RantWoman gets this dispatch by email and is reprinting in deep humility and prayer.
Dear All,
As perhaps some of you have heard through the grapevine, I have been spending the last year writing a book. I have finished the first draft and editing and now am in the process of reviewing and editing the book as a whole. The tentative title of the book is Reflections on a Peace of Africa: Life in the Great Lakes Region. Here I have included the first chapter of the book, From Genocide to Ugandan Relief for Hurricane Katrina Survivors.
If you would like to be placed on an email list for notification when (no promises) the book is published, please email me at
dave@aglifpt.org.
I hope you find the chapter interesting and thought-provoking.
Peace,Dave
www.aglifpt.orgEmail:
dave@aglifpt.orgDavid Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams
P. O. Box 189,
Kipkarren River 50241 Kenya
Phone in Kenya: 254 (0)726 590 783 in US: 240/543-1172
Office in US:
Dawn Rubbert
dawn@aglifpt.org1001 Park Avenue,
St Louis, MO 63104 USA
314/647-1287
Chapter 1 From Genocide to Ugandan Relief for Hurricane Katrina Survivors The Rationale for GenocideThere was one little child, probably three years old, just big enough to walk. The others had gone ahead, and this little child was behind following after them. The little fellow was perfectly naked. I saw one man at a distance of about seventy-five yards, draw up his gun and fire—he missed the child. Another man came up and said, “Let me try—I can hit him.” He kneeled down and fired at the little child, but he missed him. A third man came up and made a similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped.Such is the reality of genocide. One can pray for the soul of this little boy who never had a chance in life. The totally innocent are slaughtered as if they are no longer human beings.
In talking with many survivors of the Rwandan genocide that I know personally, the wedge between life and death was no more than some chance happening. Note that we only hear the stories of those who survived as dead people tell no tales.For instance, Charles Berahino, a Hutu from Burundi, was caught by a group of Tutsi youth who were planning to kill him with machetes. He called out a loud prayer to God indicating that he was about to come to Heaven. One of the youth said, “He’s a Christian. Let him go.” He was saved and lived to tell this story.
A young man who was thirteen years old at the time of the genocide told me this story. At one point he had on an oversized coat. An interahamwe seized him by the back of the coat in order to kill him. He quickly shed the coat and ran through the forest with the interahamwe in fast pursuit. As he ran, another man who had been hiding in the forest became scared and ran. The interahamwe then ran after the other man and probably killed him. So the boy was saved because someone else took his place. Solange Manirguha, one of the lead HROC facilitators in Rwanda, was also saved. On the first day of the genocide, the interahamwe attacked her house. They broke through the roof, entered, and killed her parents. Then the one who killed her parents turned to Solange and her sisters and said, “Run, run.” They ran. So this man who helped kill her parents helped save her life.
Surveys have found that most of the people who participated in the genocide felt that they had no other choice. In 2002 Scott Strauss, in The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda, interviewed 209 genocide perpetrators who were in prison. Before the genocide most of the perpetrators had had good relations with their Tutsi neighbors (positive 86.5%, “no problem” 11.2%, negative 2.4%). Almost all (98.9%) would have allowed their child to marry a Tutsi. This is not too surprising when one realizes that 68.8% had Tutsi family members. The 4.8% who were married to Tutsi wives or were hiding Tutsi were most reluctant, but felt forced to commit atrocities.
Only a small percentage, perhaps 4.8%, were “true believers” and killed willingly. The largest percentage (64.1%) said that they were coerced by other Hutu to participate. If someone actively opposed the genocide, he was frequently killed himself. Most of the killings were done in large groups – 76.3% were in groups of over ten people. In other words it was mostly mob killings.
