Background
There seems to be a difference of opinion about the ethic and historical distinctions between the two principal ethnic groups in Rwanda - the Hutus and the Tutsis. In around 1700 the nomadic Tutsi clans came from the upper White Nile to Rwanda andBurundi where they established themselves as a minority, ruling caste over the local Bantu, the Hutu. In the memorial in Kigali, a European anthropologist suggested that when the colonialists arrived they found Tutsi and Hutu living together in relative harmony. Rwanda was first colonised by the Germans and then the Belgians, both of whom used divide and rule tactics, favouring the Tutsi to further their colonial aims. In the late 1950's with the end of colonial rule in sight, the Belgians swapped sides to favour the Hutus - who preferred democracy and then independence. Ethnic clashes occurred in 1959 when the Tutsi king died, and the first independent government in 1962 was Hutu dominated, and introduced quotas for Tutsis. Many Tutsi fled to neighbouring countries, and proceeded to launch guerrilla attacks against the Rwandan government. In 1972 thousands of Hutus were massacred in neighbouring Tutsi dominated Burundi, causing even more anxiety in Rwanda. From this time until 1990 there were repeated massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda. During the 1980's many Tutsis in exile in Rwanda aligned themselves with General Museveni, who came to power in 1986. In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front, based in Uganda and lead by the current President Kagame (a key lieutenant of Museveni) invaded Rwanda with 5000 well armed and well trained troops. The Rwandan called for French and Belgium assistance, which they received, and were successful in repulsing the rebels. The army then went on a rampage, killing many Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers, who they accused of helping the rebels. Thousands were murdered and hundreds of thousands fled to Uganda. The RPF invaded again in 1991 and 1993. In 1994 all parties attended a peace conference in Arusha, Tanzania, where a power sharing agreement was reached. However on the return flight home the aeroplane containing the Rwandan and Burundian presidents was shot down by Hutu extremists killing them both. This was the tipping point for the unleashing of the Hutu extremists, those in suits within the government, the military and the Interahamwe - the militia made up of young Rwandans, trained and armed (often with machetes and other simple farming implements) by the men in suits. Lists of Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers had been prepared and the militia went from door to door, pursuing the people on the list, and then proceeding to hack them to death, and then did likewise for any of their relatives who were present. The militia also killed ten Belgian UN peacekeepers, because they knew it would provoke the Belgians in to leaving, and remove any potential for UN intervention. Guess what the Belgians did ? They upped and left - leaving a small UN force under the command of a truly heroic Canadian by the name of Romeo Dallaire.
Meanwhile around one million people, out of a population of around 6 million, and caused a couple of million refugees to flee to near by countries. Road blocks were set up, to stop people fleeing the perpetrators, all Rwandans had their ethnicity marked on their ID cards so it was easy for the potential victims to be identified. Those not caught in their homes, or fleeing on the roads were often hunted down where they sought refuge - in churches and schools, which were sometimes sealed off and bombed - killing all those inside. A tide of hatred washed over the population, and whilst the story of those who risked their own lives to protect others are many, the truth remains that millions of people, who formerly lived together as neighbours or even family, either took up weapons and killed people, or turned away and acquiesced. The streets of Kigali were littered with dismembered bodies - when the RDF forces took the capital all of the local dogs had to be killed because they had developed the taste for human flesh.
Interestingly Commander Dallaire had been informed that the Interahamwe was being trained, that plans were afoot to kill the Belgian peacekeepers to get the Belgians out of the country and that massacres were imminent, prior to the beginning of the killings by a high level defector in the Government. Dallaire sent an urgent cable to UN headquarters in New York, advising of the imminent threat, suggesting that even a small UN force would likely to be effective, and requesting such a force be sent. What happened - almost nothing. The matter was pretty much avoided, and the requested force did not arrive until over two months later. The first troops to arrive were the French under Operation Turquoise, which effectively created a corridor to the south and west through which the perpetrators could withdraw and escape in to the Congo. The world had failed to leave up to the creed of never again, and there was blood on many people's hands.
Genocide tourism ?
