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| Saturday, 1 May 2004 |
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Rwanda's genocide - the result of stepped-up ethnicity by Preethi Sirimanne - von den Driesch Exactly 10 years ago, in 1994, no sooner the plane carrying Rwanda's president Juv,nal Habyarimana was shot down, the country's militia consisting mainly of Hutus in a rampant fit of paroxysm exerted a gruesome killing campaign.
Targeted were the minority group of Rwanda, the Tutsi, and Hutu moderates - politicians, journalists and other persons - who opposed the government. The militia, the communal police, local leaders and civilians hunted, shot, mutilated, raped and killed as many as 800,000 Rwandans within a period of 100 days. The horrors of the Rwandan genocide were so shocking that it is almost impossible to imagine a tragedy of such magnitude ever took place in the last decade. Eyewitnesses reported: Hundreds of bloated bodies floated down the rivers Nyabarongo and Akagera at the rate of two bodies per minute, twisted dead bodies lay in heaps inside a church, the corpse of a little girl was flattened to the thinness of a cardboard by passing vehicles, dead bodies thrown down in the forest partly eaten by animals were decaying leaving a pungent odour unable to withstand. 100,000 children were orphaned and over 250,000 women raped more than half infected with the AIDS virus. This month, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the massacre, the Rwandan president Paul Kagame accused the international community of deliberately failing to prevent the genocide. Speaking at a conference Mr Kagame said: We should always bear in mind that genocide, wherever it happens, represents the international community's failure, which I would in fact characterise as deliberate, as convenient failure. How could a million lives of the Rwandan people be regarded as so insignificant by anyone in terms of strategic or national interest? Do the powerful nations have a hidden agenda? I would hate to believe that this agenda is dictated by racist considerations or the colour of the skin. I hope it is not true. Racist ideology of the colonizers It is impossible to understand the conflict in Rwanda without exploring Rwanda's history. The fundamental question revolves around the issue whether ethnic problems between Hutu (84 per cent), Tutsi (15 per cent), and Twa (1 per cent) existed before the colonizers came to Rwanda. Before the colonial era the Hutu and the Tutsi people spoke a common, highly sophisticated language, shared common religious beliefs and took part in cultural events together. This situation changed dramatically after the foreign rulers came. At the Berlin Conference (1885) the European imperialists carved up Africa so that Rwanda and Burundi came into the hands of the Germans. However, after World War I the Belgians took over and administrated Rwanda for the following years in a self-serving manner that benefited their imperial interests. The Belgians transformed the Rwandan society first by destroying the existing pattern of rule, secondly by introducing a racist ideology supported by the European scientists at that time and thirdly by introducing an identity card system which forced Rwandans to register under their ethnicity. The race card the Belgians played in their divide and rule policy later contributed to the 1994 genocide. Racism was something the colonizers benefited from as a tactic to differentiate communal groups. So the Belgians put forward a pseudo-scientific doctrine, an assumption based on the Hamitic hypothesis which claimed that the Tutsi originated from a superior race (Caucasoid) from the Nile Valley. Since the Tutsi were fairer and taller and had narrow features they were considered closer to Europeans and superior to the Hutu. The Belgians also regarded the Tutsi to be more intelligent, loyal to the colonizers, efficient and reliable. In contrast, the Hutus who were short, had broader faces and darker skin colour - common to the African Bantu tribe - were considered as less intelligent, brutish and inferior. Among those who helped to propagate and indoctrinate this racial hierarchy theory were the Catholic missionaries who controlled all schooling in Rwanda. Having converted the majority of the Rwandans to Christianity, the Catholic Church became the part and parcel of the colonial rulers and acted as a powerful, influential body. Scheerer, a missionary in Rwanda, wrote: Pastors have prestige and influence. They gain access to foreign money and government officials. In Rwanda a young man who wants to climb to get ahead will first visit the Bible school. As Belgians decided to give official posts primarily to Tutsi they started separating the Tutsi from the Hutu and compelled all Rwandans to register. The identity card system which recorded ethnicity in written form became the foundation for allocating jobs, education and other facilities. While the Tutsi were given monopoly of public life, the Hutu population was forced to bear onerous obligations, like paying taxes, surrendering their cash crops and work without payment. The Tutsi elites benefiting from their own superiority and elevated positions helped the European clergy and academics to write the history of Rwanda according to their own interpretations, leaving out the contributions made by the Hutu to the country's development. This inaccurate history widely served the Tutsi interest and validated the European racist theory. The haunting fact is this racial hierarchy doctrine and the registration of Rwanda's population systematically institutionalized superiority of one particular race and created a division between the Hutu and the Tutsi. The society fell apart as the colonial rule and Christianisation eliminated local religions, customs and rules which kept the Rwandans together. The explicit domination of one group and the subjugation of the other produced anger, hatred and violence. The irony is that the frustrated Hutu instead of attacking the colonizers targeted their proxies: the Tutsi. As Rwanda became independent in 1962, the Hutu population came into power and generated a new wave of patriotism. Scholars began to rewrite Rwanda's history including the Hutu contribution to the country. Meanwhile the Hutu who suffered during the colonial era started to take revenge on the Tutsi. As violence escalated, more than 300,000 Tutsi fled to neighbouring countries in the 1960s. In the 1980s, exiled Tutsi wanted to come back to Rwanda but were hindered by the government which said that Rwanda is already too populated. The Tutsi then organised themselves as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), declared their intention not only to return but also to establish a democratic government and entered Rwanda in 1990. It is at this point that the Rwandan government asked help from France to fight against the RPF Tutsi rebels. Since then violence increased from both sides culminating to the genocide in 1994. Rwanda's tragedy exposes to the world how polarization of ethnic cleavage, racist doctrines and rankings, systematic manipulation, domination and suppression, coercion and misinterpretation of history can sparkle violence, hatred and revenge which ultimately destroy a whole nation. Those who try to ignore the historical facts and try to overrate the ethnic differences as a tribal problem are doing a great injustice to the people of Rwanda. The root cause of the Rwandan tragedy was the artificial ethnic differences set up by the colonizers. Therefore the evil crimes of past centuries must be addressed and challenged before we say never again. |
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