What does one do when one’s government is the motivator and instigator in a plan to kill one’s neighbors, including perhaps one’s relatives? How many people have the moral strength to resist when there is a great possibility of being killed? Like everyone, I fantasize that I would have resisted, but that is in the comfort of my quiet study. Can anyone really predict how he or she would have responded in such an impossible situation? It is remarkable that after one hundred days of daily “hunts” by a large percentage of the male adult population, about twenty-five percent of the Tutsi survived. Almost all of those Tutsi who survived had to be helped by one or more Hutu.
What was the rationale behind all this senseless killing? The architect of the genocide, Theoneste Bagasora, with his extremist group, called “Hutu Power,” had this rationale: If they could get all the Rwandan Hutus to participate in the genocide and exterminate all the Tutsi, then there would be a conspiracy of silence. This would develop into Hutu solidarity and their reign over Rwanda would be secure. Since everyone participated, everyone would be guilty. This is why they worked so hard to force people to participate. With this unity in crime, there would be total impunity for everyone. I think that this justification is one of the greatest horrors of the Rwandan genocide.
Nazi Germany killed their millions of victims out of sight and sound from most Germans. Most Germans could claim that they didn’t really know what was going on – although I think that they had to be blinding themselves to the people missing around them.
At this point I need to add a few words that I left out of the quote at the beginning of this section:There was one little child, probably three years old, just big enough to walk through the sand. The Indians had gone ahead, and this little child was behind following after them. The little fellow was perfectly naked, traveling on the sand. I saw one man get off his horse, at a distance of about seventy-five yards, draw up his rifle and fire – he missed the child. Another man came up and said, “Let me try the son of a bitch; I can hit him.” He got off his horse, kneeled down and fired at the little child, but he missed him. A third man came up and made a similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped.This is from the testimony of Major Scott J. Anthony, First Colorado Cavalry before the United States Congress, House of Representatives, “Massacre of Cheyenne Indians,” in the Report on the Conduct of the War (38th Congress, 2nd session, 1865), page 27.
The extermination of the Native Americans in the United States, and the marginalization of the few remaining Native Americans is the same rationale as that of the Hutu Power group in Rwanda. Although it took about 300 years rather than 100 days, there is today a conspiracy of silence in the United States about this genocide.*****
How Could So Many People Participate in the Rwandan Genocide?
This is one of the most difficult questions to understand. Even Rwandans ask, "How could we have killed each other like this?"
Deborah Wood, who was an AGLI work camper in Rwanda in the summer 2008, is a teacher at Westtown Friends School near Philadelphia, and wrote the following article, "Just Say No? Reflections on Peace Work in Rwanda," for the school’s newsletter, “Professional Development at Westtown” (Volume 8, Issue 1, December 2008).
She began the article by quoting one of the Rwandan facilitators she worked with there:"We Rwandans like to follow orders. That is how we so easily killed each other in the genocide. We just follow orders. We don't think about them". These were the words of one of the facilitators of the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) workshop I was a part of in Gisenyi, Rwanda. I was there under the auspices of a Quaker organization to help the local Friends Church build a peace center in their community that had been in the home territory of many of the leaders of the Hutu Power movement that orchestrated the 1994 genocide.
The words, an undenied truth, were spoken as we debriefed a workshop activity. There were signs of agreement from all the Rwandans in the room. For the activity, the facilitators had lined the nineteen other participants and myself up face to face and instructed the line on the left to push our partner out the door, then to switch roles.
When given this task we had already been working together for over a day talking about the roots of violence in our communities, hearing about the 12 steps to transforming power, and playing silly games with each other to keep us awake and get us laughing. We had grown comfortable with each other and our facilitators. No one had asked for the purpose of this activity, we just did it. In the first round my partner hadn't made me move an inch or even put me off balance. When we switched roles I pushed my partner halfway to the door. She had flexed her knees and staggered her stance, just egging me on; she had read my competitive athletic nature accurately. Another participant, a mother and deacon in the Friends church who taught other church members to embroider so they might be able to earn money, pushed her partner, a young man, a third of the way to the door.
