Never Again. Never, Ever Again

Several of the Rwandan girls wear wristbands which say ‘Never Again’. 

How much do you actually know about the genocide? How much does the world as a whole actually understand about what happened here in 1994, when thousands of people were brutalised, tortured and murdered?

I think it’s important to explain it here in this blog, to give an overview which will put this visit into context, and highlight why there is such a need for the inspiring work of Guides du Rwanda. 

This morning, we visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial.  250,000 victims of the genocide are buried here.  That’s not a typo: two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand.  Can you even imagine a number like that? There are graves with whole families buried together in one grey shroud – they are 6 to 7 metres deep. 

The Rwandan Guides gave us all a red rose with a white ribbon attached, which we laid at the graves.  Several of them had larger bouquets, which they laid at the graves, with ‘We will never forget you’ written around them, some in English, some in Kinyarwanda, the local language.  Many of them have relatives buried here. 

Some participants seemed intent on photographing every aspect of the place.  I wasn’t comfortable with this and felt it was insensitive.  This is a place of mourning, a place of tragedy, a place of reflection.  But I suppose people have different ways of doing things.    

The centre is a training and history education facility, which explores the story behind the Rwandan genocide, as well as other genocides in history.  What is genocide? It is an intentional act of multiple murder, aimed at eliminating a particular group.  It is never spontaneous.   

I’m not going to write the entire history of the Rwandan situation here, as I could not possibly provide every single detail, and I would most probably miss bits, or get the chronology wrong.  Anyone visiting this part of Africa should visit the Memorial Centre and see it for themselves.  Watch ‘Hotel Rwanda’, and ‘Shake Hands with the Devil’, read books etc.  I will attempt a summary here, which I hope will show how the situation led to unthinkable tragedy. 

After Rwanda gained independence in 1962, the regime was characterised by the persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Tutsis.  (There were two main tribes – Hutu and Tutsi; today, people identify as ‘Rwandan’).  From 1959 – 1973, more than 700,000 Tutsis were exiled from Rwanda and sought refuge in neighbouring countries.  These refugees formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which invaded Rwanda in 1990, having been prevented from returning.  Tensions grew.  A war against the Tutsi minority ensued, and the RPF were intent on re-establishing equal rights, as they were considered by the Hutus to be an inferior race.  An intense campaign against the Tutsis began; word was spread that they could not be trusted.  Genocide was ‘rehearsed’ during nine separate episodes from 1990 – 1994.

This is the key part to understand, (see also Kathy’s comment from an earlier blog entry).  A UN colonel was informed that 1700 Interhamwe (youth militia) had been trained, and were registering all Tutsis in Kigali for an extermination plan, where they would kill 1000 every 20 minutes.   

The Security General of the UN at the time said “No reconnaissance or other action, including response to request for protection, should be taken by UNAMIR until clear guidance is received from HQ”. 

There were rumours in the intelligence community that something big was stirring in the country.

On 6^th April 1994, President Habyarimana (Rwanda) and the President of Burundi were flying into Kigali.  At 20:23, their plane was shot down.  At 21:15, the Rwandan genocide began.  Roadblocks were erected to find Tutsis; houses were searched; extremist media said that they were going to ‘eliminate the internal enemy’.  Radio was used to incite hatred, to instruct killings and even to justify them.   Tutsis were systematically murdered in horrific ways, to cause the maximum amount of humiliation, pain and suffering.  No Tutsi was exempt.  Children were murdered; the elderly were murdered.  People killed their own friends and neighbours.  The details I read today at the Kigali Memorial are too gruesome to relay here.  They left me speechless at the horrific reality of what humanity can do to itself. 

The centre has whole rooms full of photographs of adults, children and babies, who were murdered in cold blood.  There is also a room of human skulls. 

After the horrific events of 1994, the Security General of the UN said – ‘the international community failed Rwanda and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret.  I realised after the genocide that there was more I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support’.

Do you see why several of the Rwandan girls wear wristbands which say ‘Never Again’?

Never, ever again.