The Rwandan Genocide

Between April and July 1994, within 100 days, approximately 1.000.000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, while the world stood by and watched - hacked to death with machetes or other farm tools, strangled, drowned in septic tanks, palled, shot, buried alive or killed by methods beyond imagination. The Hutu militia was openly supported by the Rwandan army. The few UN soldiers there were forced to watch and the international community was busy defining if the mass killings were “acts of genocide” or indeed “genocide”.

Those three months of killing and murder were actually only the ultimate climax in a long lasting conflict that roots in colonial times. In pre-colonial times, the terms Hutus and Tutsis were used to describe social classes: the pastoralist Tutsis on the one hand and the Hutu peasants on the other.

Often a rather random matter, a royal decree declared people owing more than 10 pieces of cattle to be considered Tutsis. Under Belgium rule, this distinction was turned into an ethnic difference and aggressively propagated. Physical features were assigned - a complete nonsense in a tiny country where intermarriage was common. Identity cards were issued that stated whether a person was a Hutu or a Tutsi and in school the groups would sit separately. These last two categorizations came in handy in 1994. Everybody knew who his / her neighbor was in the days of the genocide.

Most Tutsis still believe that these and many other measures were meticulously planned. Further proof they see in a 100% Hutu army, Kigali businessmen purchasing machetes en masse (what seems an innocent order in rural areas) and 100.000s of weapons that were handed out to Hutus prior to the genocide.

Nevertheless, Tutsis were massacred long before 1994: in the late 1950s, in the early 1960s and in the 1970s. Each time, many fled in large numbers, weakening the Tutsi minority even more. In the neighboring countries - Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Tanzania - they formed the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPN). This militia eventually freed the country in July 1994, after the UN had pulled out and the international community refused to help. For more information: http://www.history.com/topics/rwandan-genocide.

Of the many genocide memorials in Rwanda, the museum in Kigali is the largest and the most visited one. Initiated by two young British men, it was opened in 2004, the 10^th anniversary of the genocide. The concept of the museum follows the events in a chronological order: the build up of genocide, the genocide, and after the genocide. The entire visit is tough to stomach, but the children’s rooms are simply unbearable. Photos and short biographies of the young victims, some a few months old, fill the room.

One room is devoted to other genocides, like the Armenian, Cambodian and the Shoah. The many photos of the victims are crucial to give some of the one million killed a face. Videos with oral testimony of survivors, many of whom were forced to watch the slaughtering of family members, bring this tragedy even closer.

The garden is divided into sectors, each symbolizing a certain aspect of the genocide or the prospect of a peaceful united Rwanda. The two large mass graves contain the remains of an incomprehensible 250.000 people gathered from ditches and fields in the area.

The Kigali Genocide Memorial is one of many in Rwanda. Personally, I found the churches of Nyamata and Ntarama, south of Kigali, the most horrifying testimony of the killing, because of the immediacy.