I visited two memorials in Rwanda, the first in Kigali, the capital, and the second in Kisuni, in the countryside near Rwanda's second city of Butare.The memorial in Kigali sits in a suburb, down a hill just out of town, on the side of a small hill, above four long, thin terraces, in a stark white building. From the entrance you look out across the terraces across the small valley to the steep hill covered in houses and topped by a group of skyscrapers, some inhabited but many in the process of being built - giving the city an air of bursting, new vitality.
We started our visit with a tour of the mass graves where most of the 250 thousand odd victims in Kigali alone had been interred in four mass graves, covered by two 200 metre long concrete slabs about thirty centimetres high, each occupying one of the terraces that we had seen as we approached the memorial. It is almost beyond comprehension to imagine that around thirty percent of the population of a city were killed in the space of a few short weeks, by their neighbours, friends, family, all fellow citizens in a frenzy of organised violence. And here they lay beneath, crammed in on top of each other, beneath our feet. Looking at the city in the background it was difficult to see how these bustling streets, and smiling faces, could have been the scene of a bloodbath, emptied of the living and filled with the rotting corpses of the recently slain.
We then headed up to the museum and had a wander around. Strangely I was a little under whelmed - the exhibition was well presented, leading from a historical account of Rwanda, through independence, the build up, the genocide and the aftermath. The design of the building suited its purpose well, as I wandered around in circles following the exhibition the sense of space made me feel confused, claustrophobic and a little afraid. The room at the end containing thousands of pictures of the victims was very moving. However it never really had the knock-out effect, that left me floored when I visited Tuol Sleng the Khmer Rouge torture chamber in Phnom Penn. Perhaps here the wounds were to recent, there was not many graphic photos, not much description of the horrendous acts of violence, not much detail about how people were convinced, bullied or threatened to do what they did.
A few days later we headed out to Butare, and while Damo went off to track the chimps, I headed out to Kisuni. I met a soldier on the way who decided that rather than answer my questions about directions, he would escort me there himself. In that very African way he took my hand in his and we proceeded to walk down the road, hand in hand, something that takes even the most open minded Western man a while to get used to.
There is almost no flat land in Rwanda at all, there are simply big hills - volcanoes, less big hills - small rounded peaks, and then your ordinary, everyday hills. The school at Kisuni sits on a big hill, immediately surrounded by small hills, with a back drop of other large hills encircling it. It provides an excellent vantage point, it can be seen from far off and the views it affords of the surrounding countryside are panoramic. All of the hills are green, most are completely covered in a patchwork of square fields containing crops, with some of the summits are near verticals side of the hills covered in eucalyptus groves. You can see the dull orange of the gravel roads weaving their serpentine way off in to the distance, around the sides of hills, done through the valleys and along the ridge lines.
As we entered the fenced off compound a truck filled with rocks arrived and headed over the right where a large group of men and women were working. The soldier explained to me that some of the mass graves had started leaking and the bodies had been exhumed in order for the foundations to be laid in rocks and the tombs rebuilt and resealed. We met the caretaker who searched for the keys in the new yet to be completed, two storey memorial building at the top of the hill, and then lead us around the back to the old class rooms. There were about ten or twelve rows of six, simple, square red brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs, scattered across the side of the hill in neat rows, all looking very much like classrooms. I noticed that the windows facing the sun were all covered in large tarpaulins, secured to the roof.
The caretaker lead us to the building furthermost down the hill, whilst he opened the door I stared out around the valley, the sun was quite high in the sky, basking all I could see in a bright light which made the greens of the flora and the reds of the earth and the contrast between the two seem almost surreal. It was an idyllic, pastoral scene - there was almost no sound at all other than a few birds singing. Here and there I could see people working in the fields, and the odd cow or goat wandering about. As the door to the classroom was opened, I looked in to the dark room and was unsure of what I was seeing. In each of the four corners of the room were hip high simple wooden benches, about the size of a double bed, covered in bright white human skeletons preserved in lime. In the centre of the room was a small table with a stand of flowers on it. As I entered the room I noticed what was perhaps most confronting about the remains was that rather than being laid out as for a funeral many of the victims were preserved as they had been found, reflecting them in the moments before their death many were twisted and writhing in pain, mouths open to expel a chilling scream of pain, some cowering in fear from the death blow they were about to receive trying to protect themselves or shield young children or skulls and bones deformed or smashed as they were killed. I walked further in to the room and couldn't tear myself away from looking at the macabre spectacle, usually their is a distance between us and death, but here it was thrust upon me. The details that the lime permitted to be seen were incredible, despite many of the skeletons effectively being flat, it was still possible to see holes in skulls from hoes, broken bones, bits of clothes still attached to some victims. I looked outside to the bright sunshine and back in to the room and didn't know what to think.
