This piece has been very difficult to type, although I've recited numerous superb drafts of brilliant prose over the past few sleepless nights. Regrettably, all the clever words disappear into thin air with sunrise but this is my way of paying respect to Rwandans both then and now because, although this part is Anger, part 2 is Inspire. The Rwanda Genocide of 1994 is a heavy coin with one side deathly dark, the other a beacon of shining light that brightens humanity.
Fascinated by the Holocaust since my early teens, having visited Dachau in Germany and Vad Yashem in Israel and devoured literature and movies about the genocides in Europe and Rwanda; I believed myself bulletproof and tough enough to cope with Kigali.
Him Outdoors and I followed our usual museum pattern on arrival, each roaming independently at our own pace. The memorial is astoundingly well laid out, beginning right at the beginning, before European colonisation and drawing visitors deeper and deeper towards the darkness of 1994. The blow by blow account of a well planned, prepared and actioned slaughter is clinical in its precision and thoroughness. The images moved, but didn't shock; who among us hasn't seen visuals of horror-filled trenches and corpses caught forever in agonised death throes? Our screens are overladen with ghastly scenes shot live in Syria and we have armoured ourselves to view others' agony with a certain amount of disconnect.
But then there it was on the wall - the kick-in-the-belly Genocide Fax sent 3 months before the horror began by United Nations Assistance Mission In Rwanda (UNAMIR) Commander Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire to Head of UN Peacekeeping Mission Kofi Annan. And the UN reply refusing permission to raid the arms caches or to send the requested 5500 UN troops. Further, instructing Dallaire to pass what he had learnt from the informant directly to the Rwandan head of state, the man planning a genocide. The informant, known only as Jean-Phillipe, disappeared never to be heard of again. Unlike Kofi Annan, who went on to greater things at the UN.
Alongside were details of the $12 million arms deal between a French arms manufacturer (a deal guaranteed by the French government) and the Rwandan government. A government blatantly attending peace talks in Arusha and declaring on their arrival home that the peace agreement meant nothing, it was just 'piles of paper' and openly boasting of what they would do to the Tutsi after the accord was signed.
Reading this documentation of historical fact in a museum hit home harder than any press reports had done. Staggering back to lean heavily against the cool wall, overcome with a nausea-induced heatwave and frantically wondering where the closest restroom was, my mind grappled to deal with the bald facts. It was preventable. The world knew. They allowed a genocide to happen, not in another time when ignorance or lack of information could be blamed. Twenty-four years ago.
HO has an uncanny ability to identify a crisis point. From nowhere, a hand pressed my shoulder - "are you ok?" I was incoherent but the bile subsided. Move on, barely taking in the halls following because the cacophony of bellowing anger in my head was blinding.
Fury blazed so hotly that I walked straight through the other genocides covered on the second floor. At least two of them, along with Rwanda, occurred after the UN adopted Resolution 260 on 9th December 1948 - Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Syria, naturally, being an ongoing genocide hasn't quite made it to museum status yet.
Breaking point was yet to come. I sat for a while composing my thoughts before entering the Childrens' Hall, called Lost Tomorrows. Now the 100 bloody days in 1994 were narrowed down to a dozen or so photographs of happy, smiling children and babies and descriptions of their favourite things to do and to eat. And how they died. Tears stung as I was introduced first to Francine and Bernadin, aged 17. David Mugiraneza, around the corner, delivered the knock out punch. Little David, aged 10, who loved football and making people laugh and wanted to be a doctor. David, whose last words before being tortured to death were "UNAMIR will come for us."
Too much. Much, much too much. Torture is an age-old method of gaining information; who tortures a 10-year old? But that anguish was nothing compared to the tsunami of grief wrought by the trust and faith a small boy had in the foreign peacekeepers, unaware that they had been ordered to stand by and do nothing. I collapsed into a sobbing heap in the corner, absolutely overcome with shame. Why has France not been hauled before the International Court for aiding and abetting a genocide? Why did Kofi Annan not fall on his sword in shame, the shrill screams of hundreds of thousands of butchered people ringing in his ears?
A few weeks ago a friend and I were given a thorough tour of the UN in Nairobi, and properly drilled (and grilled) about how the UN is for everyone and we should all participate in suggesting solutions to world problems. George, our guide, admitted that the innocence and intentions of a world exhausted by two cataclysmic wars within 30 years has hamstrung the UN of recent times, where national interests supercede international morality and peace. The UN is incapable of preventing catastrophe and its efforts to adapt procedures to deal with this new world are too slow.
Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Syria will happen again and again until we, the people, start playing stronger roles in our governments' international policies. Thabo Mbeki's 'An African solution for an African problem' always resonated with me. Not regarding the solution he was pushing for that particular problem, but because Africa is our home. Fifty-four countries and thousands of languages notwithstanding, this is our land and our welfare. No one understands Africa and Africans better than us, even when we aren't getting on or understanding each other at all.
The African Union has always been a blip somewhere in the outerspace of my consciousness but now, pushed by the lessons of Rwanda 1994, I intend to find out more about it and pay attention to what it is doing. There are lives at stake, yours and mine and, more importantly, our children. We cannot be so focused on what is happening in our hometown that we allow millions of people to die horribly in our neighbourhood.
"When they said 'never again' after the Holocaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?" Apuilan Kabahin, Kigali Genocide Memorial
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