Dealing with Genocide

“Human nature is for man to be a killer” is what our tour guide told us today. We went to the genocide memorial today. It was an intense experience. To have been here for a month already and still in some ways be so ignorant of the things that have happened here. The memorial was more of a walk though, with pictures, videos, testimonies. Upstairs there was a little section of all the genocides that have gone on around the world. There have been so many, in Europe, Africa, and China. It is hard to believe there can be so much hate towards people just because of a race. On the lower level we heard the history of why the genocide in Rwanda happened, as well as stories from people that went through it, saved people, and killed people. It was a lot of information, and a lot to process. The history of it all happened with the Belgians (surprise surprise it was an outsider trying to do something in a culture not their own). They brought their technology, and health products to Rwanda, divided them into three groups (Hutu, Tutsi, and twa… the twa were the pygmies) and they also decided that they would put the Tutsi’s in power because they were the minority, but they were the better race. This act that happened so many years ago started the resentment of the Tutsi people. This people that were once all united as Rwandans were now all divided. They brain washed these people with propaganda, they had articles on how the Tutsis were bad, and they were cockroaches, making them sick. They had the “10 Hutu Commandments” that talked about how if they married, or partnered, or did business with a Tutsi, that they were considered a Traitor. Eventually, after separations, beatings, small killings, when the president died, Genocide was born. They already had lists made up of the first people they were going to kill. They killed these people with clubs, machetes, and guns. It is not like the Tutsi’s looked any different, they knew the people. They taught children to kill their friends, neighbors were killing neighbors. One lady in the memorial said she once saw a baby, breast feeding from her dead mother. There was a whole section of children, what their favorite things were, how they were killed. The Hutus smashed babies against walls, machete them in their mother’s arms, shot them in the head. Children, how could any one do that to a child?!? We saw tons of skulls with holes through them, as well as machete lines. Broken bones, tattered cloths. There was one room with pictures from family members. So many faces, so many young people. The man told us there were 250,000 people buried in mass graves here. This happened just 14 short years ago, how could this happen? The government enforced a killing of an entire people group, and the people learned to be killers. This country stank of murder because the streets were littered with bodies. And no one did anything to stop it. The UN in fact pulled out. Thousands and thousands of people were getting brutally murdered as we in the states sat back and had a latte. It’s hard to be here and to be surrounded with people with this ghost of a past. The movie said every Rwandan was affected, by either knowing someone who died, or someone who murdered. They are sill going through trials because there are so many people. This country seems too developed now, so strong, yet you can tell there is quietness. I can’t imagine this place, and these people going to war on each other, hacking each other to death with farming tools. Neighbors killing neighbors, kids killing friends. People killing children and mothers over everyone else because they are the future of the Tutsi’s. How can people be so evil, so sick? How can a human be viewed as nothing the way the Tutsi’s were. And how after knowing, seeing a place like this, can we allow things like Darfur to still be happening? There will be more conflicts, and we just sit there and do nothing? We let thousands of people die brutal deaths, and sit back doing nothing? I can’t understand this mind set. I feel frustrated at my own people for doing nothing, I feel frustrated at the killers for being so evil, and I feel frustrated at myself for being ignorant for so long. I am still processing this, it is hard to process the deaths of thousands of people for absolutely nothing, as well as the fact that these things still occur and no one seems to help.

(The pictures are of the mass graves and names of people killed in the Genocide taken outside of the Memorial, cameras were not allowed inside)