A little from the other side
Rwanda's Latest Ethnic Cleansing~
True reconciliation is impossible until the Hutus' suffering is also recognized.
By Michael J. Kavanagh
Posted Wednesday, April 7, 2004, at 3:18 PM PT
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. While the world looked on unashamed, the Hutu Power movement went on a 100-day killing spree to exterminate the minority Tutsi population and any political opposition by moderate Hutus. It took a Tutsi-led rebel force called the Rwandan Patriotic Front to put an end to the killing and start the long, slow process of rebuilding this small African nation.
Over the past 10 years, the RPF—now the democratically elected government—has made incredible progress in Rwanda. It has established a government dedicated to "unity and reconciliation" whose rhetoric is high-minded and enlightened. Women make up a greater percentage of the Rwandan parliament then anywhere else in the world (they are required by law to fill 30 percent of all government positions). And security in Rwanda is impressive; I feel safer walking around the streets of Kigali at night than I do in my Brooklyn neighborhood.
…If such social engineering could ever work, Rwanda—a country where insensate respect for authority has often been cited as a main reason why so many people could suddenly turn around and kill neighbors, friends, even family members—is the place. But in fact, ethnicity is as present as ever in Rwanda. If Rwandans don't use the words "Tutsi" and "Hutu," it's because they've found other ways of saying them.
Take, for example, rescapé—roughly, "survivor"—the widely used term for those who escaped the genocide. Rescapé is reserved solely for Tutsis. In a recent interview in Kigali, my translator—without prompting—told a Hutu woman who had suggested that she herself was a rescapé that such a thing was impossible because she wasn't Tutsi.
She looked at him, and then at me, with a mixture of confusion and pain. She'd done time in the refugee camps, lost family members, fought off rape attempts, and was now dirt-poor after 10 years of supporting her husband in jail. In her mind, she was a survivor.
"But maman, survivors are only Tutsis," my translator explained once more—again without prompting.
