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| Gorilla - Picture Sophie Poldermans |
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| Hotel Mille Collines - Picture Sophie Poldermans |
In April, it will be 20 years ago when the Rwanda genocide
started to reach its appalling heat. In the ethnic conflict between the Hutu majority
and Tutsi minority, it is estimated that between 750,000 and 1 million people
[predominantly Tutsis and moderate Hutus] were killed within a hundred days.
The methods that were used to kill, were horrifying. People were slaughtered
with machettes, tortured to death, sexual violence was inflicted on a massive
scale and in a systematic manner, people were intentionally infected with HIV. Next
to the Holocaust, this is one of the classic examples of true genocide, where there
was, thanks to the hate speech of Radio Mille Collines, legal proof that there
was the intention to destroy a group of people in whole or in part. In
addition, war crimes and crimes against humanity were every day’s reality.
During the study trip ”Transitional Justice in Post-Genocida
Rwanda”, initiated by the NGO Together against Impunity in the Great Lakes
Region and the universities of Tilburg and Kigali, that I participated in in
2012, I experienced a tiny little bit of the impact of the atrocities that had taken
place in 1994. During this trip I visited some of the most important places
during the conflict, among them the Kigali Memorial Center, the Murambi genocide
memorial site [the site of a technical school where during the genocide 30,000
people were killed in one night], the Mpanga Prison, housing 5000 génocidaires, the Millennium Village and
a demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants camp. In this line, I
carried out research as to Gender and Transitional Justice: Sexual Violence in
Rwanda.
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| Prisoners - Picture Sophie Poldermans |
After this trip, I explored the country on my own. A
beautiful country, with a breathtaking landscape - I am sure there were
actually a thousand hills - and I followed Dian Fossey’s footsteps by hiking
the jungle on the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda
in order to find some of the world’s very last mountain gorillas. The people I
met were very nice. However, I was shocked that after so many years, I could
still feel the ethnic tension around and this tension was in my experience so
strong, that it could easily explode any minute. The conflict is not dead, it
is still alive and is being nourished by ethnic tension in the entire region. I
could see hatred and fear in people’s eyes, that is very hard to describe. I
had only experienced that before when I was doing research in the Balkans. No
surprise if you take into account that it takes generations [look at Europe after
the Second World War] to move on.
Many ways have been explored in order to achieve peace and
justice, both on an international, regional, national and local level.
Reconciliation plays an important role, for example in the local gacaca tribunal trials. During my trip
to Rwanda, I was happy to encounter numerous positive initiatives to embrace
sustainable peace. The Millennium Village is an example of a village where the
new generation of Rwanda will be brought up with the United Nations Millennium
Goals, with the main focus on education and awareness raising.
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| Millennium Village - Picture Sophie Poldermans |
Another example is an experiment where houses are built
within a village in a structure where deliberately a perpetrator, victim and a
third person will literally live next door to each other. Can you think of a
more concrete example of reconciliation?
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| Neighbors: Tutsi victim and Hutu perpetrator - Picture Sophie Poldermans |
Although Rwanda has a long way to go, there is hope for today
and the future. The keyword here is Respect in the richest meaning of the word.
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| Kigali Memorial Center - Picture Sophie Poldermans |
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