Voices of Rwanda

By Briana Wong
Columbia Spectator
October 26, 2009

Last Tuesday, the Columbia/Barnard Hillel hosted Voices of Rwanda, a group dedicated to creating a platform for survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide to share their stories with the world that abandoned them 15 years ago.

The genocide, which took place between the beginning of April and the middle of July in 1994, began when Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana was murdered. Over the course of the next three months, somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans, the majority of whom belonged to the Tutsi tribe, were slaughtered.

During Tuesday’s event, representatives from Voices of Rwanda screened a film featuring the testimonies of three survivors. Michel, a young Tutsi man, related the experience of having his family’s home invaded by members of the Hutu militia. His grandfather, who had managed to “change his ethnicity” from Tutsi to Hutu, was asked by the intruding soldiers whether or not the boy was his. Michel recalls his grandfather saying, without missing a beat, “No. I do not know him.”

The grandfather’s decision to allow the militia to take away his grandson strikes most of us as astonishingly neglectful and unjust. But this type of heartlessness is not endemic to the Rwandan genocide. The misconception that we are not our brothers’ keepers is timeless.

This past week, my World War II history class watched the 1955 Alain Resnais documentary “Night and Fog,” which discusses the plight of the inmates of Europe’s concentration camps during the Holocaust. One of the most chilling moments in the film is when a camp foreman, a German nobleman, and nameless others firmly protest, one after the other, “I am not responsible.” In turning a blind eye, all of these men were responsible directly or indirectly for the loss of lives during the genocide that is known today as the Holocaust. Silence enables.

Half a century after World War II, the Clinton administration displayed the same failure to recognize its responsibilities with respect to such atrocities. Alison des Forges, a Human Rights Watch researcher and authority on the genocide, was confident that there is “powerful proof that [the American government] knew.” Instead of sending aid to Rwanda, the United States actually lobbied in the United Nations for a total withdrawal of U.N. forces in Rwanda during the first month of the conflict. Secretary of State Warren Christopher avoided the term “genocide” like the plague and forbade officials to refer to the Rwanda uprising as such until May 21. Even then, American officials did not use the “g-word” in public for three weeks after Christopher granted them permission to do so. It is known that U.S. officials were aware of the identities of the genocide leaders and had contact with them, but these officials did not enforce their requests for genocide leaders to stop the killings.

In a 2003 interview, a mournful Bill Clinton said, “I think we could have sent 5,000, 10,000 troops there and saved a couple hundred thousand lives . . . I’ll always regret that Rwandan thing.” My first reaction upon reading Clinton’s response was, as King Lear would say, “Woe, that too late repents!” These sentiments would not make up for the lives lost.

But upon reflection, I came to the conclusion that a belated repentance is far superior to none at all. This is especially important because history repeats itself. The Rwandan genocide was one of many genocides perpetrated since the end of World War II —we must not forget Cambodia (1975-1979), Brazil (1988), Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), and Sudan (2003-present) along with dozens of other mass murders that have not been classified as genocide.

The world has had more than enough opportunities to realize that bucking responsibility is not an option. Judging by the way humans have behaved in the past, the sad truth is that we will have plenty of opportunities to exercise the responsibility to stand up for the rights of those who are persecuted. According to human trafficking expert and Columbia alumnus Siddharth Kara, human traffickers made a combined $95.4 billion in profits last year. The U.N. has estimated that every year, there are approximately 5,000 honor killings of women worldwide. The Lord’s Resistance Army, mostly consisting of abducted children, has ravaged northern Uganda for well over 20 years. It is imperative that we do all that we can to give a voice to those who don’t have one.

Note:
The author is a Columbia College sophomore.

Related Materials:
What Really Happened in Rwanda?

What they don’t tell you about Rwanda

The truth about the Rwandan genocide

The Truth about the Death of Maj. Gen. Fred Rwigyema

Paul Kagame’s blackmail aims at granting him impunity