Genocide Memorial Day

Le 6 avril    On April 6th, 1994, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down when approaching the capital city of Kigali. He and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were on their way back from Tanzania where they had signed the Arusha Accords. This agreement was aimed at defusing tensions between Rwandan groups – the Hutus and the Tutsis – by forging a power-sharing agreement. The Arusha Accords would have allowed the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi to rule side by side after centuries of inter-tribal pressure. The Accords never came to fruition, however – instead, it became a rallying point for Hutu extremists.

The Rwandan people were less worried about the President’s having been shot down than they were about what the event would trigger. From the beginning of 1994, the tension in Rwanda had been escalating – everyone knew that something evil was brewing, that something awful was going to happen. There had been increasingly more violence during the early months of 1994, and weapons were made readily available and at shockingly low prices. Government forces had begun recruiting young men into a group of militia called the Interahamwe – “those who attack together.”

As the violence and confidence increased, and the numbers in the ranks of the Interahamwe continued to swell, any sense of individual responsibility fell. The groups of rowdy, confident youth would parade through the streets with machetes tucked in their belts and grenades strung around their necks. They wore colorful shirts and would hassle whomever they wanted. No one said a thing.

There are so many factors that went into the Rwandan Genocide, and it’s impossible to read all of the media on the War and its causes. But just like any other genocide, propaganda and brainwashing were the wood that fueled the fire.

Since the Europeans arrived in Rwanda and started acknowledging the people as separate tribes, there had been problems. The Belgians had decided that it was the tall, lean and lighter Tutsi minority with imperial Masai ancestry who should run government and have high-standing positions. This created bitterness in the Hutus. Hutu teachers would take ethnic roll call, which required one to stand when either “Hutu” or “Tutsi” was called aloud. This all was further aggravated when the category of “tribe” was placed on identity cards. With that, someone could look at your identity card and tell whether you were Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa – the pigmy people who are few in number and did not factor into this power struggle.

Hutus were told that Tutsis were their enemy – that Tutsis were the cause of any and all the suffering that Hutus had endured in their lifetime. False claims were made in various forms, but most powerfully through the radio. In a country where there were few televisions and even few literate citizens, the radio was the only way to get news. And in a country starved of information, the radio stations were willing to provide – even if all they were providing was brainwashing remarks about Tutsis being the cause of all Rwanda’s problems.

It’s as disturbing to read about the events leading up to the Genocide as it is to read about what happened in the 100 days of killing that started on April 6, 1994. 800,000 Rwandans were killed during that short time frame – twice the number of civilians that died in the entire Vietnam War. In such a small country, about the size of Maryland, that meant that one in ten citizens was now dead. How is that possible?

When one reads the statistics, hears the stories, it all goes in, but the brain hardly recognizes this as being possible. We’ve seen the power of propaganda and mob mentality and its excruciating results before – the Jewish Holocaust was more than 50 years before the Rwandan Genocide, to which we had said “Never Again.”

In a country that was ripped apart by bloodshed, though, it’s incredible to see the strides Rwanda has taken in the seventeen years since the Genocide. How does anyone hope to recover after such an event? Where do you begin? But the government, led by their fearless president Paul Kagame, has done a wonderful job of encouraging reconciliation and pardon. For forgiveness is the only way that one can overcome such pain. Love is the only way to heal – one by one – until the people as a whole can move forward.

Today, on April 6th, take a few moments to pray for all those who perished in the Genocide. Pray for those who were left behind to pick up the pieces, whether as victims or as the accountable. All need your prayers. And take a minute to tell someone about the significance of today – Genocide Memorial Day. The whole world stops for a moment of silence on September 11th, but very few are aware of this remembrance to the 800,000 lives that were lost in Rwanda in 1994. It’s truly commendable what progress Rwanda has made post-Genocide, and we must all work together to keep the growth and healing moving forward.

This prayer was offered on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide by Reverend Mpho Tutu, the daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

A Prayer for Rwanda

God weeps over each death
As though it were the only death.
The God who knows each hair on our head
The God who has written our names on the palm of his hand
Does not catch us up in a numberless genocide, in an anonymous
Sea of blood and violence
And let us die unnamed
But God knows us, God gathers every tear of grief every tear of terror into her bottle
And God weeps
God weeps with our tears
God rages against our complicit silence
When, I wonder, will “never again” mean
NEVER AGAIN?
When will we stop claiming that our hands are tied
When, in fact, our hands are folded?
Which death will be enough of death?
In silence let us remember and reflect….