Thirty years ago today, unspeakable horror exploded in Rwanda. Genocide began.
In college, I met an international student from the short-lived country of Biafra, which had broken away from Nigeria six years before. Over two million Biafrans died in that civil war, mostly from starvation.
But the war in Biafra, as catastrophic as it was, was not genocide. The term has specific and legal meaning. The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part, with people defined as ethnic, national, racial, or religious. There are other qualifications.
As with Nazi Germany’s desire to destroy the Jewish population from the face of Europe, the Hutu in Rwanda determined to eliminate the Tutsi. Over a mere one hundred days, more than half a million people were slaughtered by Hutu military personnel and peasants alike.
How did this happen?
The history is complicated. Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa peoples coexisted for centuries. Unlike the distinctive pygmy Twa, the difference between the Hutu and Tutsi was class or caste distinction, not necessarily racial. They shared a common language, a common culture, even a common religion – Christianity. While the Hutu were by far the numerically dominant group, for more than a century the Tutsi held power under a monarchy.
Then the European powers arrived, the Germans, the Belgians, and the French in succession. They brought with them a modern racialized theory which supported the Tutsi rule and infected a poison into the common understanding. With Tutsi rule propped up by pseudoscience and pseudo-Bible-based race theories about the Tutsi being more advanced and foreign, toxicity festered between the two groups.
In 1959 the Hutu gained power, and in 1962 the nation won independence from Belgium. More than 300,000 Tutsis fled to neighboring countries where they remained in generational exile. Occasional flareups continued until, in 1990, Tutsi exiles living in Uganda invaded Rwanda. Civil war broke out. Three years later, various factions agreed to a shared government. But it never happened.
On April 6, 1994, the Rwandan President, a Hutu, was assassinated, the Tutsi rebels were blamed, and the wholesale killings began – Tutsis, moderate Hutus, and Twa alike. The carnage swept through the country and by July somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 people lay dead – everywhere. The Hutu said their goal was to kill every Tutsi living in Rwanda, and they almost succeeded.
Even as the killings ensued, the Tutsi rebels from Uganda slowly gained control of the country. In the wake of the rebel advances, hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled to Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Burundi. In the vast refugee camps, the old Hutu guard held power, still hunting down Tutsis. Besides the numbers killed, an estimated two million (out of seven million) Rwandans, mostly Hutu, were displaced. In addition, a third of the Twa had been killed.
At first, the French and other international authorities supported the Hutu or called this a dual genocide. The appearance of civil war complicated external perceptions. It took months to sort out and years to stabilize the country, now shred of infrastructure and economy. To stop the Hutu in exile from further genocide, Tutsi rebel forces invaded the DRC, leading to two Congo Wars over the next decade, with millions more perishing.
What can we learn from this tragedy?
Much has been written about the genocide, related wars, and the long, slow process of healing. What motivates me on this anniversary is a desire to dig deeper, to understand the whys. The simple theological answer is sin, human depravity. But such an answer, albeit correct in my opinion, is insufficient. Sin is found wherever humans are found. Genocide is not. What causes a people to turn to genocide to the point that they kill their neighbors simply because some authority says those people are cockroaches or “too-tall trees to be cut down”?
Though I have read numerous sources on both Rwanda and genocide, I am no expert on either. I am an ethicist by training and so bring certain tools to the conversation: research skills, theological and ethical understandings, etc. One doesn’t have to earn a graduate degree to learn how to use critical skills, though it helps greatly.
Just as someone without an advanced degree in nutrition can still learn to eat right, “lay” people can learn to use basic skills to help them make ethical decisions and to come to ethical conclusions. Some of the most ethical people I have known have had little if any academic training. Ethical analysis, however, is a bit more daunting.
What conclusions can we draw about this most ghastly of anniversaries?
- We must remember the bad and the ugly, as well as the good.
When I saw this anniversary date pop up, I recalled that I’d seen a couple of movies and read some books and articles back in the day. All I remembered was that one group of people had tried to eradicate another.
The anniversary date stirred something in me. Anniversaries and commemorations are like that. People prefer to leave well enough alone. They are afraid old hurts will be revived and old conflicts, long dormant, will be restoked. But if pain is not dealt with, it festers. Moreover, even after the last wound has healed, memories have a lot to teach us. Thus, the adage about history having a way of repeating itself – if we don’t learn from the past, it will come back to haunt us.
2. Words and labels have power.
As children, we learned that, although sticks and stones may break our bones, names will never hurt us. Hogwash! Recently, someone in the news excused slanderous political speech as mere words, not consequential action. What Rwanda teaches us is that words have great power to provoke action.
