GHOSTS OF GENOCIDE

WARNING: THIS IS HARDCORE, VERY DISTURBING, DO NOT READ IF EASILY OFFENDED

THE ECHO OF GHOSTS OF A TRAGIC PAST

Rwanda is a new country; only 13 years old, it is racing towards modernity at a speed unseen before. You can feel the progress on an hourly basis; there is strong leadership at the top which guides this often wayward nation on a sound path. Being from Rwanda I now feel a strange sensation; I joined Facebook and have been reunited with so many University friends and they all say the same thing. I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE FROM RWANDA! I told them a thousand times but it didn’t register; now they’ve all seen Hotel Rwanda and think they know us thoroughly.

“It’s really tragic what’s happening out there.”

“When will they stop killing each other?” That ended 13 years ago.

Then the next question is; “Are you huti or tuti? Are you tuti or fruity or whatever the name is?”

“It’s really sad, the huti’s killed tonnes of tuties or was it the tuti’s killing the fruities? So sad, I sometimes just cry.”

I remember walking into a Rwandan party in Coventry when a woman fainted and had a fit, when I tried to approach her she got worse. Apparently I looked like her son who died and when I saw his picture there was a definite match. I was ordered to leave the party lest I make her have a stroke. In the April rains in Rwanda, survivors suffer from deep depression and psychosis. It is simply called “April Madness” as psychiatric illness is not a recognised fact of life, despite our tragic history.


That is the supreme irony of the genocide; nobody really cares and if they did, it was for the wrong reasons. Now the Genocide is an allegory of human intolerance but is rarely understood nor can it be understood even this long after 800,000 died in 3 months, plus the domino effect of 4.5 million Congolese. I have steadily avoided writing about this topic on this blog but I feel I must now; I don’t know why maybe just because it is logical to do so. There is no logic to the Genocide, one game people play is “the what if game”; what if the world intervened? What if the RPF never invaded? What if the peace deal was respected? What if this? What if that? The sad conclusion is that it was maybe inevitable, it was not random violence it as meticulously planned to the final detail and it would have been carried out whatever.


There are numerous myths about the Genocide; it is used by various parties to promote whatever theory they espouse. Being in England at the time, I had the pain of watching it live on TV while the world did nothing. It affected me in various ways, though indirectly. Firstly was survivor guilt; the fact that I was in a comfortable safe country while people were hacked to death on national TV; this destroys the first myth, that the world didn’t know. It was live on TV, so they knew, they debated in the UN, so they knew. The world still denies this till this day; as if to say “if we only knew”.



The second myth is “the domino effect”; this is mainly peddled by France and other apologists for the Hutu extremists. It says that Rwanda was a powder keg waiting to explode and the death of Habyarimana was the first domino to set off the genocide. His death was planned for what was seen as betrayal in signing the Arusha accords. The swift reaction of the extremist core is proof that they were ready to exploit the situation.


The next is that of a “Dual-Genocide”, Africa is always portrayed as a savage heart of darkness where tribal violence springs up from time to time. Like flash-floods or earthquakes; they are an inevitable inconvenience of life in Africa. Making it look like both sides killed eases the conscience of a passive World Community. But how is that so?


In Rwanda massive steps have been made to reconcile the survivors and killers; the government has made a conscious decision to do so. This is because it could not afford to wait for people to gradually feel the need to forgive; it had to compel them to, for it was too dangerous to wait. In Rwanda the development is compensating for the years of decline, when in 30 year after independence almost nothing was done to develop the country. Rwanda has never had it so good; now it produces more graduates annually than in the previous 30 years put together, in has nearly all the young attending primary education; nearly half finishing secondary, nearly 30,000 skilled graduates annually. But that said the legacy of 30 years of despotic rule still burdens this country. 70% of over 35’s are illiterate; most educated professionals were either killed or took part in the Genocide. Doctors killed, Nurses killed, Engineers killed, Lawyers killed, Admin clerks killed.


