Attempting to answer the difficult questions of genocides

New College pays homage to victims of the Rwandan Genocide
by GEORGE KAGAME



On 6th April 2009, the Mayor of Toronto David Miller issued a press release proclaiming 7th April as a ‘Day of Reflection’ for the victims of the genocide against the minority Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 beginning on 6th April.

A sombre looking Councilor Gord Perks presented Mayor Miller’s proclamation to the Rwandan Community in Toronto, and said he was too overwhelmed beyond to say anything at the time.

Rwandans living in Toronto, many of who are survivors of the genocide, Canadians and others interested in Rwanda were brought together by the University of Toronto’s New College to deliberate on the events of the 1994 genocide in a weeklong commemoration of the victims and survivors of the genocide.
The genocide in Rwanda was so efficiently executed such that 100 days later when the Rwanda Patriotic Front under Paul Kagame stopped it, almost one million Rwandans of Tutsi descent and their Hutu sympathizers had been hacked to death.

The deaths were planned by the central government and fueled to all levels of society by the highly effective radio and print journalists. The media had fired up any able-bodied Hutu with any stake in the existing leadership in Rwanda at that time up to “participate in nation building.”
The killers were armed with hastily procured machetes from China through Egypt and South Africa.

Like all events to commemorate genocides not just against the Rwandan Tutsi but other races, very unsettling questions are asked, many people are in put in awkward positions as well. There are usually no answers in such times even if in most cases the best-qualified persons by experience and learning are brought forward.

In the Rwandan situation such questions normally circle around the role of the ‘International Community’, the UN, the ‘West’, religion and most importantly; what is it that is so important to justify murder by a machete, by one person, then the next and finally a whole community. As the Rwandan Community met this week at New College, they were trying to find answers to such questions as the ones the above.

Like so many similar events organized all over the world, the answers to the causes, effects, and possible solutions were not forthcoming. In such circumstances, all the speakers could only speak about hope, hope that the lives of the survivors of the genocide can be rebuilt, that the country can and will once more cooperate, love and trust each other, that many of the suspects of the genocide and their supporters can have humility and stop revising and negating the events of Rwanda in 1994 and hope that Rwanda will once more achieve and sustain her place as pillar of pride in the centre of Africa.

Most of the questions asked however were directed to the media, the western media specifically. Very few asked or even tried to ask powerful African leaders and countries for their actions or inactions. Tunisia’s president in 1994 Zine El Abidine Ben Ali being chairman of the OAU, his primary concern was welcoming Nelson Mandela for his first address to African leaders meeting in a presidential summit in Tunis.

The international community, which in Africa is the term used to describe rich western countries was aloof to the Genocide in Rwanda and did nothing to stop it, not many on the continent however have made this accusation in similar weight to the responsibility and nature with which rich African countries at the time treated the genocide.

1994 was a landmark year in African history by many aspects. Leaders on the continent having failed to achieve the objectives of the Organization of African Unity, OAU since 1963, they were considering changing its name to its current acronym the AU with the inspiration of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.
Egypt in 1994 was the leading economy on the African continent and its president at that time as today was Hosni Mubarak the immediate past chairman of the OAU in 1993-4, yet it was in Egypt and South Africa that deals to procure the machetes to be used in the genocide were done.

Some people chosen by circumstances and fate happen to have been put in a situation to answer questions concerning Rwanda. Some of the most prominent among these are the two Canadians. One a senior military man and who headed a UN peace keeping mission Dallaire and the other international politics and medicine activist James Orbinski, who was present give his personal accounts of what happened in Rwanda when he was in the country in 1994. Orbinski a resident of the Annex was a head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Rwanda throughout 1994. His work is documented in the movie: Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma.

Orbinski said that among all the major players in global politics, only Canada continued supporting peacekeeping efforts during the genocide. He said that the voices of people speaking out against genocides has continued and was recently even more loud when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for the President of Sudan Omar Bashir and 8 important figures in his government.

Orbinski however added that the decision had created a complex situation for the people of Darfur and as such Doctors Without Borders will not support the court proceedings in charging Bashir.


Eric Rutsindintwarane a Rwandan diplomat in Ottawa told the gathering that the genocide in Rwanda is “our history, its a bad history but all the same it defines our past,” while Professor Rick Halpbern, the Principal of New College said that other survivors of past genocides like the famous Holocaust need to support efforts in rebuilding Rwanda and keeping the memory of the victims. “As a historian I know how important memory is and how dangerous forgetting is as well.”

The world has undergone considerable changes since the end of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda; the OAU changed its name to the African Union but remained with the same hallmarks of failure.
The UN started the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; the ICTR has turned out by many accounts to be a mockery of justice. And many survivors of the genocide don’t even know of what the court is actually doing.

The international Community has formed that International Criminal Court, with the recent arrest warrant against Sudanese president Omar Bashir as exception, the ICC is yet to fully explain the events happening in Darfur and the media as is wont has not seriously led a campaign to sway public opinion towards the situation either. And in Rwanda we all are saying NEVER AGAIN.