When asked why we had pushed our partners off balance and toward the door, most of us answered that we were following the instructions and I added that my partner had prepared to push back and so I pushed hard and moved her backwards to the door.
Then came the point to the lesson, the facilitator asked, "but why would you push your partner out a door?" One or two of us chuckled to break the sudden shame-filled tension. The mother and church deacon, feeling a bit defensive, replied again, "You told us to, so I just followed instructions". And then the facilitator said the words above about how easily Rwandans follow orders, how much more comfortable they are when they are doing what they have been told to do.
In the following days I saw that characteristic mirrored in other people and activities. Perhaps I saw that willing obedience because I wanted an answer for how it was that the people I lived, worked, played, and worshipped with for five weeks could have killed their families, neighbors, and colleagues. Yet at the same time, I didn't want to see how it was that a few years of propaganda, free beer for the militia, economic hardship, a supply of French ammunition and Chinese machetes, and a tendency to follow orders was all it took to trigger the most intensive killing of the 20th century.
Close to 1 million people of the country's 8 million died at the hands of fellow citizens in just 100 days during the spring and summer of 1994. In no other conflict has the rate of killing been as quick as it was at the start of the Rwandan genocide. The AVP workshop, one of the ways communities in Rwanda are hoping to prevent genocide from happening there again, gave me insight into the social framework of Rwandan society that eased individual Rwandans into the role of genocidaires.
I witnessed a similar AVP exercise in Rwanda. In this instance the facilitator placed the chairs on the side of the room, had groups of five people hold hands and without talking sit down as a group on the chairs at the side of the room. Three of the groups quickly found their seats while the fourth group had people pulling different ways and never got anywhere. A woman from one of the “successful” groups commented, “The strongest man in my group pulled us the way he wanted to go and we all followed. I felt like I was in prison”. Everyone agreed with this. Therefore, those groups which completed the task for the exercise succeeded for the wrong reason. Then someone commented, “This is exactly what we did in the genocide. The big leaders pulled us where they wanted us to go and we all followed.”
***** Roots of Genocide
For years, I have been thinking about the psycho-social root of genocide and other acts of extreme violence. These are not particularly common but do happen frequently enough to show a pattern. Why do some places have a genocide and others places don't? I am not talking about the specific socio-political causes or the role of those at the top who are most responsible. Rather I am thinking about the issue, what is the real root?
My thesis is that the Hutu's untreated trauma from being at the bottom of society during colonial times allowed them to use extreme violence against the Tutsi later. As we have learned from the testimonies of so many participants in the HROC workshops, unacknowledged trauma leads to withdrawal from others, a feeling of isolation, lack of communication, the burden of anger, hostility, revenge, family violence, substance abuse, and a sense that the person is no longer human.
When many people in a society have these feelings, then this becomes the zeitgeist of the society. Societal violence is a probable outcome. Latent, unresolved trauma which can be passed down for generations is the root cause of the extreme violence.
Take Rwanda, for example. In the early 1930's, the Belgians who considered the almost White “Hamitic Tutsi” to be superior to the Black “Bantu Hutu,” divided everyone in Rwanda into Tutsi and Hutu, making the Tutsi the ruling class and the Hutu the subservient class. The Tutsi were then instructed to treat the Hutu severely. They required the local Tutsi leaders in each community to recruit forced labor Hutu gangs.
Rwanda is a very hilly country and these forced labor gangs, controlled by whips used by the Tutsi, built by hand the still excellent roads throughout Rwanda. If a Tutsi did not fulfill his quota of Hutu laborers or did not drive them hard enough, he was relieved of his duties, punished, and another Tutsi was put in place.
In AVP, there is an exercise called "Masks". Half the participants are given masks – the low class –and the other half are unmasked – the upper class. The rules include "masks can only speak if given permission by the unmasked", "masks must address all unmasks formally with a title", etc., and if anyone breaks the rules they must remain silent. Within an hour to an hour and a half, two antagonistic groups are formed. In the AVP manual there is a caution, "Don't push too hard. This exercise explores some of our most emotionally charged areas." Think then of what thirty years of this can do to two opposing groups.