The only undisputed fact is that Rwanda was a deeply isolated country, and when faced with a threat it could only internalised it and turn in on itself; like someone slitting their wrists or cutting their leg off. The true tragedy is not what the Hutu extremists did to Tutsis; but what Rwanda did to itself. In Rwanda there is still an imbalance; those from the Diaspora are at an advantage, while the “Sopecha” who is born and bred in the country is lagging behind due to a lack of exposure. The Sopecha is often scared of change, slow to adapt, stuck in their ways. While the Diaspora is the opposite, due to the fact that they had to adapt and had be useful in foreign lands. Talking to a Taxi-man you hear this first hand, “That’s the estate where they only talk English.” As if it was pure evil he was describing.


Due to Rwanda’s small size and high population density there is a need to have intimacy rather than avoid it. It is not Gay for men to hold hands as they walk down the road; it is a sight you have to get used to. Imagine soldiers with AK-47’s strapped to their backs, walking hand in hand as they giggle like school-girls. It is common for people to touch you while they talk to you, as if to make you understand better. In a country where contact cannot be avoided, it is embraced. So you have killer living next to survivor, greeting each other over the garden fence. When I was flying here from London I met an acquaintance who was shivering with fear, he said “The people who killed my family now live in my house.” In the end he failed to board the flight as it would have been too traumatic.


That is the crux of the issue; the past is here with us today, most people just choose to ignore it. There is a blissful peace here but the threat of violence that sometimes lurks beneath the surface. A balance of fear and loathing as some unrepentant killers bide their time; waiting for the day when “The work can be completed.” In the Congo 35,000 soldiers of the FDLR await an evil second coming, but if they returned they would get lost as the whole of Kigali has changed. Rwanda is like Israel; surrounded by enemies waiting to destroy it, it is always outnumbered but never outgunned. It has one of the strongest armies in Africa. The stories you hear are amazing and worth having a book written about them; I sit with men who have killed dozens in battle. They laugh about how they shot POW’s all night after torturing them. That is against the Geneva Convention but when hear what these POW’s did then you are less sympathetic.


My friend had just finished fighting in 1994 when the real trauma started; he was charged with removing bodies from pit-latrines in Nyamata. Imagine descending into a pit full of shit, maggots and rotten bodies. I don’t know what hell is but it can’t be worse than that. He said he was looking for a particular girl, an ex-girlfriend who was the beauty queen of the town; she had been raped for 3 months and only released from her miserable life when she was killed by ramming a wooden stake through her vagina. Hers was the first body he found, I saw a photo and even while dead and covered in faeces she was still as beautiful as her reputation said. He spent days diving down the pit to harness ropes to the bodies to take them to a proper burial, after a while the maggots start to eat you like the corpses around you. The he found the soldiers responsible for this and spent several days torturing them before he killed them and narrowly avoided a firing squad as a lesser ranked soldier took the blame. For the record it didn’t make him feel better, revenge is pointless.


This is what Rwanda is dealing with; how do you undo that kind of trauma? In the West people go to a shrink because their mother didn’t give them a toy they wanted. Western psychiatrists have tried to come and give care here but have found it too traumatic. What do you say to someone who was buried alive under their family and had to eat the remains of his mother to stay alive? I wonder what Freud thought about the matter? Perhaps it is better to forget it and move on, what is left is a tragedy so great it defies logic. In the holocaust there was an industrialised murder that was cold and distant; it is silly to compare tragedies but Rwanda was personalised murder like no other. Neighbour killed friend killed school-mate killed drinking Buddy killed babysitter.


The scars are so vivid; going to an Estate Agent today, I tried not to focus on his huge machete scar across his forehead. A pretty waitress I usually see has an awful scar on a crippled arm, missing limbs and digits never surprise you. And yet these psychos run free, driving past the 1934 prison yesterday I smelt the filth of thousands of killers compacted into a hell of a stench, as if sin had a smell. The shear numbers (100,000) are what prompted their release as much as a need for reconciliation, like when someone does something so bad you just leave them.


