Rwanda – the Hell on the Earth
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.
Wilbur Wright
Sleeping – waste of time.
Boredom.
Limitation.
Shock.
In this way humanity slept carnage in Rwanda. “How can you be considered one million lives in Rwanda to be invalid in terms of strategic or national interests?” – April 6, 1994 began 100 days of genocide.
Rwanda is a small country in central Africa, the size of some of the Polish provinces, inhabited by more than 10 million inhabitants. During that day, plane was shot down on the board with the presidents of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira (neighboring Burundi). It is not determined exactly who could be behind this to these days, but this event has been clearly perceived by the Hutu – “Fit from the earth Tutsi.” During the reign of the Belgian colony in the identity cards of inhabitants of Rwanda inscribed, to which tribe is the following: the Hutu or Tutsi.
I simply want to live – and this desire keeps me going
On the road the Hutu militias check anyone who wanted to pass – if you were the Hutus – you had entered, further if the Tutsis – mostly your head was smashed with a machete (before the mass genocide in Rwanda it was imported from China). Hutu militias belonging to the radio station RTLM urged that all the people from their tribe have to murder their Tutsi neighbors, or even from their own tribe, if they do not want to take part in the massacre.
Relation from the Polish priest, who was at the time of the massacres in Kigali (Capital of Rwanda): “… Within two days the streets were covered with bodies. It was warm, lay rotting corpses, the dogs ate them. (…) Enduring mass, Hutu entered the church, they had whistles. I immediately began to chop people. We, the whites, fled to the presbytery. (…) So it already is that while everyone around me are dying, people believe that the end does not appear. In the chapel of burnt bones still lie – we buried them in a small tomb. No names. ” Such relations are hundreds of thousands, more or less gruesome. To this day, can not grasp the fact that the neighbors were murdered only because they were from different tribes. The enormity of the crime is still not overwhelming. Certainly within 100 days killed more than 800 000 people!!! What is more, some reports say even more than a million. Until today they are wanted people who are responsible for organizing the massacre. The genocide in Rwanda is called the biggest failure in UN history. Let us hope that the perpetration of such errors is already behind us.
Day to day life is a breathtaking experience
Rwanda and neighboring Burundi is a magnificent piece of the world: hilly, green area, full of sun, lakes and rivers. There are great natural pastures! Tutsi lived there – a pastoral people, probably Nilochamici who migrated from eastern Africa. Their last king was 2,20 m tall! Tutsi tribe is a pastoral one with the most important values. They did not kill cows, they are trying to continually grow their flock. They are feeded on their milk and blood, which drops slightly, by cutting the artery arrow. Evenings, they like to sit and look at their flocks to pasture. 10-15 percent are Tutsi in the population of Rwanda and Burundi, the rest population belongs to the Hutu. Tutsis have never worked too hard, everything needed to live, they made for them Hutu – farmers, counted as Bantu peoples. Tutsi and Hutu are ethnic different and divided by the class, but they could not exist without each other. Worked Hutu and Tutsi fighters assured each other protection.
These areas were in the late nineteenth century colonized by the Germans, and after the First World War coincided with Belgium. Colonizers behaved structure of local society. In the early 60s Rwanda and Burundi were in the refuge of many Belgians, whose war expelled from neighboring Congo. To maintain its influence in these areas, they tried to play the class-ethnic conflict between Tutsi and Hutu. In Burundi, the Belgians helped to power the Tutsi, who were better organized and pro-belgian. Among the Tutsi of Rwanda they had stronger tendencies to independence – there Belgians supported the Hutu. Even before the two countries gained independence in 1962, was the first fighting between Tutsi and Hutu. Then at the same time two countries broke tribal conflicts. Each succeeding regime, to save themselves in a crisis, a crisis is a permanent phenomenon in African politics. Fighting in the years 1962, 1965, 1972, 1988, 1993 – these were the collective outbursts of horrible massacres, mass escape. Usually began in Burundi, but passing on Rwanda, because the boundary between the two countries is conventional: the people, culture and landscape are the same – it’s a like the two German states recently.
