Between April and July 1994, in just over three months, nearly a million Tutsis were murdered in Rwanda. Written in 2007, K. is republishing this text by Stéphane Bou today, on the occasion of the week of commemoration of the beginning of the genocide.[1] At a time when the survivors are growing old and the denial of the crime that struck them continues to circulate, it seemed important to us to give new life to this report, which delved into a country still petrified by horror, where memories of the massacres are infused everywhere, in words, silences, bodies, landscapes. It bears witness to the duration of the genocide – its psychological, social and political persistence – and to the memorial work specific to the ordeal of genocide.
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Rwanda is still living in the time of the crime. How could it be otherwise? It was yesterday. Digging up the earth means taking the risk of discovering another mass grave, and even today the corpses must be exhumed to try to recognize the dead. The count is not over. The memory of the genocide is out in the open and haunts the landscape. At some sites, such as Murambi, hundreds of skeletons have been frozen in time by lime, relics of a massacre that stands as a sign of unrelenting astonishment. “What can be done, what can be said, who can be asked, when the person I should ask is no longer there?” sing the two Tutsi friends who accompanied us there. A Swedish visitor wrote two derisory words in the guestbook of this hellish memorial: “Very sad”.
The survivors still haven’t understood why they should have disappeared and why they didn’t. They sometimes talk about their genocide, the fastest and most productive in history, like Arlette, whom I met on the evening of my arrival in Kigali. She tells me about her life, but stops abruptly: “That’s when our genocide happened…” She knows full well that the crime was long in the making and is part of history, that it was made possible by years of discriminatory policies and hate speech, but it also strikes her as a natural disaster, a climatic mystery that no one can explain, an anonymous monster that came from who knows where to devastate the country and whose return must be feared. In Rwanda, people are even sure that it will return, sooner or later, in Africa or elsewhere: on the second floor of the Kigali memorial, where the remains of 256,000 corpses are mixed together, at the entrance to the exhibition devoted to “the history of genocides of the 20th century”, the words “never again” have not been written. The Rwandans are not so optimistic. They warn you by greeting you with another phrase: “The violence of the genocide will strike again”. For them, the whole world is the scene of the crime.
There are many people who are in endless solitude. Not necessarily real solitude, but experienced solitude. A feeling that the human no longer exists.
How can you not think about the genocide all the time? How can you not keep bearing witness for its victims? The survivors are caught in an impossible situation, stuck between the dead that live on inside them and the living that they need to reach out to. For Dr. Naason, one of three psychiatrists in Rwanda: “The survivor of an extermination project is not the survivor of a war. They are people who have been constantly told that they have no right to exist and that, if they survive, it is by way of exception. Many people live in endless solitude. Not necessarily real solitude, but experienced solitude. A feeling that humans no longer exist.”
The trauma is like a cloud always hanging in the air, ready to unleash its lightning at any moment. “Between April and July especially, at the time of commemorations and anniversaries, it’s like an epidemic. Those who return to the genocide have endless headaches. They hide. They cry out. They don’t believe the genocide is over. Schools have to close to get through the crisis.” Arlette and Anita talk about it with a smile, with that imperturbable gentleness that has earned Rwandans the reputation, originating from who knows what colonial joke, of being ‘the Switzerland of Africa’. ”The more years go by, the more the traumas reawaken. In the early years, we were sort of detached. With each passing year, the trauma is stronger than the year before.” And then Anita asks me if I’ve ever been to Saint-Tropez. Saint-Tropez? She explains with a chuckle that the French TV series ‘Sous le soleil’ is one of her favorite programs. You can’t always bear the burden of being on the side of the dead. Sometimes life resembles a TF1 sitcom, where tanned starlets talk about their pathetic existential concerns while stretched out on deckchairs.
The more the years go by, the more the traumas reawaken. In the early years, we were kind of detached. With each passing year, the trauma is stronger than the year before.
Arlette and Anita are two orphans, but they belong to the same family. Like all the members of the AERG, like most of the survivors, who are all part of a strange patchwork family where the “daddy”, the “mummy”, the “big brothers” and the “little sisters” are more or less the same age. Together, they organize “descents” into village schools to help genocide orphans avoid becoming vagrants. The survivors form a country within a country. In the village of Kimironko, one hundred and three people are grouped into twenty-four families. They are all between 15 and 25 years old. The older ones look for income during the day to provide for the needs of the younger ones. They take turns studying. They make plans together. “The best thing to avoid trauma is work,” explains one older brother. However, “suicide is a path that more and more people are taking,” says Dr. Naason, “and it can be said that it is now a real public health problem. The burden of time: people have not found an answer.
People have not found an answer? The government believes it has found one. It has given it a name, it is called “unity and reconciliation”. At the heart of this policy are the gacaca. In the hill villages, these traditional courts must judge tens of thousands of murderers and their accomplices. In the aftermath of the genocide, one hundred thousand of them were in prison. An impossible solution. The gacaca are the means found for the guilty to repent, the victims to forgive and the country to reconcile. “There is no choice,” they say.