I mentioned earlier about the Hutu calling Tutsi cockroaches. A derogatory term slung around for a long time, it had a corrosive effect. When authority figures started saying, “Kill the cockroaches,” and handing out machetes, people turned on their neighbors who, they came to believe, deserved nothing more than to be squashed.
Or cut down. Tutsi, who tended to be taller than Hutu, were derided as trees to be cut down.
Modify an individual’s or a group’s name with something bad long enough and the label not only impacts them, it impacts how we treat them. Certainly, we see this in the treatment of Jews by Nazis or in our own country in the treatment of Native Americans, Black Americans, and other groups.
As I was taught from the Scriptures, “Out of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
3. Bad theology and bad science have very bad consequences.
The bad science in the Rwandan case was the misunderstanding of what constitutes race and ethnicity. Poorly understood science led to bad theories about history. Myths rose up lacking supportive data.
As for the bad theology, generations of Western Christians had misinterpreted the Old Testament passages about the sons of Noah and the curse of Ham. For the African diaspora in the U.S., seen as descendants of Ham, that led to enslavement and abuse. For the Tutsi, it was the opposite; they were considered Hamites and thus a cut above the even lower Hutu. Bad theology can cut multiple ways.
Both the bad science and the bad theology came from the West and were superimposed on local cultural tensions. Although the science and the theology have long been debunked, the curse of Ham still lurks under some rock to this day.
Bad science and bad theology lead to destruction. Attitudes and beliefs, formed around wrong interpretations of scientific data and Scripture, kill.
4. Cultural conflicts don’t go away by ignoring them.
Growing political tensions between the Tutsi and the Hutu festered for generations. European conquerors did not introduce the hostility, but they did intensify it. Outsiders added fuel to the fire and then totally misread the situation when full scale conflict broke out.
But where were those who could mediate, who could sort out the growing tensions? While individual priests and pastors proved sacrificial heroes, the church as a whole was no help, and in fact contributed to the problem. Political outsiders and world leaders were interested only in their own wellbeing.
Not intimately familiar with the current scene in Rwanda, I am not directly aware of how the healing process has unfolded. Many testimonials are available on the genocide and the aftermath. Certainly, much healing has transpired. Courts were set up to deal with the perpetrators, but there was neither time nor space to handle every offender. As for the untreated trauma, like the conflict that brings it on, concerted effort is needed for healing lest the trauma give birth to fresh conflict.
Since 2000, Tutsi leader Paul Kagame has ruled the nation. The country is stable. Yet peace is not the absence of trouble. Tensions and trauma unresolved get passed on from one generation to the next. The pain does not just go away.
5. Evil has a systemic side.
People resist the idea of systemic evil, particularly systemic racism. We refuse to believe that oppression and conflict are perpetrated by system-wide forces.
Outsiders at first looked at the tragedy in Rwanda as a spontaneous combustion. But genocide is anything but spontaneous. By definition, genocide is intentional – meaning premeditated, one group of people rising up to destroy another. Groups do not spontaneously rise and destroy.
Ordinary people may get caught up, adding fire to the fuel, but it is impossible to come away from a study of the events in Nazi Germany or in Rwanda and not realize that genocide is a concerted effort. Whole nations do not just incinerate. Authoritarian leaders push compliant and groomed followers to shove their neighbors over the brink.
I firmly believe that God can change one heart at a time and thus change society. I also believe that God can use changed hearts to create systemic changes in society for the good.
6. Even the simplest of people can be taught to think for themselves.
Out of Rwanda’s nightmare came many stories of individual Hutus rising up to shield and defend their defenseless Tutsi neighbors. Not every Hutu was caught up in the craziness. Priests and community leaders were numbered among the noble. As were peasants in remote villages who, refusing to pick up machetes or stand by, found ways to rescue their Tutsi neighbors. Many Hutus paid with their lives. Many more intervened without recognition.
Living ethically and dying nobly do not require a college degree. Character comes from a reflective spirit. Ethical living requires learning to think for oneself, understanding that we can each rise above the petty and impenetrable differences that divide us and live in a world where peace and understanding thrive.
One Final Thought
I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone from Rwanda. Yet my heart aches for those who were lost and those who remain, including the living lost. Will you join with me this April 6 in taking a moment to lift up all who suffered during this season of hate – and pray with me that the Hutu and Tutsi find lasting peace? Will you also pray with me that all humankind will learn to love and not stir up hatred?
If it sounds like I’m asking for world peace, I am. As I was taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
This post is the first in a three-part series on the Rwandan Genocide. To be notified of subsequent posts, subscribe here. For more resources, please check out howardkenyon.com/resources/. To recommend additional resources, you are welcome to comment below.