The Genocide

It seems that Kigali is rather like Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh in that there isn’t really that much to do there for tourists other than visit the memorials and museums devoted to “The Genocide”!... And like everyone else, Im going to do my moral duty to go learn about what happened, pay my respects to “those that were lost” and then spend some time thinking about it/us etc…

The Genocide.

Well its been written about thousands of times Im sure and you can easily go read about it on the web whenever you want to but Im gonna give my shortened version here none the less…
Note: my version here has been greatly simplified and truncated and is as I recall it... Thus there are definitely omissions and probably mistakes... You should really read up on it if you are interested, though its rather "dark" reading!

 

Right… Two main Tribes in the area Hutus (mixed produce and livestock farmers) comprising about 85% of then population and Tutsis (nomadic Cattle herders) at about 15% of the population. The Belgians were the first colonial power in the area and they used the “wealthier” Tutsi minority (since wealth at the time was largely measured by the number of cattle one owned) as the “overseeers” of the masses,,, and so they got all the plum positions in the administration and this reinforced the wealth etc… Then the French took over the Belgian colonies and continued the same system but they also reinforced the race identity by issuing ID cards to everyone with their race clearly marked on it… and the positions of power and wealth continued to be abused and amplified as is normal human behavior. And so the unhappy masses knew exactly who to blame for their exploitation and instead of accurately applying the blame to the people in power, the applied the blame to the race of the people in power…

And given enough exploitation and some hate propaganda then when the opportunity comes along, terrible things happen! And the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 that lasted 3 months and killed about one million people out of a population of seven million is what happened here!

We all more or less know that but some things that most of us foreigners don’t know is that it was anything but unpredictable or unexpected!

The fact is that for about 30 years prior to “the big one” there had been sporadic mass killings of Tutsis by the Hutus (Pogroms where thousands of people were killed) and many hundreds of thousands of Tutsis had already fled to live in neighbouring Tanzania, Uganda, and DRC). Leading up to the 1994 atrocities, there was a concerted campaign of propaganda against the Tutsis and the national army was being armed and trained by the French (nice juicy arms / training contracts no doubt)… The government which was newly installed by democratic elections and completely Hutu set up (for a year in advance) special training for Hutu militias on how to kill people! It was so clear that the there was going to be trouble but the remote UN administration and the Belgians and the French decided “not to heed the warnings”… The whole thing was very thoroughly planned right down to which groups would work in which towns and how to trigger it all with a few well-chosen assassinations of the PM, the replacement PM, and a few Belgian foreign troops… and then they really got started… Within one week of the assassinations society had fallen to pieces and it was mob rule and mass murder in every corner of the country… In the pogroms of the past few decades, churches had been safe ground for the persecuted Tutsis but not this time, the trained bands of Interhamwe went directly to the churches and massacred the Tutsis by the thousands… grenades, machine guns or the local favorite machetes and clubs, rape and torture added for good measure and a bit of entertainment I suppose!… No one was spared, babies children, adults, and any moderate Hutus who dared speak against it, well they got the exact same treatment… What can you say… What can you do…  So So Horrific… So So Pathetically Human

Its not like it’s a new story of course there are plenty of examples of this exact sort of thing happening regularly through this last century… The Armenian Genocide in Turkey (Ottoman Empire) at the start of the century, the Jewish Holocaust by the Germans in the 30s, The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 70s, and Im pretty sure there are plenty of example out of Asia that I don’t know much about (Japan in Nanjing? Or China and the Koreans?) and Africa has some other examples too…. And there are very strong similarities in the way most of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia and New Zealand have been treated too and repeated incidents of mass killings etc.

 

…Again, its abominably clear from these things that pretty much all of us (that means you and me too!) have the ability to “switch off” our humanity, go into “beast mode” and apparently enjoy doing the most horrific things to other people … even to our friends!  yep Here in Rwanda, many many of the perpetrators were close friends of their victims!

Im at a loss to understand… and so Im at a loss to know what to do or how to react or even how to think… just lost!   Its to do with our ability to define an “us” and a “them”. Its to do with our ability to hate! (ill-directed or otherwise)... but how to get enjoyment out of taking action on that emotion of Hate… that confounds me!

All I can say is that the classic little Judaeo-Christian metaphorical idea of the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other seems to hold a disappointing amount of reality.

I just hope I never let my “monster” out of the box...

 

note: The images below are disturbing!

 

 

 

 

The main memorial site in the capital is the resting place of a quarter of a million Rwandans!!

 This is a small catholic church from a community about 30Km from the capital... About 5000 Tutsis were murdered here ... They had taken refuge here but the Interhamwe didn't show any mercy... The holes in the wall are where they threw grenades into the crowded church!

The same small church but a satellite building where they taught Sunday school to children... The stain on the wall is where the Intrehamwe smashed the small children against the wall to kill them...

 

 Inside the main church are the remains of over 2000 of the victims...
I don't mean to be insensitive toward the people who died here but just reading the staggering numbers in words doesn't really convey the horrors, but I find a graphic picture definitely helps bring the truth home so to speak... Absolute horror...