Deadly effects of Rwandan genocide still felt today
Dirke Köpp
Commentary
April 6, 2019
The Rwandan genocide began 25 years ago. However, the deadly repercussions are still being felt. One only has to look to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, writes Dirke Köpp.
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Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/B. Curtis
Stroll through the Rwandan capital, Kigali, today and you'll encounter well-kept streets, new skyscrapers and business centers — a modern city. And yet, 25 years ago, these same streets — and roads throughout the country — were lined with hundreds of thousands of corpses. The putrid smell of decay hung the air.
It has been a quarter century since nearly 1 million people, most of them from the Tutsi minority group but also members of the Hutu majority, were massacred in Rwanda in the space of a few months.
It took a long time for the massacre to be recognized as a genocide against the Tutsis, and for the world to say that it would "never again" look the other way.
And yet, the world continues to look away every day. Not in Rwanda. But in Yemen, Congo, Myanmar, South Sudan, in the Sahel. It's not always conspicuous mass killings. Instead, many smaller attacks occur on a daily basis, and they're largely ignored.
Arms in the wrong hands
At the moment, Germany, France and the UK are arguing about whether they should supply Saudi Arabia with weapons — and if yes, which weapons.
In Rwanda, it emerged afterward that France had been supplying weapons to the regime until just shortly before the genocide. And instead of protecting civilians with the Operation Turquoise military intervention in June 1994, the French army allowed the perpetrators, along with their weapons, to retreat to what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The people in Congo have been suffering the effects of this failure ever since. Barely a day goes by without massacres and attacks by armed groups in eastern Congo. But because it's happening a little each day, and far away in small villages, the violent killings are largely ignored by the media. The international community only tends to react when the body count hits 100 or more.
100 days of slaughter: Rwanda's genocide
Rwanda's genocide began on April 7, 1994. It was a mass slaughter that shocked the world. At the time the international community — above all France and the UN — failed to come to the aid of victims.
Image: Timothy Kisambira
A signal to extremists
On April 6, 1994, unidentified attackers shot down a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana as it was about to land at Kigali airport. President Habyarimana, his Burundian counterpart and eight other passengers died in the crash. The next day organized killings began. Massacres continued over the course of three months, and nearly 1 million Rwandans lost their lives.
Image: AP
Targeted killings
After the assassination of the president, Hutu extremists attacked the Tutsi minority and Hutus who stood in their way. The murderers were well-prepared, and targeted human rights activists, journalists and politicians. One of the first victims on April 7 was Prime Minister Agathe Uwiringiymana.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Foreign nationals rescued
While thousands of Rwandans were being killed every day, Belgian and French special forces evacuated about 3,500 foreigners. On April 13, Belgian paratroopers rescued seven German employees and their families from Deutsche Welle's relay transmitting station in Kigali. Only 80 of 120 local staff members survived the genocide.
Image: P.Guyot/AFP/GettyImages
Appeals for help
As early as January 1994, UNAMIR commander Romeo Dallaire wanted to act on information he had received about an "anti-Tutsi extermination" plot. The warning he sent to the UN on January 11, later known as the "genocide fax," went unheard. And his desperate appeals after the genocide began were rejected by Kofi Annan, who was Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations at the time.
Image: A.Joe/AFP/GettyImages
Hate media
The Mille Collines radio station (RTLM) and Kangura, a weekly magazine, stoked ethnic hatred. In 1990, Kangura published the racist "Hutu Ten Commandments." Mille Collines radio, which was known for its pop music and sports programs, fueled the genocide by urging Hutu civilians to hunt down and kill Tutsis. Director Milo Rau devoted his film "Hate Radio" to these appalling broadcasts (photo).
Image: IIPM/Daniel Seiffert
Refuge in a hotel
In Kigali, Paul Rusesabagina hid more than 1,000 people in the Hotel Des Mille Collines. Rusesabagina had taken over the position of the hotel's Belgian manager, who left the country. With a great deal of alcohol and money, he managed to prevent Hutu militias from killing the refugees. In many other places where people sought refuge, they were not able to escape the slaughter.
Image: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/GettyImages
Massacres in churches
Churches were no longer sanctuaries. About 4,000 men, women and children were murdered with axes, knives and machetes in the church of Ntarama near Kigali. Today, the church is one of the country's many genocide memorials. Rows of skulls, human bones as well as bullet marks in the walls are a reminder of what happened there.
Image: epd
France's role
The French government maintained close ties to the Hutu regime. When the French army intervened in June, it enabled soldiers and militiamen responsible for the genocide to flee to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even take their weapons with them. They still pose a threat to Rwanda today.
Image: P.Guyot/AFP/GettyImages
Streams of refugees
During the genocide, millions of Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus fled to Tanzania, Zaire and Uganda. Some 2 million of them went to Zaire alone. These included former members of the army and perpetrators of the genocide, who soon founded the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a militia that is still terrorizing the population in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo today.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Capture of the capital
On July 4, 1994, rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) patrolled the area around the Church of the Holy Family in Kigali. By that time, they had liberated most of the country and routed the perpetrators of the genocide. However, human rights activists also accused the rebels of committing crimes, for which no one has been held accountable to this day.
Image: Alexander Joe/AFP/GettyImages
End of the genocide
On July 18, 1994, the RPF's leader, Major General Paul Kagame, declared that the war against the government troops was over. The rebels were in control of the capital and other important towns. Initially, they installed a provisional government. Paul Kagame became Rwanda's president in the year 2000.