With the implementation of the agreement, people were waiting for the UN troops, who were busy in other parts of the world and in Africa. A plane crash killed two presidents, it was a high time to starting to struggle for the succession of power. Rwandan regime had a mafia structure, based on the person of the president, his family, the clan. This structure does not tolerate a sudden vacuum in the political center. The world has armed them with weapons machinery.
Life – the most precious value
Intertribal conflicts in Africa have always been: agricultural and pastoral peoples fought for access to water, land, pastures. The low level of technology and the sparse population resulted, however, that were not the case for mass slaughter. Weapon in the fight were arrows, spears. Only during the Cold War, East and West Africa had machine guns. Also, Rwanda and Burundi are still abandoned in weapons. It is also the most densely populated area of Africa. The small space living there for about 15 million people. Polish missionaries who had returned from Rwanda, talked about the victims, torture, cruel rituals. Killing the enemy is not enough – to get rid of it, you have to destroy him, destroy his body. In acts of mass hysteria reborn an archetypal behavior. But it is never enough, the media bring out such cases. A killing old men, wounded, women and children? In this conflict comes to the liquidation of the entire tribe. Moreover, civil wars everywhere are particularly cruel. That was the case in Spain and so it is now in the former Yugoslavia. The Civil War with particular force reveals what Dostoyevsky called a phenomenon:
Unnecessary cruelty? It is not enough to beat your opponent!
South Africans hate the White land? Black racism is in American ghettos, it is not actually in Africa. If whitepeople were killed in Rwanda, there have been created some special circumstances. In such conflicts we need to be able to keep up, best get out of sight. Not only the death of the missionaries, but everything that is happening now in Rwanda, shows the failure of efforts. In this beautiful country is the world’s largest concentration of missionaries. It turns out that one hundred years of Christianization it’s against tradition, which dates back thousands of years.
Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world. How to reconcile this fact with the image of the green? Switzerland of Africa? When my friend was in Kigali in 1962, there was even a hotel, nuns, they put him to sleep at the hospital maternity ward. In November last year in guerrilla [Front for the Liberation of Rwanda] we did not eat – once I got a banana, another of the egg, yet there was nothing else. Despite the good natural conditions where there is a poverty, because the level of culture, agriculture is very low. Forested areas, soil erosion progresses. Moreover, all the impoverished agricultural countries in Africa have the cheapest on the world tropical products such as tea or cocoa.
Western journalists write a nightmare scenario for Africa: how they call her? Continent without hope?, Where democracy has no chance! Seriously? Der Spiegel asks if the only salvation from anarchy would not be a new colonization. It is a crap! Who would like to colonize Africa, which depends on THAT person who has the money? Different civilizations have their own historical time, its own way of existence, their own pace. Any attempt to speed up, go to the shortcuts (for example – communism) ended in disaster. Africa is extremely violent, savage, primitive, but also fascinating. In the nineteenth century, the colony was the criterion of formal state power, and besides, Europe depended on access to raw materials. Today, raw materials – except crude oil – almost lying on the pavement. They are cheap, because they displace them from the market, even cheaper synthetics.
Africa is a huge part of the world, more than 30 million square miles, 52 countries, nearly 800 million people. It is a continent of many races, several major religions, thousands of languages, hundreds of people. In Africa, there are different processes with conflicting phenomena. Any generalization is here so abusive. The essence of the sociological and economic structures of the Third World is the complexity. It is, moreover, their strength, this gives them the flexibility that allows survival. Will the citizens of Rwanda are able to build their own democracy? Nowhere is it said that the world must be a democracy. Apparently nothing better has not yet been invented. We do not invented anything better for the European civilization. One wonders how this product works in the civilizations of Europe, which are governed by different rules, have a different tradition. For no one can do the story. In Rwanda peolpe need to do their own history alone, as they can. Travelling broadens the mind. New people bring fresh, vivid happiness. I do not like sleeping – cause it limits time of doing fascinating things! We – as humanity – should not sleep through another carnage somwhere in the world.
by Milena Bodych, Poland
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