Until when shall the world remain indifferent?

I was two months old then and far removed from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi when it happened. However, my Rwandan roots have come to define who I am and shape how I see the world today; the Genocide is always at the back of my mind like a forgotten obviousness tattooed in my past. I have acquaintances who witnessed firsthand the Genocide and tales such as those of mothers who have had their hands stained by pint upon pint of their children’s blood always serve to remind me that there is a unique pain that empathy alone can’t reach. There is one thing that I haven’t forgotten, the splinter in my paw if you will, and that is the international community’s actions during and prior to the Genocide. There were those who harmed us directly by providing military support to the acting government then and there were also those under whose indifference we bled. While countries like France went out of their way to arm and train the Interahamwe militia, the UN ordered Unamir, the peacekeeping troops in Rwanda to stand down. Meanwhile, the United States refused to even acknowledge what was going on in Rwanda as “genocide”. Time was wasted in intellectual debates and PR exercises on what kind of wording would be more palatable to the world, what word would paint the massacre of over 400 people per minute – a death rate faster than that of the Jewish Holocaust – as just another African civil war. Such countries as France and Belgium have been repeatedly called out, and rightly so, as symbols of the failure of the international community to put Rwanda’s humanitarian needs before their political interests. That said, this is not an exercise in finger wagging, at least not for this particular tragedy. I am writing this today for Gaza, for Palestine, for Israel, for Syria and for other places whose atrocities the media is shy to shove in our faces. The only consolation Rwandans had after 1994 was the remorse that followed the Genocide, at least by some. Bill Clinton called Rwanda his personal failure, the UN owned up to its mistakes and when the French are not busy acting like the injured party in this relationship, they too are slowly learning to own up to their role in the Genocide. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a real apology in 2050. The general sentiment was that never again would the world stand by as helpless groups of people are persecuted unjustly; that my country’s genocide took us to a dark place we would never revisit; that we were a lesson well learnt. Yet here I am, enacting the revised script of my own people’s tragedy and this time as part of the international community whose indifference Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, and others will look back on as unforgettable and quite possibly, unforgivable. Perhaps like you, a part of me would like to be able to think ‘rationally’ about this and group all these victims as people who are ‘other’ to me and therefore inconsequential to my existence. However, the imaginary line we like to pretend exists between our right to personal happiness and the duty we owe humanity was never there to begin with. Knowing the history of these conflicts and the past events that shaped up the current events is great but, once again, the danger of making these crises intellectual, political or anything else but humanitarian is prominent. That Hamas can use Palestinians as human shields is shameful. That Israel can legally get away with bombing civilian residences in Gaza because they issue a warning beforehand is shameful. It is no longer enough to simply say a silent prayer for Gaza; enough noise needs to be made to waylay our collective indifference. I urge you to stand up today for Gaza, and tomorrow to stand up for places where the spotlight won’t reach. After all, we “have always depended on the kindness of strangers”. The writer is a Rwandan currently studying in the United States.