Image: Alexander Joe/AFP/GettyImages
Lasting scars
The genocide went on for almost three months. The victims were often slaughtered with machetes. Neighbors killed neighbors. Not even babies and elderly people were spared, and the streets were strewn with corpses and body parts. It's not only the physical scars on the bodies of the survivors that remind Rwandans of the genocide. A deep trauma also remains.
Image: Timothy Kisambira
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To compare the numbers: The Rwandan genocide cost the lives of around 800,000 people. But in the aftermath of the massacre, millions of people have been killed in eastern Congo in the last 25 years, in what to this very day is a sort of "collateral damage" of the Rwandan genocide.
On a recent visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, Congo's new president, Felix Tshisekedi, remarked that this "collateral damage" has not spared his country, which has "suffered the loss of millions of lives."
Tshisekedi's visit to Rwanda could be a first step toward reconciliation between the two neighboring countries, which have been at odds for more than 20 years. The root of the tensions has always been about domination in the region and Congo's resources.
Repression to prevent another genocide
Rwandan President Paul Kagame's authoritarian style of government — often referred to in the West as a "developmental dictatorship" — punishes his critics with imprisonment. Kagame has called it a necessary evil to prevent a new genocide; apparently this is the only way to keep history from repeating itself.
Take the case of opposition politician Victoire Ingabire, who was accused of playing down the genocide and served six years of a 15-year sentence for inciting insurrection. Last September, in a big show, she was pardoned by Kagame.
When she criticized the president again, she was again threatened with detention. This threat, of course, was not made in English or French, but in Rwanda's Kinyarwanda language, and was therefore was missed by most foreign media.
Portrayals of Rwanda's genocide
Over the course of just 100 days in April 1994, up to 1 million people were killed in Rwanda while the world watched without acting. Trauma still runs deep 28 years after the genocide, yet art addressing it may help.
In the British Netflix series, Kate digs into the turmoil of her past. She wants to put those responsible for the genocide in her home country behind bars, but that puts her in grave danger. It's a dramatic reappraisal of the genocide — and its aftermath to this day, accompanied by Leonard Cohen's "You want it darker" as the soundtrack.
Paul Rusesabagina ran the Hotel des Mille Collines in Kigali in 1994. During the genocide, he protected more than 1,200 people from certain death. In 2004, the story was turned into the film "Hotel Rwanda." The disturbing drama was not only nominated for three Oscars, but also reminded the general public of the atrocities of the genocide.
Romeo Dallaire (photo) was commander of the UN mission in Rwanda before and during the genocide. In his book "Shake Hands with the Devil," he lays blame on the international community for the catastrophe of 1994. The Canadian had said that intervention was vital in order to stop the murder, but his cries for help and those of the Rwandans went unheeded. His book was turned into a film in 2007.
Image: A.Joe/AFP/GettyImages
Hate Radio
Radio was used by the genocidaires, who perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda, as a propaganda tool to spread their hate messages throughout the country. The RTLM broadcaster called Tutsi and moderate Hutu "cockroaches." In his play "Hate Radio," the Swiss theater director Milo Rau stages a frighteningly authentic day in the studio of the infamous station.
Image: IIPM/Daniel Seiffert
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
The church is also partly to blame for the genocide in Rwanda. This dramatic, formal sentence from a Tutsi pastor's letter to a church superior collaborating with the genocidaires was chosen by US journalist Phillip Gourevitch as the title of his book. In Rwanda, he collected reports from survivors. Through them, he tried to understand the psychological aftermath of the genocide.
Shooting Dogs
The film "Shooting Dogs" shows how quickly a supposedly healthy world became hell on earth. In a school in Kigali, hundreds of people seek shelter from the murderous militias waiting outside the gates. They initially believe that the UN blue helmets can protect them, but then the evacuations of Americans and Europeans begin. The Rwandans are left behind — and the killing starts.
Image: picture-alliance/Mary Evans
Left to tell
For 91 days, Immaculee Ilibagiza hid in the bathroom of a pastor's house. Machete-wielding men had been looking for her and the seven other women who had taken refuge in the small room. When they were finally able to leave, she discovered that almost her entire family had been murdered. She believes that it was her faith that saved her, and has written about the genocide and its lasting effects.
Rwandan Records
Even 25 years after the genocide, Rwandans remain inextricably linked to the darkest chapter in their history. But many Rwandans also want to look to the future — including rapper Eric1key and the "Rwandan Records" project. Their goal is to show how the victim mentality may be overcome by promoting the perspective of self-confident people. They've had shows in Berlin and Rwanda.
Image: HKW/Laura Fiorio
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Far from over
Behind the facades, Kagame's highly praised reconciliation project has not yet progressed as far as the president would have the world believe.
Rwandan overtures to reconciliation are impressive, especially the willingness of ordinary people to forgive the murder of their parents, children and siblings. The state, however, is not setting a good example.
Official proclamations only ever mention the genocide of the Tutsi. Forgotten are all those Hutu who lost their lives because they dared to help save the Tutsi from the murderers in their own ranks.
This doesn't mean that Rwanda is in danger of facing another genocide. It does, however, show that the country, and the region, still suffer the consequences of the 1994 massacre. And that the road to reconciliation is far from over.