Thus, officially, one no longer has the right to speak of Tutsis and Hutus on pain of being accused of “divisionism”. All Rwandans! To do everything to erase decades of history, which the survivors repeat ad nauseam: “All my childhood, I heard those who insulted us: ‘You are Tutsis, you are snakes’. That was life. One day, our schoolteacher gave us a history lesson: “You are not the same. – But we live in the same hills! – Look, there are those who are long and those who are short.” It always comes back to me: “The Tutsis are traitors.” We were told about verses in the Bible that said that Tutsis must be killed because they have been abandoned by God. There were mixed-race families. They said: “You are Hutu, but in your womb there will be Tutsis”. They cut her open. There are mothers who killed their children. There are children who killed their mothers. If, for thirty years, it was said that Tutsis were not men, it will not change in two days. Even if there is a policy of reconciliation. We need to see how to reach those who have lived their whole lives with these ideas. It’s a long process…“. I heard these sentences from a hundred different mouths.
“People still want to kill.”
Imagine the survivors, a minority living among those who murdered their families. The fear, always the fear. “I can’t go back to my village anymore,” says Dr. Naason. “The last time, I imagined that everyone would chase me away. Here in the big city, I tell myself that no one will know who I am.” Thierry Sebaganwa is convinced of it: “People still want to kill.” And he says that in April 2006, during the commemorations, a listener shouted his hatred at the radio during a phone-in program: “We will kill you all”. This genocide nostalgic who wants to finish the job and thinks that the radio station of Mille Collines has not finished broadcasting has been sentenced to seventeen years in prison. Dr. Naason says: “I have had a few rare cases of genocidaires who have gone through psychosis. You have to go through madness to be able to say something about these massacres in which they participated. Those who have remorse commit suicide before going to a doctor.”
Meanwhile, Thierry does not understand “why it is always the same people who are killed. There are villages where, if there is a gacaca, the survivors are very much at risk. It escalates when there are courts, because they are the only ones who know what happened! They represent a danger to the genocidaires”. A Human Rights Watch report has just been published, criticizing the Rwandan government for not providing them with sufficient protection. Some estimate that there were more than two hundred murders last year.
“A few dozen, according to Jacqueline Kondika, MP for the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front). We did have a few cases of insecurity, and the government took action.” She is doing her job as a member of parliament, faithful to the policy of her government: “Immediately after the genocide, the wounds were open. The gacaca courts were set up to deal with the current realities. It is very practical in the context of unity and reconciliation to reduce sentences. People must return home to contribute to reconciliation. It is about resurrecting a country. The perpetrators must be re-educated. We have no choice, we have to live together, and I have decided to forgive those who exterminated my family because there is no other possible choice.”
“Here, they talk to you slowly, gently, and then suddenly, they hit you. That’s the problem in Rwanda.”
One evening, during a dinner, Venuste was called on his cell phone to be told that Hutus were throwing stones at the house of a member of his family. For Thierry, “the authorities don’t feel the problems the way we do. We need a force.” Often, the Tutsi survivors also feel as far removed as they can be from those Tutsis from outside the country who arrived in 1994 from Uganda or Burundi and who speak English. “How can justice be done in a country where there are so many criminals?” asks Dr. Naason. “The state is stuck. Its good will is completely overwhelmed by the situation. When the state releases thirty thousand people, it is interpreted as a sign of weakness. There is official reconciliation and then there is reality. Ethnic allegiances have been reshaped by the genocide. There used to be mixed marriages. Today, they are rare.”
Elvis, the president of the Butare AERG, accompanies us to Runda, in the district of Kamonyi. He returns to this reputation of Rwandans as the “Switzerland of Africa”: “Here, we talk to you slowly, gently, and then suddenly, we hit you. That’s the problem in Rwanda.” All along the road, schoolchildren in their bright blue uniforms cross the trucks that deposit their load of prisoners on the construction sites. Their uniform is pink. We are going to attend a gacaca. Beside me, Alain explains why he will never testify: “My principle is simple. I am a man, I am built to be a man, and the rest, I let go. I don’t want to testify because it’s pointless. A man has killed, say, five people: with the remission of sentence, he will do five years in prison, one year of community service, and then he will be released. What will that change? Every day, I see the old man who revealed our hiding place.” He remembers the face of a murderer, a cross around his neck. Did this image make him lose his faith? “But God helped me to stay alive!”
The court is at the end of a dirt road, in a vacant lot. A corrugated iron roof is placed on a meagre wooden frame. There are no walls. Children cling to the fence that surrounds the barn. They laugh with the only soldier present, an old machine gun carelessly hanging down his side. The public enters and leaves as they please during the proceedings. Justice on the Rwandan hills is not very formal. It is more like group therapy than the trial of a genocidaire. Thierry translates this Western-style trial for me as best he can.
