Reflections…

We sat on the bus in silence today, pondering what we had just seen. As I had climbed the steep stairway of the mass grave, I was overwhelmed and deeply moved by the raw facts of death. In the dusty, dank chamber femurs and other human bones were stacked on top of each other like so many cords of firewood. Row after row of skulls, some with gaping holes due to the forceful blows of the murderers, lined the walls. This atrocity occurred only 15 years ago, on April 14, 1994. It is estimated that 10,000 people were killed here, when they had fled for protection inside the Roman Catholic Church. I feel strange discussing this in such a public place, but the caretaker of the genocide memorial in Nyamata encouraged us to tell people what happened here.
Why did this happen? It is difficult to boil something this horrific down into a simple statement. I found a concise explanation in the book, “Promises Not Kept: Poverty and the Betrayal of Third World Development” by John Isbister.
“The tragedy in tiny Rwanda was staggering. Rwanda is a former Belgian colony populated by two ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Belgians did nothing to reconcile the two groups. They initially favored the Tutsis, then switched their allegiance to the more numerous Hutus before independence. A civil war between 1959 and 1963 led to the massacre of one hundred thousand Tutsis, the forced exile of two hundred thousand Tutsis to Uganda, and the establishment of a Hutu-dominated state. Tutsi resistance, under a military organization called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), continued from that time until 1994. By early 1994, negotiations seemed to have produced a tentative agreement under which the two groups would share power and the Tutsis living outside the country would be allowed to return.”
“In the spring of 1994, however, following the death of president Habyarimana in an airplane crash, extremist Hutus led their people in an orgy of violence against both Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The exact number of dead will never be known, but the estimates range from five hundred thousand to 1 million, mostly Tutsis, who were slaughtered over a ten-week period by their previous friends and neighbors. It was not a military operation but a frenzy of civilian violence, fueled by the Hutu-controlled radio, which urged more killing” (130).
We have been studying the Rwandan Genocide in our Issues of Peacebuilding Course. There is so much more than these two short paragraphs can hope to convey. At times I am overcome by incredible feelings of sorrow and grief at the fallen state of humankind. But there is reason for hope. Peace and reconciliation clubs are formed in schools, and people are encouraged to talk about their experiences in order to facilitate healing. I’m sure that I will continue to learn more about how the government and the people are seeking to restore their country.
The Rwandans are such beautiful people, and there are only a few outward signs of the recent tragedy that they experienced. There are bullet holes in the parliament building, and signs on the street saying something about Genocide. They are written in Kinyarwanda, but I believe that most of them are genocide-prevention study centers. These issues are not something you can talk openly about with people in the streets, but it is amazing how much you can sense that their lives have been formed by these events.
I feel powerless to help. But I am forced to recognize the depravity of my own heart, and I want to love those around me more fully. God, help us all as we learn to treat those around us with dignity and respect.