Genocide ....Jamais Encore

Its the only reason most of us have ever heard of Rwanda - The genocide. So much so that the pre-conference blurb that we all received had to make it clear to us "It is considered impolite to ask Rwandans whether they are Hutu or Tutsi, and how they participated in the Genocide. We are trying to build a society of Rwandans."

But it is impossible not to wonder when you are here ... thanks to Hotel Rwanda we all know what Hutus and Tutsis are supposed to look like .... and so we all peer at people .... is that nose thin or flatter? She's tall and thin - must be Tutsi ... I wonder if she has any family left? I wonder how she survived .... Hmmm he looks rather squat and definitely darker .... I wonder how many he killed or raped .... and how he deals with that today?

I visited the Genocide memorial in Kigali - a beautifully presented history of pre-genocide Rwanda chronicling how the seeds of tribalism and hatred were sown through colonialism (divide-and-rule wasn't just a British tool) ... and supported by the Belgians, French and the Catholic church ... and how "Hutu Power" came to be. It then unfolds the horror of the Genocide itself in detail, and exposes the egregious inaction of the international community, UN General Dallaire's difficult situation, Kofi Annan's incalculably arrogant and costly mistake in ignoring Dallaire's pleas, the reticence of the US government to engage and especially the complicity of the French through Operation Turquoise aiding Hutu Power. Inexorably - the exhibition moves on to the situation that ensued in the refugee camps on the then-Zairean border, the rush of aid agencies who naively prolonged the conflict and the effect on creating Congo. Finally the memorial ends with a painful reminder of the lives of children lost and the potential wasted .... I had tears streaming down my face .... By the time I got to the new additional exhibition on genocides past and present around the world - despite the international cry of "Never Again" after the Holocaust .... I was pretty much inconsolable.

What is so hard for we foreigners to understand is how the Rwandans all still continue to live together especially in such seeming peace .... how do Tutsis cope when they see Hutus that they know committed heinous atrocities and how are Hutus able to forget the catastrophe that they generated and carry on with normal life .... It is incredible that just 13 years on - President Paul Kagame has somehow managed to create a society which functions (albeit with a heavy police presence) and that people appear (at least to an outsider) to genuinely seem to believe that they must put all differences and history behind them, abandon old tribalism and work together ....

One of the more shameful aspects of the aftermath of the conflict (if you believe Gourevitch) is that the international community refused to let the leaders of the Genocide be tried under Rwandan law .... giving the excuse that Rwanda practised the death penalty and so the countries where the Hutu Power instigators had fled to (UK, France, Canada, US, etc etc) could not in conscience extradite them back to Rwanda ..... and so the UN set up the International Criminal Court in Arusha. Gourevitch claims that in large part this was to bury the mistakes made by the UN and other nations and even their complicities in the conflict, and unfortunatelt the ICC has only managed to prosecute a fraction of those implicated and errors made in arresting and bringing such leaders to justice (especially from France) have been more than embarrassing ... even more embarrassing is the way in which this is still being sadly ignored ....

Rwanda responded to such a snub by altering its own rules on the death penalty and setting up its own system of trials based on local tradition - the Gaccaca courts. These have taken place across the country and have allowed normal people to confront their tormentors and give explanations .... a bit like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa but even more focussed on the average village person - these courts have allowed those who committed serious crimes and genocide planning to be imprisoned yet also "pardons" those who were swept up in the madnesss of those 100 days .... its somehow worked (at least superficially) .... and its allowed the rebuilding of an entire nation and society to start ....


In some spirit of self-flagellation - the next day ... I decided to visit the genocide memorial at Nyamata about 25km outside Kigali. This was a Catholic church where thousands of Tutsi's sought refuge from the Hutu killers - who were their neighbours and friends in the same village .... the priest locked them inside, brought in the Hutu Interhamwe and then fled to Europe. Over 2500 people were murdered inside the church over the course of a couple of days ... the women were gang-raped and people who weren't killed first had their achilles tendons cut to stop them running away .... some were killed with machetes or clubs ... others with grenades and guns ....

Its a simple and small church .... brick built with a dozen roughly hewn pews .... and then you notice the church roof is spattered with bullet holes and blood .....

(The purple ribbons show that the 100 days of remembrance are being observed (from April to July) to mark the period of the actual genocide)



A side room is piled high with clothes and belongings of the victims .... you notice hairbands and torn Nike T-shirts .... spiderman pants .... and lovely batik prints ....

The front pulpit is covered with the same cloth that adorned it during the massacre ... its covered in blood .... and on top rests a pile of rosaries recovered from the carnage ....

Outside lies a neat row of mass graves .... twenty to a coffin ... those are for the lucky that have been identified or were found at least semi-whole .....

And then you walk on to perhaps the most horrific sight that I have ever seen .... underground lie the bony remnants of hundreds, thousands of others that were systematically chopped to bits and dismembered .... there are neverending racks and racks of bones ... almost immediately my Doctor-response kicked in and i started to identify the bones - femur, femur, tibia, radius - rather than take in the sight before me .... but then i reached to the skulls ... and I couldn't medicalise any more .... there are some that are smashed .... some whole ... and worst of all the tiny ones of the children massacred ....

It was to me the most powerful reminder yet of our failings as a international community and that we really must never ever allow ourselves to stand by and let such inhumanity take hold ever again .... jamais encore ....