When the AVP facilitators do this exercise in the Great Lakes region, they add a second component. The Masked underclass is unmasked and made the ruling class, while the Unmasked ruling class now becomes the underclass. The result of this exchange of position is that the former underclass, now the ruling class is much harsher and antagonistic to their former rulers than their former rulers had been to them.
During the colonial period the Tutsi were given all the positions of authority, education, and wealth while the Hutu were whipped and taxed into submission. No one can doubt the anger, bitterness, and sense of injustice that the Hutu felt. The Hutu were the victims of the colonial system which placed the Tutsi on top. A few years before independence in 1961, the Belgians decided to switch sides and support the Hutu over the Tutsi. The first attacks against the Tutsi began in 1959 and the Belgians did nothing to stop them. Now the Hutu victims were on the top and, as predicted by the AVP exercise described above, they wreaked revenge against their former Tutsi masters.
"When Victims Become Killers" is a book that explores this psychology: When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, by Mahmood Mamdani.
So let us apply this to the other examples.
Germany lost World War I. Large numbers of young Germans were killed in the war, much of the country was destroyed, and reconstruction was curtailed by the demands of the victors for restitution. Germans felt that they were victims. It makes no difference if their feelings were "right" or "wrong," real or imagined. The trauma of WWI and its aftermath pervaded the population and therefore the society as a whole.
Hitler read this wounded psychology correctly and was able to channel it first into his rise to power and then into finding convenient scapegoats in Jews, gypsies, communists, the mentally retarded, Jehovah Witnesses, gays; those who were seen as deviant from the ideal norm. Many Germans willingly participated in the Holocaust. See Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.
It has been frequently stated that the saturation bombing of Cambodia by the United States during the Vietnam War totally disrupted normal Cambodian society. This disruption led to the rise of the Pol Pot regime of severely traumatized people. In this case they took their revenge on their own countrymen – those who were educated, those who had previously been on the top, or those who just happened to be in the way.
I have never seen any plausible explanation of why the Afrikaners, when they won control of the South African government in 1948, decided to impose Apartheid on the country. There were other options available. Moreover, why were they so adamant about Apartheid and so cruel and relentless about enforcing it? The Afrikaners considered themselves victims also. The turn of the century Boer War with the British was probably genocide. The Boer men became fighters, leaving their women and children at home. The British rounded up these women and children and placed them in concentration camps without adequate food, health care, or shelter. Then they hunted down the Boer soldiers and killed as many as possible. Those who were captured were treated severely. The result was not only the displacement of a large percentage of the Boer/Afrikaner population, but an extremely high death rate. It took the Boers/Afrikaners over forty years to gain control of the South African government, but when they did, their wounded, traumatized psyches made Apartheid seem justified. Then it became time for the Black South Africans to resist. I am convinced that the very high homicide rate and other violence in the South African population after independence from Apartheid in 1994 is due to the traumatization of the Black population during Apartheid.
This is similar to the segregation in the southern states of the US. The US Civil War was brutal to the southern states. Nineteen percent of the adult White male population was killed. General Sherman's March to the Sea was just one of the many northern campaigns to loot, destroy, and kill in the South. By the end of the war the South was devastated, traumatizing the entire population. It ended in 1865 and northern control through reconstruction ended in 1877. While it seems "natural" to us today that the South would re-construct slavery through segregation, in fact this was not the only option. There could have been a “live and let live” attitude. But again, the whites traumatized by the war needed a scapegoat to vent their anger, fears, and feelings of revenge. The former slaves were an easy, available, marginalized group to attack.
When a group has been traumatized by war, it is necessary and imperative to deal with the resulting trauma. If not, in the years or decades ahead, that trauma which can be passed down through the generations, may lead to another, perhaps worse, war or genocide, frequently against disposed, marginalized people close at hand.
