid any instrumentalization of this site by any political entity or community".

Its officials want to make it, he explains, "the site of international reference for the propagation of knowledge on mass violence whether it is called genocide, ethnic purification or massacres".

PB/MM/SC

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