The most powerful story I heard was told to me by a soldier; he had joined the RPF and left his family but when he returned he found them all slaughtered gruesomely and the villagers all claimed to have been out or not to have seen anything. Eventually the culprit was found returning from the Congo in 1996 and interned in 1934 prison. In about 1999 the soldier persuaded a friend who was a guard to leave him alone with the killer for a while so revenge could be dispensed. When he got there he saw such a pathetic sight he lost his anger. The killer said. “I’ve been waiting for you, I’ve always hoped you’d come. I am so glad to see you, they were brave till the end, they didn’t cry. We’ll make it look like I tried to kill you and tried to escape, use a knife it is better. Cut here.”


At that moment the soldier broke down and cried in front of the killer, the killer tried to touch him to comfort him, first he shrank from his touch but he collapsed into his arms. He lost his rage and walked out crying, the killer was pleading. “You must be crazy, I killed your mother, raped her, tortured your little sister, I raped their corpses, you coward, kill me!” That is the story of death and rebirth of Rwanda. If you don’t believe in God, you should believe there is a devil and he was in charge during the genocide. You still see his face now and again; there is sometimes an implicit look in some people’s eyes that says, “Just wait, we’ll show you”. If ever there was a lapse in security then that demon would return to haunt Rwanda.


Since I became a serious Christian I see all problems as spiritual; an evil spirit had incubated in Rwanda over centuries exploded in what we call the genocide. A spirit of self-hatred, a spirit of jealousy, a spirit of murder, a spirit of bloodlust. Killers talk of really enjoying it at the time, of rapturous joy, of carnal pleasure and joyous pain. Most of the population were infants or not born in 1994, the words; Hutu and Tutsi are alien to them but the older generation cannot expunge those words from their lexicon. The killers are as much victims of their own brutality; how do you live with yourself after that? Anyone who thinks it cannot happen again is sadly mistaken, but it won’t happen spontaneously there are 5 steps to genocide that have to take place before it explodes.

1. Identification – You identify and separate a group, nothing ill is said of them, you merely show the difference.

2. Stigmatisation – You point out negative aspects you associate with them, remember you audience has friends from this opposing group so you have to separate them.


3. Juxtaposition – Point out that your destinies are opposed, how the other group favours their own and will always seek to destroy your group.


4. De-humanise – Make the other group less than animals, remove any lingering forms of humanity left. Tutsi were called “Inyenzi” cockroaches that had to be eradicated like vermin.


5. Compulsion - Make it a duty to extinguish this other group, include all official state, religious and social institutions to give it legitimacy. Hence all government arms were involved, as were churches and societies.


So it could not happen spontaneously, the symptoms are there to be detected in advance. Sadly next time will be the same; we can never see a conflict in its own context. Darfur is the new Rwanda, Rwanda was the new Somalia, Somalia was the new Cambodia, Cambodia was the new Biafra and so forth. Just like Britney Spears is the new Madonna, George Clooney is the new Clark Gable, Pepsi is the new Coke so we can never see a tragedy for what it is. So the architects of the genocide still go largely unpunished as they sit in grandeur in France, Belgium, Kenya, USA, Canada and Congo while being heroes to millions of like-minded fools. Their pathetic minions are left to face the Gacaca court system.


The Gacaca system is not perfect but it the best we can have, it would take 200 years to try the killers in the court system so killers are left to be tried by their peers. This is the true sphere of reconciliation for the Genocide, listening to the victims is the most worthwhile aspect, they want to be heard. It is painful for all involved, to the victims, the accused and the court of local neighbours. The perpetrators will always have the net closing in on them however long it takes. One undisputed result of the Gacaca is that it has extended democracy to the lowest level of society, whatever happens at a national level, local people determine their own destiny in all matters of life.


I don’t want anybody to get the impression that Rwanda is in any way lawless, it is beautiful and progressive on a level never seen before. The astounding beauty and kindness of its people still surprise me everyday. Humanity died and was reborn here; you can trust even your enemy here. Rwanda is a nation that knows what it is capable of; it was taken to the brink and back. Not many Nations know what they are capable of, nor people neither, to quote the venerable Kanye West “the most beautiful people do the ugliest things.” Even you, the reader, are capable of the utmost cruelty and vicious murder. In certain circumstances you will kill, torture, rape, practice cannibalism and a lot easier than you think. If you disagree then you aren’t human, because Mankind is not Kind.