After September 11, 2002 the Bush Administration quickly used the anger, fear, and feelings of revenge from the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to psychologically enable traumatized Americans to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. In both places, the American actions may be planting the seed of another genocide or acts of extreme violence in the years or decades ahead.
These are not very happy thoughts, but we need to explore those roots of extreme violence and genocide if we are going to prevent them in the future.
*****Soldiers versus CiviliansI had a great uncle, Donald Colvin, who was building railroads in Mexico during the time of the Mexican Revolution (1912). I have his letters written home to his mother and sister. In one of these letters, the Mexican army and the Zapata rebels were fighting in a town close by. Even though he was a gringo working for the American imperialists, he showed absolutely no alarm about the fighting nearby. In those honorable days, soldiers fought each other and didn't bother the civilians. When the Zapata rebels won, he continued on in Mexico building railroads for the new government until, unfortunately, he drowned in a flash flood.
Alas, this is not the case in the African Great Lakes region. Soldiers rarely fight each other, but attack and terrorize citizens to get them to flee. There is not going to be any lasting resolution to the fighting and wars until the international community understands this aspect of the conflict.This is how it works. An armed group, which can include government troops, decides that they are going to attack and conquer a village and its surrounding area. They announce their intention by such means as wounding a townsman, and telling him to return home and tell the villagers that the group is going to attack. He returns to his community, raises the alarm, and people take what they can carry and flee. One frequently sees pictures of these people with large loads on their heads or pushing a loaded wheelbarrow fleeing along crowded escape routes. If a few soldiers or other armed actors are in the town they also flee knowing they will be overwhelmed. The conquering group then enters an almost deserted town, loots it, takes over the best residences and businesses, and controls the territory.
This works best when the invading group has a fearsome reputation. They get this fearsome reputation by killing civilians, raping women and men (see below), looting, setting buildings on fire, and feasting on livestock. The more terror the armed group spreads the easier it is to conquer territory.In the meantime, the fleeing people are subject to all kinds of hazards: lack of food, lack of medicine, exposure at night when they perhaps sleep outdoor in the forests, the possibility of rape, and the breakdown of cohesion, which is what keeps a community functioning.
The armed group now controls the area with few people in it. If people decide to return, then they must do so under the terms of the new rulers of their area. This can mean "taxation," conscription into forced economic activities, and whatever the new military rulers of the area demand. The armed groups wish to control various territories for different reasons. There may be a lucrative illegal mine in the area or it might be on the route to export minerals that can be taxed as they move through. Also they may have used up the resources of a conquered area and need to move on to more “fertile” territory. When Laurnet Nkunda's rebel group seized Rutshuru in eastern Congo in 2008, he controlled the Gombe National Park and if a person wished to see the gorillas, Nkunda's group collected the fee.
This was probably not a big money-spinner at the time, but this illustrates that all sources of income are seized to enrich the rebel group.This explains why so many people in the region have died – not by being killed by armed actors, except during the Rwandan genocide, but due to exposure, hunger, and disease. Frequently this includes revenge killings as people are accused of supporting the "enemy".Soldiers in this scenario are dispensable. When there are reports that so many soldiers from an armed group have been killed, meaning mostly young men who had little other option, this has little meaning in a strategic sense. New soldiers can be recruited immediately and since there is little training, they are soon ready for action. This is to say, regardless of the numerous campaigns to wipe out this group or another – they have been trying to wipe out the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda for the last 24 years – this never happens.
The international community continues to support military solutions like the 2009 Congolese/Rwandan armies’ attempts to kill and capture the former Hutu genocidaires in North Kivu. Since the Congolese army is one of these armed actors – controlling mines for the benefit of the soldiers only, sometimes looting, raping, and killing as does any other armed rebel group – the expansion of area controlled by the present Congolese army is not a solution to the problem. Nonetheless this is the solution supported by the international community including the UN forces in North and South Kivu.
