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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477435" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>No Secret: The Rwandan Genocide</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A remote source of the Nile, <br>the Kagera River originates in Burundi. <br>On its way to Lake Victoria it flows<br>into a steep gorge along the natural border<br>between Rwanda and Tanzania.<br>Before entering the ravine, <br>the river cascades in a small waterfall<br>that swells in the rainy season.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As the Kagera sweeps down from<br>the highlands it carries within its currents<br>vast clusters of uprooted trees embedded<br>in gigantic dollops of elephant grass. <br>In the spring and summer of 1994<br>it was still much the same. <br>However, this time also thousands <br>of human corpses floated on the river.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Rwanda and Burundi <br>are two tiny African countries, <br>each with a territory somewhat smaller<br>than Belgium. Most of the population<br>belong to Hutu tribes, <br>who are traditionally crop growers. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But beginning in the 1300s<br>warrior herdsmen<br>from the highlands of Ethiopia<br> migrated to the region. <br>They originally spoke Somali or Oromo, <br>but in adopting the local Bantu language<br>and settling among the Hutus, <br>they became known as Tutsis. <br> <br>The German colonists favoured<br>the Ethiopian look of the Tutsi minority.<br>They employed them as overseers<br>in the administration of Ruanda-Urundi, <br>as the colony was called then. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then during the First World War Belgium <br>took over governing the territory <br>but continued to support the Tutsis <br>as the ruling class.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> In 1919 Brussels received a mandate <br>from the League of Nations to administer<br>the colony. The Belgian colonists divided<br>Tutsis and Hutus on the basis <br>of cattle ownership, church documents, <br>physical measurements<br>and physiognomic appearance. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Basically, they had designated <br>the wealthy and tall as Tutsis, <br>and classified those poorer <br>and shorter as Hutus. <br>The Tutsis got used fast<br>to their privileged status<br>as Rwandan aristocrats. <br>They worshipped their king <br>as a god-like ruler and treated <br>the Hutus with disdain as peasants. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the aristocratic Tutsi monarchy <br>came to an end in 1959 <br>when Belgium allowed holding<br>universal elections.<br>King Kigeli V of Ruanda-Urundi <br>was forced to go to exile <br>and the majority Hutus<br>assumed control of the government. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">These were turbulent times<br>that deteriorated into wide spread <br>communal violence. <br>In 1962 two independent countries<br>emerged from the former colony, <br>Rwanda and Burundi. <br>But the transition from colony <br>to independence was not <br>a peaceful one.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">At the time that Rwanda <br>became independent, <br>Hutus comprised more than 80 percent<br>of the country’s seven million people. <br>Nevertheless, the Tutsi minority<br>was reluctant to give up <br>its privileged ruling status.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Consequently, Hutus and Tutsis <br>were at each other’s throat<br> in the power struggle <br>for governing the country.<br>In Rwanda hundreds of Tutsis <br>were killed while thousands of others<br>fled to neighbouring Burundi and Uganda. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the aftermath of the atrocities, <br> President Grégoire Kayibanda <br>made the Hutus the governing majority <br>of the nation. Yet the leaders <br>of the new regime did not choose<br>a policy of national reconciliation.<br>Instead, they opted for oppression<br>and discrimination. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They blamed the problems of Rwanda <br>on the Tutsis. In the 1970s<br>the Hutu-led military <br>continued to murder Tutsis in Rwanda.<br>They excluded the Tutsis <br>from the governmental administration, <br>the armed forces, even from schools<br>and universities.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet meanwhile Tutsis had their share<br> in violent ethnic cleansing as well.<br> In 1972, in response to a Hutu rebellion, <br> the Tutsi controlled army<br> in the Republic of Burundi<br> killed over 100,000 Hutus.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Similarly to Rwanda, over 80 percent<br> of the population in Burundi<br>consists of Hutu tribes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Harking back on the shame and humiliation <br>of the past, the Hutu leadership in Rwanda <br>intensified their hateful propaganda, <br>inflaming bitterness and hostility<br>against the tall, aristocratic Tutsi. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They claimed that the Tutsis <br>intended to restore a feudal system<br> to enslave the Hutu population. <br>They recruited writers and teachers<br> to travel the country to raise Hutu pride <br>and to create a pan-Hutu consciousness. <br>They sowed the seeds of spite, <br>unfurled the propaganda of hate <br>and prepared the hurricane of genocide.