Interface News Reporter | Cai Xingzhuo
Interface News Editor | Liu Haichuan
In 2024, Rwanda's capital, Kigali, has clean streets and no potholes, and sleek new buildings give the city a modern look, and tech entrepreneurs flock to it from all directions. However, the Associated Press report described poverty outside Kigali as "still rampant," with most people still living on subsistence agriculture, and tin sheds dotting the countryside in 1994 (the year of the genocide in Rwanda) are still ubiquitous in Rwanda.
It may be hard to imagine that new mass graves can still be found in Rwanda today, a relentless reminder of the scale of the massacres 30 years ago. Speaking at the 30th anniversary commemoration, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said: "Our journey has been long and difficult...... Rwanda is deeply ashamed of its enormous losses, and the lessons we have learned are etched in blood. But the tremendous progress that our country has made is evident, and it is the result of the choices we have made together to reinvigorate our country. ”
French President Emmanuel Macron said in a pre-recorded video before the commemoration that France and its allies could have prevented the genocide but lacked the will to do so. Three years ago, Macron acknowledged that France, Rwanda's closest European ally in 1994, bears "great responsibility" for failing to prevent the country from sliding into slaughter.
The Holocaust and after the Holocaust
The genocide in Rwanda began on April 7, 1994, when the plane of former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down. Prior to this, ethnic violence had been brewing in Rwanda for decades. According to official information from the Kigali Genocide Memorial, the massacre lasted 100 days, with large-scale violent clashes between the Tutsi and Hutu clans in Rwanda between April and July 1994.
In 1994, French writer Jean Hartsfeld traveled to Rwanda to investigate and report on the Holocaust and its aftermath, completing the "Rwandan Genocide Trilogy" after 14 years. According to his account, on each day of the massacre, "from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Hutu militias and civilians massacred Tutsis on the hills of Nyamata". The death toll of the massacre is not accurately counted, but scholars agree that the massacre resulted in an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 deaths, most of whom were ethnic Tutsis, but also Hutu moderates.
According to the Associated Press, Rwanda's ethnic makeup has remained largely unchanged since 1994, with the Hutu majority, the Tutsi making up 14 percent of Rwanda's population of nearly 14 million, and the Twa making up only 1 percent. In 2003, the United Nations designated April 7 as the International Day of Reflection on the Rwandan Genocide, and in 2018 renamed it the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda against the Tutsi people.
After Paul Kagame came to power (he became vice president in 1994 and was officially elected president in 2003), many Hutu officials went into exile or were arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of involvement in the genocide. Some fled to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where armed conflict began. In the late 90s of the 20th century, Rwanda sent troops into the Congo twice, in part to hunt down Hutu rebels. Some human rights groups have therefore accused the new Rwandan authorities of retaliatory attacks, but the Rwandan government has slammed the allegations, saying they do not respect the memory of the victims of the genocide.
While Rwanda is largely peaceful, reports describe it as "not having a good relationship with neighbouring Congo." The DRC claims that Rwanda supports the M23 rebels, who are mainly Tutsi fighters stationed in remote areas of eastern Congo. Rwanda, for its part, said the Congolese military was recruiting Hutu who had participated in the 1994 massacre.
The "Wounded Generation": How Can Young People Reconcile with Trauma?
Jean Hartsfeld called "the Holocaust not a brutal war with many casualties, but a program of extermination". And, to paraphrase one female survivor, "the Holocaust was an anti-human undertaking orchestrated by humanity, and it was too crazy and too meticulous to be understood." While Rwanda has come a long way since the 1994 genocide, the "scars" of the past still haunt the country.
Within the Rwandan state, the Rwandan government reportedly imposed draconian criminal laws to punish genocide and sought to outlaw the ideology behind it. At the same time, the Rwandan authorities have vigorously promoted national unity between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi and Twa minorities, and an independent government is committed to reconciliation efforts. Even, Rwanda's identity card no longer identifies a person by race, and genocide-related lessons are part of the school curriculum.
Attempts to reconcile have been sought in many ways, such as in Mbyo, one of Rwanda's six "reconciliation villages", where former perpetrators and survivors of the genocide live and live together. Many survivors find solace in learning the truth about how their loved ones were murdered and the killer's apology, but there are also opinions criticizing such seemingly successful reconciliations as "artificial." It turns out that not all people find "relief" in this way of life – many bodies remain unfounded, and not all perpetrators have been sentenced. According to the report, a quarter of Holocaust survivors are still struggling with mental health.
For the younger generation of Rwandans born after the Holocaust, how to understand the history of their predecessors and how to understand the relationship between races in order to reconcile has become a challenge they must face. In Rwanda, for example, there is a non-governmental organization called iDebate that encourages younger generations to debate issues such as genocide, atrocities, hate speech and the need to criminalize civilization. Addressing the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma, a study shows that many adult survivors were severely traumatized by the Holocaust, and that young people, including those born after the genocide, experienced similar genocide-related trauma. These traumas threaten to prevent the children of some survivors from participating in the post-genocide reconciliation process.