This is the title of Philip Gourevitch’s book about the Rwandan genocide. The quote is from a letter from some Tutsis who were hiding in a church to their Pastor. They had been informed they were going to be attacked and wanted him to intervene. There are two versions of his response. He said either, “Your problem has already found a solution. You must die.” or “You must be eliminated. God no longer wants you.” Most of the people were killed by the Pastor and armed militias.
One argument the international community made during the genocide of 1994 was that the Hutu-Tutsi fight had gone on for time immemorial. It was a problem that was very much like an act of God or nature – like an earthquake – that could not be prevented or stopped. This is what we say whenever tragedies occur for which we do not want to act. I HATE IT!!! By saying this we abdicate our responsibility to help other people but this does not absolve us of any guilt. It also isn’t true. It wasn’t true in WWII or Bosnia and definitely not Rwanda. In fact, the opposite argument can be made about Rwanda. The Hutu-Tutsi divide didn’t really exist until the Belgians took control of the country in the 1920’s. That is not time immemorial.
There are three ethnic groups in Rwanda; the Twa, Hutus and Tutsis. The first people to arrive in Rwanda were the Twa, pygmies who started living there about 35,000 years ago. Afterwards they were joined by the Hutus (majority) and Tutsis (minority), who now make up most of the population. These two groups intermarried, lived and worked together and got along. It was not unusual for Hutus to be mistaken for Tutsis and vice versa. This all changed when the Belgians took over in 1923. They used the different groups to reinforce their rule. To do this they set criteria for determining who was who. The Tutsis were taller, lighter and had different facial features (longer and thinner noses.) They required everyone get an ID cards showing their ethnicity. They also said the Tutsis were descendents of the Abbysinians and made them rulers of the country. Even then the country remained peaceful until 1959. In the 1950’s anti-colonial sentiment was growing in most of Africa and Rwanda was not immune. The Hutus resented the Belgians and the Tutsi aristocracy and both groups started political parties aimed at emancipation. By 1959, tensions were running high and when Tutsi Mwami (King) Mutara III Charles died. He died after receiving a vaccination but the Tutsis thought he had been assassinated and their forces went after a Hutu politician. The Hutu response was swift and thousands of Tutsis were killed and many others fled into Uganda. Again, this was in 1959 AD. That’s thirty-five years before the genocide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda
In the 1990’s Rwanda was led by President Juvénal Habyarimana. He was a Hutu and a dictator. Around this time the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) began a revolt from Zaire. The RPF was made up of Tutsis and moderate Hutu. In 1993 both sides sat down Arusha, Tanzania and signed a peace agreement that would have given the RPF a say in the Rwandan government. They would never get that chance as President Habyarimana died when his plane was shot down on April 6, 1994. The government then told the country to kill all the Tutsi ‘cockroaches’ and moderate Hutus who supported the Tutsis. Over the next few weeks “Hutu Power” forces murdered at least 800,000 people. This took approximately 90 days. Assuming the 800,000 figure is accurate, and most groups think it could really be as high one million people, that is 8889 people a day or 370 an hour making it one of the most efficient killing sprees in history.
The Gourevitch book is so good because he is such a skilled writer. The book reads like a novel, though the brutality shown in Rwanda is beyond the scope of any fiction writer. He recounts stories of people seeking refuge in churches and being butchered there. One church, NyarubuyeRoman Catholic Church in Kibungo Province, saw between 5000-10000 deaths in about two days in April 1994. The site has been turned into a memorial to the genocide where the dead were left where they died. It sounds gruesome but when you think about it, how else can you really capture the horror these people suffered?
This horror was compounded by the international response before, during and after the genocide. Nothing was done to stop or prevent the killing, in fact the French actively supported the Hutu Power forces by giving them money and weapons. When it was over, refugee camps turned into breeding grounds, training centers, money making apparatus and just about everything else for Hutu Power forces. They actively prevented Hutus from returning to Rwanda and launched attacks on the country from outside. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, was the head of the UN Department of Peacekeeping. He has admitted that he could have done more and didn’t. He has called this the UN’s biggest failure since it was founded. He is right.
One might ask why I read all these very depressing books. I do it because I think it is important to look and see where we failed and how things could have been done differently. Not everyone went along with the killing. Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, is a well known case of someone who helped other people. He didn’t set out to save 1,000 or more people but he did. Since then he has said that he wasn’t special, he just made the right choices and he cannot understand why others didn’t.
The problem we have is that countries like the US lack the political will to step in to prevent genocide. The US response in Kosovo was the most vigorous response we have ever mounted in a situation like this and that was pretty anemic. The take home message needs to be that we can make a difference and prevent cruelty if we want to. Studies have been done on mob mentality and how people’s actions influence each other. If there is a group of people and someone needs help if one person acts to help, others will do the same and if no one does anything is just reinforces everyone’s behavior. Making sure people do not get away with mass murder also deters future murders. Stalin said “One murder is a crime, one million is a statistic.” He was right. We don’t know how to deal with cruelty on the level of genocide but we should.
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