Meanwhile the caretaker had been opening the other rooms and when I came out of the room for some air, he pointed me to the second room. Likewise it was filled with the same disturbing scene, this room contained more young children, some no older than two or three years; the next room had more young people; the next mothers and babies and so on. After I had seen six of these rooms, I looked out at the surrounding countryside and thought to myself, what am I doing here ? Is this the height of insensitivity, the disturbing depths to which tourists descend to try and capture that authentic experience ? Do I want to reach out and touch the bones so that I can feel the genocide - so it is more real ? Am I honouring the people who died or is it just another stop, a Holy Planet must see, on my tour of Africa ?
As the caretaker locked up all the rooms, I stood under the shade of the veranda looking out on the countryside and my mind kept loping back to how could this place and these people have done all this. I imagined what it must have been like for those victims who cowered in fear for a couple of weeks, held together in a large hall, denied food and water so that many died of dehydration, to be then set upon and hacked to death. There chilling cries would have rung out across this small silent valley, and everyone in the surrounding area who heard must have known what was happening - and yet they either participated or turned a wilful blind eye to the tragedy.
When the caretaker asked if I wanted to see the other rooms - there were around fifty of them - concurred with him that it wasn't really necessary. On the way back up the hill he showed me the central hall where all of the victims had been brought and told they would be protected - it was filled with shelves of clothes and shoes, many victims had their clothes stripped off them so the killers could wear them. He also showed French armies flagpole and volleyball court placed on top of mass graves, as they permitted the perpetrators to escape. On the way back to the memorial centre I asked the caretaker my routine question about how the survivors and the relatives of the victims can go on living today knowing that there are many among them who were perpetrators and will never be held to account, how do they bury their bitterness and get on with life ? Without battering an eyelid he explained that he had lost his mother, his wife and three sisters at this very place, but that now Rwanda was one country where ethnicity didn't matter any more, their wasn't a hint of bitterness or revenge in his voice. He paused to show me a mass grave, a narrow pit, about three metres deep, in to which bodies had been thrown, piled on top of each other until the hole was filled. He said that people have not forgotten what happened but that they had to think more about the future and about living together than the past.
Having asked this question of a few people, to me it seems that the forgiveness and reconciliation are a little forced in Rwanda - people don't like to think or talk about it - despite it being such a seminal event in both their lives and the life of their country. But perhaps their is no alternative - revenge and punishment will only lead to more violence, reopen painful wounds and foment more hatred. However, maybe, just maybe, Rwandans are succeeding, little by little, in that delicate balancing act between carrying on living and looking to the future, whilst not forgetting the painful past.
I still can't answer for myself the question of why I went, and it has raised more questions than it has answered, and exposed some deep contradictions about humanity. Why is is that when so many people die a life is so easy to take - almost thoughtlessly, that life itself loses meaning, and yet it is the large amount of death at once that makes us sit up and take notice and reminds us how precious life is- there is no memorial to the earlier victims of ethnic violence in Rwanda, nor to the estimated five million victims of the war in the Congo ? Why is it that the scale of the phenomena also seems to diminish and amplify the responsibility, how could individuals resist the tide of mob, yet why didn't each individual stop, think I am participating (or turning away from) the murder of one person, then another, then another and so on a million or more times ? Do individual victims have the right to demand justice, or is the fledging social cohesion, the rupture of which would no doubt lead to more violence and death more important - and who gets to decide ?
No comments:
Post a Comment