The 1994 Genocide; a scream never heard

In 1994, Rwanda, a small state became the site of unimaginable deliberate human destruction. The horror that took a hundred days to end, a hundred of the darkest period in the history of the continent; hundreds of extermination campaigns claimed over 20 percent of the population under the explicit direction of the state with the principle targets being members of the country’s Tutsi community. Rwandans were traumatised by killings beyond their comprehensions; it was a conflict of betrayal as the killings were efficient and well planned. The country sunk into hell, the laughter kept silent, the smiles froze, and the shouts of horror replaced the beautiful songs of the women and children. To some people, it was hard to believe that in the few weeks an unimaginable evil had turned Rwanda’s gentle green valleys and mist-capped hill into a stinking nightmare of rotting corpses piled on top of each other in classrooms and churches as Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher recounts, “the most horrible and systematic human massacre we have had occasion to witness since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis’.” The killings took place in broad daylight; in schools, hospitals, clinics, churches, and other places where people sought refuge. Doctors murdered their patients, engineers murdered the paupers, lawyers murdered their clients, the clergy murdered their congregation, politicians killed the electorate and neighbours killed fellow neighbours. All these categories of people participated in varying magnitudes with the state orchestrating and bureaucratizing the genocide, of course using state resources. The incitement was made over national radio and every part of society was involved. The extermination went on….thousands of innocents left alone to die, no body helped, no one came.The international community watched the horror from a distance despite the legal and moral obligation to prevent the genocide especially under the 1948 Convention on genocide. Rwanda became the least on everyone’s agenda and there was reluctance to take even the slightest action. The international community encouraged the Belgian government to withdraw its forces in Rwanda, effectively condemning to death thousands who camped at the then ETO-KicukiroIn March 1998, the then US president Bill Clinton acknowledged the failure of international community to deal effectively with the situation in Rwanda. While speaking to the crowd assembled at Kigali International Airport, Clinton said: “We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred” in RwandaFrom memory to actionToday, as many discover the horror that took place and seek to understand how and why violence of this character could have happened in our time, and as we seek to answer the very complex question as to what led to the 1994 debacle, there is need for a paradigm shift from prejudice and bigotry to justice and tolerance.Shifting from ideology of hate to that of love and bringing up good people that value humanity, for the one million plus Rwandans who died is not a matter of abstract statistics. For unto each person there is a name, an identity; each person is a universe. As our sages tell us, “whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe.” Conversely, whoever has killed a person; it is as if they have killed an entire universe. Thus, the abiding imperative: we are each, wherever we are the guarantors of each other’s destiny -- this is the only way that our memories can bear fruits of love, peace and harmony among Rwandans. There are conceptual issues that seem not to have permeated fully in our society, yet they are prudent in understanding the moral questions inherent in genocide and ideology of hate. Rwandans ought to; avoid comparison of pain, use good precision of language, choose carefully the source of information and avoid stereotyping descriptions and most importantly avoid oversimplifying the Genocide. Therefore translating our memories to actions requires an all-round interdisciplinary approach to citizens’ education – an approach that helps Rwandans move from thought to judgment to participation. Citizen education on Genocide helps Rwandans to understand the forces that undermined peace and egalitarianism in Rwanda, betrayed a generation of youthful Rwandans and later to the genocide forms – for these forces are still with us. This shows that it is our obligation as Rwandans to write our own history – translate our thoughts into actions and participate in cultivating the ideology of love and pragmatism. Most importantly re-categorisation of our communities based on cross-cutting issues such as gender and profession. Let us live by past memory and turn it into action. Yes! We need the past so that we learn from our own history, connect the present to the future, and find solutions to our own problem. So, we should remember all those who perished, young and old to shape the country’s history.Let’s join our hands together as Rwandans in championing the struggle to remember – and celebrate – the survivors of the Genocide – the true heroes of humanity. For they witnessed and endured the worst of inhumanity, but somehow found, in the depths of their own humanity, the courage to go on, to rebuild their lives as they helped build our communities.David Nkusi, cultural heritage analyst/philosophical studies consult.