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">However, in the neighbouring countries<br>the Tutsi refugee Diaspora organized<br>militia forces to overthrow <br>the Hutu regime in Rwanda.<br>In 1990 civil war broke out<br>as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) <br>of the Tutsi minority<br>invaded the country from Uganda.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then on April 6,1994, an airplane<br> carrying the Hutu presidents<br> of two African nations, <br> Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and<br> Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, <br> had been shot down. <br>The fanatic Akazu organization <br>of the Hutu Power ideologists<br>immediately blamed the Tutsis <br>for the shooting down of the plane.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They spread hate and hysteria. <br>By radio and word of mouth<br>they told Hutu civilians that it was <br>their patriotic duty <br>to “fill the half-empty graves” <br>with the bodies of Tutsis.<br>They called for the slaughter<br>of all Tutsis, as well as of Hutus<br>who sympathized with the Tutsi. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They even incited Hutu wives <br>and husbands to murder <br>their own spouses.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Although throughout the centuries<br>both Hutus and Tutsis<br>unleashed violent actions<br> and slaughtered each other, <br> the tragic events of 1994 culminated<br> in one of the most horrible atrocities<br> of history.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Rwandan radio exhorted people <br>to fight for Rwanda and to kill <br>the Tutsis like ‘cockroaches’<br>and sweep them from the country. <br>The radio inflamed the Hutus<br>to massacre the Tutsis, <br>urging them to use <br>every kind of weapons; <br>if not guns and grenades, <br>then arrows, spears, <br>machetes, knives and clubs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so they did. <br>Frenzied Hutu squads killed <br>Tutsi men, women, children <br>and babies by the thousands<br>in the streets, in churches, <br>schools and in their houses.<br> In the countryside the murderers<br> covered the dead with banana leaves<br> in order to screen them<br> from aerial photography.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In about100 days, <br>between April 6 and mid-July in 1994, <br>approximately one million people <br>were killed. The victims also included<br>Hutus who refused to participate<br>in the massacres or were <br>on friendly relations with Tutsis.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The cold blooded murderers <br>who perpetrated these heinous crimes<br>were fuelled by fanatic dedication <br>to a pan-nationalist identity politics.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The killers were often not strangers <br>but familiar faces to the victims, <br>neighbours and workmates, <br>even relatives or former friends.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The December 1993 issue <br>of the Hutu Kangura magazine shows<br> a picture of the Rwandan President <br>Grégoire Kayibanda next to a machete. <br>Adjacent to the picture appear the words: <br>“Tutsi: Race of God”, and then<br> the magazine poses the question: <br>“Which weapons are we going to use<br> to beat the cockroaches for good? ” </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The genocide<br>that followed was no secret! <br>It occurred uninterrupted<br>by United Nations forces <br>that were in place<br>monitoring a ceasefire. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And journalists and TV cameras <br>from all over the world reported<br>the massacres. <br>Viewers in cities and villages <br>on different continents <br>sat in front of their television screens, <br>sipping coffee or eating popcorn, <br>and watched in shock<br>the horrible mass murders. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The genocide ended in July 1994 <br>when the Tutsi rebels of the RPF <br>defeated the Hutu military forces <br>of Rwanda. Fearing retributions, <br>two million Hutus fled <br>to neighbouring Burundi, Tanzania, <br>Uganda and Zaire. Many of them <br>participated in the massacres. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Conditions in the refugee camps were<br>dreadful and thousands died<br>in epidemics of cholera and dysentery. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The international community<br> could have intervened in order to stop <br>the Rwandan genocide, but governments <br>lacked the political will to do that.<br>And, indeed, <br>the United Nations Security Council<br>accepted responsibility <br>for failing to prevent the massacres. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The unchecked brutality <br>of the perpetrators of this genocide <br>“made a mockery, once again, <br>of the pledge ‘never again’”, <br>said the Canadian Foreign Minister, <br>Lloyd Axworthy.<br>He was referring to the promise <br>made after the Holocaust.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Paul+Hartal">Paul Hartal</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=477435" data-title="No Secret: The Rwandan Genocide de Paul Hartal" data-description="A remote source of the Nile, 
the Kagera River originates in Burundi. 
On its way to Lake Victoria it flows
into a steep gorge along the natural border
between Rwanda and Tanzania.
Before entering the ravine, 
the river cascades in a small waterfa..."></div>
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