The aftermath and cleanup of the genocide.
Of all the genocides I have studied, Rwanda has always been the hardest to learn about or even to comprehend. I think is because of the short amount of time it was executed in and the number of murders that took place. Beyond the figures though, the worst part was the way in which the genocide was carried out by neighbors, friends, and even families. How could once lovely neighbors and families suddenly turn on their Tutsi loved ones literally overnight. It is hard to imagine that it was ordinary Rwandans that picked up machetes and clubs to chop and hack at innocent Tutsis. Even under the house of God, no one was spared and churches were actually where most of the mass murders happened. It was an unspeakable event and worst of all, no one came to help.
Studying Rwanda this time around, it has been shocking to find out how involved France was in the genocide. France didn’t personally kill anyone, but they backed the Hutus and also helped war criminals sneak across the boarders during Operation Turquoise. I have studied the Rwandan Genocide before, but I don’t remember learning about France’s involvement and I think it is important to be aware of its part in the genocide! In the article by Murigande, he states how there are reports that there would be a killing spree that was to occur and goes further to say that the French didn’t like the RPF and weren’t going to allow them to take control of Kigali. There were signs that things would happen and the UN didn’t take a bigger stance to prevent it. As much as I am angry at the French for assisting the Hutus murderers to escape, it was really the Belgians who started it all. They socially constructed two different ethnic groups (more so a caste system) in Rwanda when there wasn’t a difference between them at all. I was also surprise that on identification cards, there was either Hutu or Tutsi on it. They created this tension and hatred between the two groups and added to it by favoring the Tutsi because they thought that group had better traits.
I think the West had a huge part in Rwanda and should have done more about it. Sarajevo was happening at the same time and though it lasted a long time, media attention and some kind of action was used to try to help it. With Rwanda, I feel that because it wasn’t a white country, it didn’t get the same treatment. I think it is also because Africa didn’t have anything to offer the West. The Holocaust had to be stopped because it was already part of the war. The Native American genocide was over land and resources. Then in Bosnia and Serbia, the UN was very involved in that, but why not Rwanda? In the film Hotel Rwanda, Colonel Oliver tells Paul that the UN weren’t coming and the French only came to evacuate the whites of the hotel. Paul and other guests at the hotel try to call all the Western people they know to see if anything could be done or if they could find a way to leave. The lack of intervention from the West allowed more of the killings to happen and the rebels didn’t feel a sense of consequences for doing so.
Docter Joseph Karekezi is Cornelius’s father and his time during the genocide was a peculiar one. From the outsider, he seemed to be uninvolved with politics and what the rebels Hutus are doing. He seemed like a moderate Hutu and someone would was trying to lessen the divide and discrimination between the two groups. He was also secretly meeting with the Hutu interahamwe and Colonel Musoni to tell them to come to Murambi to carry out the massacre. He actually felt that some of the interhamwe were getting a bit lazy and sloppy because they were drinking and not killing everyone in sight. During the genocide, Karekezi reflected on his life and his beliefs and he realizes that this was his opportunity and duty to rid the country of the Tutsi. Since he is quite trusted by his community, Tutsi feel like they can look to him and trust him when he advised them to go to Polytechnic School. He was very calculating in his plans because he decided to bring his family to the school too to show the other that it would be safe there since his family was there too. His family would have been easily safe in their house, but he decided to get rid of them too. There is part in the book where it says he has a cold indifference; he neither hates anyone nor does he love enough. They were all expendable to him. Gerard says how though Karekezi seemed like he was a moderate Hutu who tried to be equal, but in actuality he hated the fact that Tutsi had better jobs and pay and he never had those chances because he was a Hutu. After the genocide, Karekezi is able to leave Rwanda through Operation Touquoise and Colonel Etienne takes him away. On the surface, Dr. Joseph Karekezi is shocking and sinister, but if you look collectively at the events in Rwanda he wasn’t that much different from half of the country. People like him could be found all over Rwanda, although most of them didn’t organize a mass murder the size he did. He turned on his village and especially his family, but that happened over and over again in Rwanda where friends and families would kill their own because they were Tutsi. When Cornelius comes back to find out the truth, “He had suddently discovered that he had become the perfect Rwandan: both guilty and a victim” (Diop 78). He was left to pick up the pieces of his father’s actions and face their aftermath.
