It would be impossible to be here in Rwanda and not make any reference to the terrible events of 1994, which has brought Rwanda international fame and recognition. There is no doubt that the country is keen to put these events behind them and demonstrate to the rest of the world that atrocities like this will never take place again.
Part of our training in preparation for coming to Rwanda was to reinforce the message that the country no longer comprises of ethnic groups but the entire population are all Rwandan and everyone I have spoken with, is fiercely proud of their country and the way in which they are moving forward.
But when you remember that the genocide happened only 18 years ago you have to remind yourself that most of the population over that age will have very vivid memories of the events, which took place. There is hardly a person you meet who has not lost some members of their family and many are the sole survivors.
For those of you of a younger generation I have included a brief account of what led up to and then took place over a100 day period, commencing 7th April 1994.
“The country of Rwanda has had an interesting history due to their ethnic groups, the Hutus, the majority, and the Tutsis, who consist of about 15-18% of the population. The Tutsis were more prominent in the royalty and hierarchy of the country but most of them were still peasants. The Hutus were the farmers and the Tutsis ran the cattle. During the time of European Colonization, the Belgians came to Rwanda and decided to further the gap between the peaceful Hutus and Tutsis. The Belgians saw the Tutsis as more like themselves; therefore, they took them under their wing and educated them and brought them up to be the upper echelon of society. The Belgians created a class system and discriminated between the two groups thereby creating a tension, which had not previously existed.
In 1962, Rwanda gained their independence from Belgium. The Europeans left the country in a state of discord with the majority of Hutus who were able to gain back their power from the Tutsis. Soon the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (PARMEHUTU) came into power. The once oppressed Hutus decided to take revenge and many Tutsis were killed. 200,000 Tutsi refugees fled to neighbouring countries to escape the violence that was taking place in their country.
In 1973, Juvenal Habyarimana came into power through a military coup and undermined the PARMEHUTU however the new President still relied on Hutu Nationalism. The Rwandan refugees who had fled during the violence before Habyarimana took power, tried coming back into the country. They were soon turned away and were told, due to overpopulation they could not return to their homes. The refugees soon formed a rebel army mainly in Uganda called the Rwandese Patriotic Front, the RPF. After many years of being exiled from their country and viewing the rise of Hutu extremists the RPF invaded Rwanda and forced President Habyarimana to sign an accord stating that the Hutus and Tutsis would share power in Rwanda.
In 1993, the problems escalated and the Hutu President, Melchior Ndadaye of Burundi, was assassinated. Ethnic tensions heightened quickly. 2,500 UN military officials from all over the world were sent to Rwanda to keep the peace between the Hutus and Tutsis. The UN officials tried to keep peace as best they could, however the cease fire agreement was threatened by the Interahamwe, a group of extremists who wished to exterminate all of the Tutsis.
On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down while returning from a peace meeting with the Tutsi rebels. This horrific event was the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide that followed and gave the Hutu extremists justification to kill the Tutsis; it is possible that Hutu extremists shot down the President’s plane in order to set their plan in motion. That night Hutus told all Rwandans to stay in their homes. Little did the Tutsis know that this was so that the Hutus could find them and kill them. Hutus marched throughout the country with machetes, guns, grenades, and clubs, brutally murdering both Tutsis and Hutu moderates. The identification cards that had been put into action back in the days of the Belgians were now used to round up the Tutsis. One of the main tools during the genocide was the radio. The Hutu extremists controlled the radio and used it to play hate propaganda messages telling all Hutus to kill the Tutsis. The radio also pinpointed where Tutsis were hiding.
As the genocide heightened, ten UN soldiers from Belgium were captured, tortured, and killed. Immediately the United States, France, Belgium, and Italy evacuated any personnel they had in Rwanda and they left the Tutsis and Hutu moderates to fend for themselves. The UN and U.S. refused to acknowledge the situation in Rwanda as a genocide because that would then have called for intervention. The rest of the world turned their backs on the helpless people of Rwanda who were being murdered. Only 200 UN soldiers were left as a peace-keeping force, instructed not to interfere except in self-defense. The Tutsis were told to take refuge in churches and schools, and yet those were the very places where the biggest massacres happened. Hospitals were raided and patients were killed. People’s homes were destroyed, property stolen and lives destroyed by the Hutu extremists trying to exterminate Rwanda of the Tutsi “cockroaches.” By mid May an estimated 500,000 Rwandans had already been killed. Thousands of bodies were floating down the Kigara River into Lake Victoria. Finally in July of 1994, three months after the genocide began, the RPF defeated the Hutus by invading from neighboring countries. They were finally able to halt the genocide. The RPF victory created 2 million more refugees (mainly Hutus) from Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis. By the end of this awful event of mass killings and extermination of the Tutsi people, 1/10 of the population had been murdered, 800,000 people in close to 100 days.
And so it is particularly fitting that this week, the country begins a period of 100 days of mourning commencing 7th April and this first week is recognized as “Genocide Memorial Week”.
Waking up on Saturday morning I was immediately struck by the fact that everything was eerily quiet and I could detect very little movement outside, not the usual hustle and bustle of people going to the fields to work and there were no radio sounds blaring out from either side of the fence and so it was for the rest of the day. I knew that shops would be closed and that people would be observing this memorable day in churches and within their own community groups. We had been told during this period of time to maintain a low profile and be respectful of this mourning period, we were unsure whether buses would be running but as it has turned out most things throughout the week have only closed for a period of time each afternoon to allow communities to come together and have the opportunity to discuss and remember and more importantly how to forgive, live with one another and move on. Offices have closed at lunchtime each day and shops and bars remain closed until about 6.00pm at night but other than the purple ribbons that many people are wearing, life has continued as usual. Around the country each district and area will hold their own special commemorative ceremonies throughout the forthcoming weeks.
During our first week of in country training we went to visit the Genocide Memorial Centre here in Kigali, a very sobering and thought provoking journey through the story of the genocide which finishes off in the children’s room where you are shown photographs and brief descriptions of some of the many thousands of children who were brutally slaughtered during the genocide. By the end of the journey we all chose to sit on our own outside in the gardens for a period of contemplation, numbed by the mindless futility of this atrocity and the shame that we, in the rest of the world, stood back and allowed this to happen.
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