The fact that this "solution" has failed for years, even decades, does not seem to deter the international community, students of the region, and the involved governments from trying it over and over again. A more creative, workable solution to the wars in the region needs to be developed. The first step is to understand that these are wars of armed actors against unarmed civilians.
*****Where will the Women Sleep Tonight?While a certain amount of attention has been devoted to the use of rape as a weapon of war, particularly in North and South Kivu, I have not seen many explanations of why this is happens.“Battles” are really one side terrorizing people in an area, these people flee and the terrorizing side moves in thereby "conquering" the territory.
One of the most effective methods of terrorizing a population is "rape" – particularly gang rape. I submit that it is more effective than killing someone because the raped person is traumatized and he/she then affects his/her family, neighbors, and community. A killed person’s body would just lie there and, if no one saw it, it would not "terrorize" anyone. Reports of the mutilation of bodies have this same affect – the mutilation terrorizes people who then flee.
Note that above I did not use only the female gender. We conducted a survey of seventy-nine people in Burundi and of the nine people who reported being raped; two were men. As everywhere in the world, rape is under reported and I expect the rape of males is even more under reported. Here is the testimony of an anonymous female HROC workshop participant in North Kivu who was raped during the First Congo World War in 1996.
I was raped and contracted HIV/AIDS. So is my daughter of 12 years. We all lost hope – no one to comfort the other. We just saw death as the next thing happening to us anytime. But God has been gracious. People have stood by us and those [HROC] teachings have really helped me to live positively. I am always bitter about the rapists but that had not changed me. Instead it worsens the situation because whenever I think about it everything comes back fresh in my mind. I have understood the meaning of forgiveness.
Many are times we wait for offenders to ask for forgiveness. In my case where will I meet them; and I wouldn't like to meet them anyway. I have decided to forgive them. I am going to share with my daughter what we learnt. I believe it will help her so that we may begin this journey together.
In North and South Kivu, where rape is prevalent, it is difficult to understand all the consequences. Not only is the woman exposed to pregnancy, gynecological problems, and becoming HIV+, but she is stigmatized and ostracized by her husband, her family, and the larger society. Here is the testimony of Rebecca, a thirty-five year old rape survivor with three children. Her husband divorced her after he discovered she had been raped. She lived in the Mugunga Internally Displaced Persons camp outside of Goma until it was dispersed in September 2009. Do not misunderstand her meaning when she says her sisters “go out to meet men” – they are prostitutes. When she says “married,” she means that they lived with some man for a period of time.
In 1998, I was in the house with my younger siblings and my mom. We were all raped. Even my mother was raped, and she died as a result. It was all in the night. The men were all in the military, or at least they wore military uniforms. We don’t really know who they were, but the Interahamwe used to wander through that area at night. The Interahamwe would mix with the locals and the locals would tell them where to loot and who to attack. After it happened, we took my mom to her brother. But he had no money for medical care either and so we took her home. That is where she died. My dad died a year later. After that, we moved to another territory. I took all of my siblings with me. But it was insecure and we could not stay there, so we came to Goma. Everything was difficult. My sisters, in desperation, would go out to meet men. Then they would get married. Things wouldn’t work and then they would come back to me. Things got bad. They would get jobs at factories picking through beans, working long hours, and making less than $1 per day. My brother in desperation joined the army; he was only 14 years old. Today, we don’t know where he is. One of my sisters has gotten married in Muaso. The other two have given birth twice, but they live with me. My sisters still have flashbacks. When one of my sisters gets a flashback, her eyes will get stuck in one direction. She fears something coming at her day and night. She can never stay alone or sleep near the door. I personally don’t get flashbacks like I used to. That has come with time and the [HROC] teachings. It was at the workshop that I realized I was not alone. And through that I felt I was able to take the first step towards forgiveness.