In your first paragraph you marveled at "How could once lovely neighbors and families suddenly turn on their Tutsi loved ones literally overnight." I feel like this has happened in every single situation we have studied. People turning against their Jewish brothers and sisters, against the people in Sarajevo. People turning against people, the human race turning against itself.
ReplyDelete“I think it is also because Africa didn’t have anything to offer the West.” I am not too sure how much I really agree with this statement. Africa did and does have a large impact on the West. Africa is sitting on very large oil deposits. Namely, Nigeria is home to one of the world’s largest oil deposits. Also, Africa is a huge exporter of gold, diamonds, and precious metals. I will say this though, according to economywatch.com, Nigeria has the ability to produce 3.2 Million barrels/day. However, they only produce 2.2 Million Barrels/day. So, maybe the issue is not that Africa does not have anything to offer to the West. Rather, it is that Africa does not want to get overly involved with Western economics and trade. Could you possibly expand on that quotation? It has substance, and everyone is entitled to opinion. I’m genuinely interested in Africa’s offerings to the West. That aside, your conclusion of that section is quite valid. Lack of Western intervention did continue the persecution in Rwanda. Then again, isn’t that the case of all the genocides we’ve studied minus the Holocaust?
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ReplyDeleteTran: Comment on my blog.
ReplyDeleteI do with everyone's comments. I shouldn't have generalize about Africa and should have written more specifically and clearly about Rwanda and maybe a few other countries that wouldn't have meant much to the West. There were also other things going on at the time and to spend on energy on Rwanda wouldn't have beneficial to the West. When we look at other genocides like Cambodia, it was right after the Vietnam War. America was still trying to recover from that, there wasn't a lot of attention put on Cambodia. The point I wanted to make about Rwanda was that the West didn't care and Rwanda didn't have a lot to offer the West in terms of why it should bother with this small country when there isn't much to gain like oil, diamond, or uranium, etc. I definitely could have worded my thoughts better, but ultimately maybe the West didn't care that much. I don't know if I would say what is going on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but there has been a war going on there for nearly a dozen years and nothing has been done about it especially when hundreds of thousands of people are being killed there.
Gudan: Comment on Tran’s Blog on Rwandan Genocide
ReplyDeleteTien, I thought your blog made a lot of really good points. I totally understand what you mean by the shock at realizing that people just turned on their neighbors. Although in the other genocides we’ve studied, people have also turned on members of their own community—neighbors, friends, and even family members, but in each case we’ve studied so far, just seems a little bit more different. Not to say that the differences highlighted between the other groups were substantial enough to justify mass murder or denunciation of friends and family, or even, in many cases, much of a difference at all. So many times the so-called differences are based on religion or some other kind of absurd, over-generalized, fabricated judgment about people. I felt the same way when learning about the Stalin’s agenda against the Ukrainian people and the genocide there, and at that time, I had felt, how can people so easily turn against their countrymen? Not to condone racism in any way whatsoever, but it just seemed to me that it was easier for Hitler to create a stigma against people who in many cases religiously, culturally, or even physically different than oneself. It seemed easier to “other” people that had more in contrast with “you.” Learning about the classism of the Ukrainian genocide though, it seemed all the more apparent that people don’t really need a reason to hate one another. At the smallest excuse, people seem ready to erase one another. The same thing happen in Bosnia, and the same thing happened in Rwanda. That being said though, I understand exactly what you mean. The fact that the Tutsis and the Hutus were ethnically identical seems like it’s harder to swallow than other circumstances of mass murder. Although Germans, Poles, and Bosnians may have turned on their neighbors as well, the idea that the Hutus and the Tutsis shared exactly the same culture and the same families makes the whole situation that much more absurd. At the risk of sounding condescending and snobbish, it’s really just hard to comprehend how people could’ve so radically turned on themselves. Obviously, I don’t want to forget the other factors such as civil war and previous massacres that had plagued the country for nearly 50 years leading up to the 1994 genocide and all of the hard feelings that existed over time, but it’s still just hard to understand. It seems like everybody woke up one day and decided to take crazy pills or something. I know it sounds kind of stupid saying all this, and I’m not picking on Rwandans, because I know genocide can happen anywhere—but the fact that not everyone turned on their neighbors or their families. Not everyone went crazy, and that makes it a little harder to bear, knowing that people weren’t always just forced into these decisions, but they were made.