The Legacy of Genocide, Hatred, Mistrust, and Displacement

By Norman Franklin

Norman Franklin

Last week marked the 30th year since the Rwandan genocide. The Hutu and Tutsi, in a 100-day melee, killed more than 800,000 thousand of their own. I struggle with the label of the recognition as “the anniversary of.” An anniversary connotes a celebration.

There is nothing to celebrate, a memorial commemoration more accurately conveys the solemnity of our reflection. We need to feel the pain emoting from the atrocity and commit to “never again.” The devastation of genocide ripples through generations.

Genocide defined is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group, has been the mainstay of the culture of hate that pervades humanity.

When a race of people or ethnic group is devalued and considered less than human, conditions are ripe for triggering genocidal activities.

The attitudes of white supremacy triggered genocidal activities with Native Americans, and with African Americans. The Trail of Tears in the 1800s, Tula, Oklahoma and Rosewood, Florida in the early 1900s are examples. These were small scale relative to the massive murders of the Armenians, the Jewish Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocides.

The twentieth century signaled the age of modernization and technological advancement. It ushered in more sophisticated means of destruction, and swifter means of exacting genocide.

During WWI, the Ottoman Empire began an extermination campaign against the 2.5 million Armenians within their borders. Mass murders, deportations to concentration camps, and death by starvation ensued. Conservative estimates set the number slaughtered at more than 1 million.

Eyewitness reports of foreign journalists, missionaries, diplomats, and military officers stirred little outrage. The world was at war.

World War II Nazi Germany is an indelible stain on the conscience of humanity; it’s a conviction on the the moral values and faith of individuals, of communities, and of nations, that, by silence, were complicit in the genocide of Jewish people. Six million Jews perished in Hitler’s gas chambers, crematoriums, and concentration camps.

Rwanda was the last genocide of the twentieth century. The internet and 24-hour cable news allowed for near immediate awareness of global events. It happened in the mid-90s, but national and international news media gave scant coverage.

Only a few journalists and missionaries remained in Rwanda after violence erupted.

There was also a bigger story in South Africa. Apartheid was dead. Nelson Mandela, the once imprisoned advocate, and leader of the African National Congress would cast his vote in the first free election. He would become the first president of the new South Africa.

Ethnic violence was not uncommon in Rwanda. The country was subjected to Belgian colonial rule for decades after the end of the First World War. Colonial policies fostered division, and ethnic tensions. The Belgians favored the Tutsi, made them the superior ethic group, and gave them leadership positions. When independence was won in 1962, the Hutu and Tutsi clashed to fill the vacuum of leadership.

The Hutu, the majority group, won control. The resentment that simmered during colonial rule erupted in retaliatory violence against the Tutsi. Massacres, displacements, and civil war were common for the next three decades. More than 400,000 Tutsi fled to neighboring countries.

Perhaps, because of the eruptions of violence in past decades, the nations and media ascribed the latest violence as just another ethnic clash.

Inadvertently, the media prioritized and devalued Black lives. The United Nations Peacekeeping Force did not intervene.

On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying Rwandan President Habyatimana was shot down. He was a Hutu. The Belgian colonialism bred resentment, hatred, and suspicion of the Tutsi laid the blame on them and ignited the genocide.

As we reflect on the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian, and the Jewish, let us commit to the principle that all life matters. All humans are a part of God’s creation and deserve to be valued and treated equally