In November 2008 Gladys and I visited the internally displaced camp mentioned above and talked with thirteen rape survivors. We met secretly in a small office because the women were afraid to be identified as rape survivors. Here is my report of the meeting:
While we were there thirteen women, many with children, one by one entered this office. We went to do a listening session with them – victims of rape. One woman had gone with ten others to get some small branches to support the four-foot plastic hovels of the IDP people in Goma. They were all raped by government soldiers. During the fighting the previous year another woman watched as her husband and three of her children were killed. She, in turn, was first beaten so badly that she is now blind in her right eye and then raped. She is now 65 years old. A sixteen year old girl had also been raped and sat with her six month old little boy. The girl next to her, also with a baby, was only fifteen, meaning she was raped when she was fourteen. Most of the women were gang raped and many had incurred major gynecological problems including the removal of their uterus. As a group the only support they get is medical care at one of the Goma hospitals. One woman was clearly psychologically deranged.
I was surprised by how graphic the women were in their descriptions of the rapes and their results since in their culture talking about anything sexual in front of a male is taboo. As usual in these situations, all the women were anxious to tell their stories, as if the telling itself was a healing act. The rest of the time they had to go around hiding in shame, pretending that nothing had happened.
I asked if any of them had been tested for HIV/AIDS. They almost unanimously agreed that they had been tested by the doctors but the doctors had refused to tell them the results. This is criminal! Women have a very low status in this region and women who have been raped really have no status at all. Therefore they are no longer considered human, e.g. they are unworthy of being told their status. One 42 year old woman was in a Catch 22 situation, unwilling to tell her husband that she had been raped because if she did she would be thrown out of the household. Her husband wanted her to return home in the rebel controlled area, but she was afraid that she might be HIV positive, although she didn't know for sure, and she didn't want to go back and perhaps infect her husband. So what could she do? I admired her because there are many people who don't wish to know their status so that they can be oblivious about whether they are passing AIDS on to their unsuspecting partners.
I asked Zawadi, the HROC coordinator, how much it cost to be tested for AIDS and she immediately called someone she knows who works at a testing center. We were told that the cost of the necessary AIDS test is only $5!!!This kind of rape is, to me, only the most obvious, what I would call "violent rape". When you see all those pictures of people fleeing with goods on their heads, where will the women sleep tonight? Many will have to find a man, perhaps a soldier or policeman, to protect them for the night. The cost is "consensual rape"; the agreement to have sex with the protector. This "relationship" might last a night or two, or a week, or a month, but in the end it is temporary and the woman is turned out and has to find another "protector". The result is unwanted pregnancies and HIV. Many of the women at the Kamenge Clinic in Bujumbura were infected by this "consensual rape".
Recently a disturbing report came out about rape in South Kivu. Formerly 99% of the rapes reported were done by soldiers. But the practice seems to be becoming acceptable in the larger community as now 39% of the rapes reported were done by civilians. So in addition to all the health issues and trauma of rape survivors, there is the added burden that rape has become more acceptable in society. How will this be overcome?
The Healing and Rebuilding Our Community program in North Kivu has begun HROC workshops with these rape survivors using only female facilitators. In addition to dealing with the trauma, the intent is to bring the women together into support groups much as I describe in Chapter 4. At least they will no longer be alone in their sorrow and problems, but have the benefit of a cohesive group.
*****The Best Side of Human NatureOn the Sunday after post election violence broke out in Kenya in 2008, a woman came to the front of Lumakanda Friends Church and gave the customary closing prayer. After church, Gladys told me that this woman was hiding a Kikuyu woman who was a neighbor in her house. The trauma of the violence had induced labor and the Kikuyu woman gave birth that night. Of course we could not tell anyone about this because the Quaker woman’s house could have been burned down if the attackers knew she was hiding a Kikuyu.When politically induced ethnic violence breaks out the media covers the atrocities but rarely covers attempts by people to save others from the opposite side. They report on the worst aspects of human nature rather than the best of human nature. This section covers the best side of human nature. In some cases the rescuers were able to save the intended victim, in others they failed, in another example the rescuer was killed for his attempt, and in another the successful rescuer was saved by those he rescued.
