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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“Genocide” |
David. Age 10.
Favourite sport - Football.
Enjoyed - Making people laugh.
Dream - become a doctor.
Last words - the UN will come for us.
Cause of death - tortured to death.
We are in Kigali, capital of Rwanda. A beautiful, relaxing and now stable city - 'the land of a thousand hills'. The city is moving on, moving forward and healing in a modern and admirable way, but you somehow can't (and shouldn't) forget what happened here in 1994, when we were reminded yet again of the horrors that us seemingly civilised humans can visit upon each other.
Today we visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial centre. What we have seen, read and heard we will never forget and though we never wanted this blog to be a site for social commentary and boring lectures, it feels right to share with you what we have learnt.
The memorial building is designed to lead you around in a circle, first telling you Rwanda's colonial history before describing events prior to, during and in the aftermath of the genocide.
A number of the exhibits are particularly heart wrenching: photos of loved ones lost; bloodstained and battered clothing retrieved from the victims; and skulls and other bones of the genocide victims. The opening words from this blog entry are from the children's memorial which is the last room you enter, where surviving family members have provided photos and details of their lost children, including how they died. Children as young as 2 macheted to death! The memorial centre is a place to remember, to mourn and, importantly, to learn.
In 1994, in the space of 90 days, over a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred here in a premeditated campaign, in addition to 10s of thousands who were tortured, humiliated and raped, but who survived. The genocidaires (the Interahamwe militia but also ordinary civilians who had been stoked up by aggressive propaganda) visited people in their homes and clubbed them to death with any instrument that could be found. Children were smashed to death against trees, women gang-raped and sexually brutalised with sharpened sticks or shotguns. They were often killed by their friends and neighbours, people they had dined with and who their children had played with. Even church leaders were complicit, inviting the militia into their churches to slaughter those who had sought sanctuary there.
256,000 people were massacred in the Kigali area alone and most of these lay buried in the mass graves at the memorial centre. The names of those they have managed to identify line the black tablets around the site. You felt that you should read every one of these names our of respect but there were too many. 11 of just one family had been killed.
What is so maddening about this genocide is the events that led to it, the reaction, and the fact that our collective 'never again's continue to ring as hollow as they have since they were first uttered after the Holocaust. As one survivor put it, "when they said 'never again' after the Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?'.
As for the causes, these are many and complex but it is important to remember that a Hutu-Tutsi divide did not really exist prior to the Belgian colonisation. Society was organised into 18 clans, with Hutu, Tutsi and Twa being classifications within those clans, and which could change depending on an individual's circumstances. People lived as one, intermarrying, speaking one language and sharing common myths. With colonisation, the very minor Hutu-Tutsi distinctions were exaggerated along racial lines, especially with the introduction of identity cards in the 60's. The Tutsis were first favoured by the Belgians and enjoyed positions of responsibility. Also stoking things up was the Catholic Church whose doctrine in the area labelled the Tutsis as 'superior'.
When independence came in 1962 however, the Belgians turned the tables, favouring the majority Hutus and basically putting a Hutu government in charge of the country. Almost immediately the consequences of the fostering of the Hutu-Tutsi divide could be seen, and years of resentment towards the Tutsis came to the fore. The slaughter began.
And as they died in their thousands, the international community did nothing, even though they had been warned, in some considerable detail, as to the events which would take place. Until rebel forces took control of the capital 3 months after the genocide first started, not a single extra peacekeeper entered the area. The UN Lieutenant General of the meagre force that was there, and who had been desperately seeking more troops in the area estimated it would have taken only 5,000 personnel to have stopped this tragedy.
Meanwhile, Darfur continues, as do countless other atrocities across the globe. The US and the UK continue to deny the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkey in 1915, presumably for strategic military reasons. The German government refuse to acknowledge the Namibian genocide of the Hereros people because they are scared of land claims. Not one person has ever been brought to justice over the killing fields in Cambodia.
And so we leave you with this:
"If you must remember, remember this . . .
The Nazis did not kill six million Jews
Nor did theInterahamwekill a million Tutsis.
They killed one and then another, then another . . .
Genocide is not a single act of murder,
It is a million acts of murder"
previous travel blog entry
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