A man is standing motionless before his judges. His name is Mufasha. He is accused of having participated in the murder of a 15-year-old child, Robert Niyomwungeri, after having stolen 1700 Rwandan francs from him. As I sit down on the floor, he is asking for forgiveness for not having “spoken the truth” until now. A judge spoke up: “Why were there only two of you in your group who took the money? 900 francs for you and 800 for your friend, is that right?” He replied that he had “the authority” because he was mandated by the authorities in the area. “Explain yourself,” someone in the audience asked him. Mufasha turns around. I see his terrified face: “I heard what you’re accusing me of. There are neighbors who can testify. I wasn’t in the group that attacked. I heard about it. I wasn’t there. I was at home.” He accuses his neighbor’s father of stealing the victim’s clothes. Who got the jacket? Who got the sweater? He doesn’t know who took the sweater… I ask Thierry if he thinks he’s lying? “Of course, he spends his time blaming others.”
A witness steps forward. He gives his version of events: ”They took the victim to his house. They asked him if he had any money here? He gave them 1700 francs. One of the men in the group had a club, and he beat him severely until he died. No one stopped him. They looked for a stick. Then they took him and threw him into the toilet. You could see that they had planned to kill him, because they had removed the wood before throwing him into the toilet.” In the audience, a young Rwandan man is constantly asking questions, demanding clarification and further explanations. Thierry struggles with the translation. Many details escape me. He summarizes the situation for me: “Mufasha wasn’t the leader, in fact, he was the second in command. The one who hits with a club is called Gashongore. He was the leader. We don’t know where he is today. He fled abroad.”
“There was no authority. We had hatred in our hearts, we listened to the radio.”
The barn continues to fill up. A 2 or 3-year-old child runs between the witness and the accused, who is standing still, his gaze lost in the distance. A chicken that wants to enter the room is shooed away. “Mufasha, now it’s your turn to speak.” All eyes are on him: “The witness lied because he was one of those who threw the child into the toilet. I apologize to all Rwandans, to God and to the families of those I killed. I was in the killing squad. As cell leader, I am also a murderer.” Beside me, Thierry suddenly stands up to ask a question: ”You ask forgiveness with your conscience? – I ask forgiveness from the human family because I killed. – How could you think there would be no consequences? – There was no authority. We had hatred in our hearts, we listened to the radio. – What is your contribution to building peace? – We have to rebuild the house we destroyed. We have to support the survivors of the families. My contribution will be to identify, denounce and hand over to the authorities those who would like to carry out another genocide.“ He recites his contrition like a robot. My makeshift interpreter turns to me and dictates the exchange of questions and answers that has just taken place: “I’m sure he’s not being sincere,” he sighs. “It’s hard to live with all the people who killed us.”
Thierry has been dreaming of Israel since 1994. He has transformed his apartment in Butare into a Shoah museum. On the walls, dozens of photos with captions bear witness. He has framed an authentic yellow star that belonged to the grandmother of a French friend. “After my genocide, I committed myself to the fight for memory and commemoration. When I talk about the Shoah, I see my story. The aim of my museum was to teach my friends this very atrocious story, which is similar to what they experienced. As a Rwandan, it is a duty.” For him, the two events belong to the same story that must be told over and over again. ”I feel at ease with the Jews. I feel comforted, I feel that they can teach me.“ Sometimes, Thierry removes the dozens of photos from his private exhibition and invites his friends to party at his place. When his friends have finished dancing, they help him put the photos back.
”How did Jews live in Germany before Hitler invented hatred of Jews?”
He worked like a demon to contribute to the commemoration of the Shoah that the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) and Elvis, the Butare Student Association for the Resistance and the Genocide (AERG), organized in the university’s large auditorium. After the short ceremony, the readings of some canonical texts and the screening of Night and Fog, the dozens of students present pounced on the organizers and pestered them with questions. “How did Jews live in Germany before Hitler invented hatred of Jews? … Did the United States and Russia, which were very strong nations at the time, do anything to free all those people in the camps? I didn’t quite understand, were the Gypsies with the Germans against the Jews? How could there be German Jews? Were the images we saw in the film taken live and by satellite? Here, we know that the genocide of the Tutsis was planned by the government, and we know why. But why did the Germans attack the Jews? How long did it take before people in Israel started listening to the testimonies of the survivors? What is the difference between a Jew and an Israeli? We are no longer allowed to say that there are Tutsis and Hutus, and we are also told that there must be reconciliation. Is there good cooperation today between Jews and Germans?”
Back in Paris. Astonishment at having to remind people of some basic facts. Yes, there were indeed eight hundred thousand deaths, perhaps more, in the space of a few months. No, it was not Operation Turquoise that put an end to the work of the genocidaires. And be careful: you still sometimes confuse the Tutsis and the Hutus. I also remember that one evening in Butare, I asked a survivor if he was able to distinguish a Hutu from a Tutsi. Is it true that young Tutsi children put beans up their noses to widen their nostrils? He pointed to a student who was passing by: “He must be a Hutu.” The next day, I recognized the student. He was giving a testimony in one of the short films shown at the Murambi Memorial Museum. The subtitles told the story of how he had lost his entire Tutsi family here.
Stéphane Bou (April 2007)
