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All Things Considered Home Page30th Anniversary of ATC
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All Things Considered

1994

  • As South Africans prepare to vote in their first all-race elections, ATC airs a series of reports on the status of African nations. In the elections, Nelson Mandela wins with 60 percent of the vote.
  • Civil war breaks out in Rwanda.
  • NPR moves its Washington headquarters to 635 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., an area of the city known as Chinatown.
  • The June 13 show features special coverage on the killings in Rwanda, including reports from NPR's Michael Skoler in the Rwandan countryside:

    Linda Wertheimer: "Relief agencies and human rights groups believe as many as half a million people, mainly from the Tutsi minority, have died so far. The slaughter has horrified the world -- rivers choked with bodies, children hacked apart by machetes, and mobs that rule with grenades, guns, knives and clubs. Soldiers and civilian militias of the Hutu majority have carried out most of the killings."

    Skoler: "Here's a little girl in a pretty flowered dress, lifting up her skirt to show burn marks on her knees and legs, and a bandage. And here's a little boy who has lifted his shirt to show a wound from a spear right in the middle of his back between his shoulders... Why? In order to get rid of the Tutsi race?"

    Rwandan woman: "Yes."

    Hear the broadcast.