On October 21, 1993, President Ndadaye, the Hutu democratically elected president of Burundi, was assassinated by the Tutsi military. This led to countrywide chaos as Hutu attacked Tutsi in their communities and then the Tutsi military retaliated by killing Hutu. One of the worse massacres occurred at the gas station on the road below Kibimba, the first and largest Quaker mission station in Burundi. A hundred Tutsi students from Kibimba Secondary School along with other Tutsi were herded into the gas station office which was then set on fire. Sixty people died and forty escaped. The next day the Tutsi military arrived and killed Hutu at the gas station and looted the small community. I remember reading about this massacre in the US media at the time.Three weeks later, my great friend, Alison Des Forges (see Chapter 2), was at the site of the massacre doing an investigation for a consortium of American and European human rights groups including Human Rights Watch. She later returned to continue the investigation. Her report was published in French, but because of the Rwandan genocide in April 1994, she never got time to translate it into English.
I always wondered what was in her report. I recently obtained a copy of two sections of the report; one on the Kibimba massacre and the other on violence in Mutato where AGLI has done a considerable amount of HROC work. I then sent the French version to Sheila Havard, a former AGLI work camper from Canada, to make a rough translation. This she did. In her email she wrote, "There are a lot of references to people saving or trying to save others". In only eight pages of the report there are fourteen incidents of people trying to save others. I quote them here:
1. There was even a Hutu teacher who tried to save some of the Tutsi, and he was killed. He was a biology teacher. His nickname was Kavyimabuhiye. Magnifique Bizimana, a 21 Tutsi student.
2. According to other testimony, the principal [of Kibimba Secondary School] did all he could to save the hostages.
3. Mutoya Parish: A lot of Hutu families hid and kept neighboring Tutsi families in their homes.
4. Mutaho Commune: A Hutu priest or church staff member from the parish said that some parish workers had come to get him to save a Tutsi on Thursday 21st at 9 p.m. He said: “We went to tell the people who were all worked up not to shed any blood."
5. A Hutu nun or church staff member recounted that she had hidden an UPRONA member/supporter [Tutsi] and his family on Friday morning. He already had a head wound. In the afternoon a gang armed with lances came to get him but the nun/church staff member managed to thwart them.
6. The same nun said, Then an old woman came to seek refuge. Her husband and son had been captured. She only had a blanket left.
7. She continues, Then, with the priest, we rescued a young man who was being arrested/stopped on the road. There was a crowd on the road going to Mutaho, shouting: “We’ve been told that people are dying on the road” .
8. In the Mutaho trading centre, on Friday morning, a group of Hutu armed with pangas (machetes) and clubs went round the houses inviting everyone to come and demonstrate against the assassination of President Ndadaye. Those who refused were threatened with death. So an UPRONA member/supporter had to seek refuge in the house of a neighbor who was a Hutu shopkeeper, a member/supporter of FRODEBU and of the Muslim faith" FRODEBU was the Hutu party of President Ndadaye.
9. Somewhat later, this same shopkeeper intervened to prevent a rich Tutsi shopkeeper from being killed. He was hit with a stick and had to flee without being able to save the Tutsi.
10. The same Muslim shopkeeper, Later on he hid the principal of the commune college and an English teacher in his home, both Tutsi, as well as a Hutu member/supporter of UPRONA and the wife of the rich shopkeeper who had just been killed. He hid them for two days until the military came on Monday morning and took them to an IDP camp.
11. Again the same shopkeeper, The Hutu Muslim shopkeeper risked being killed at this time but the people he had saved pleaded for him and saved him in turn.
12. A 53-year-old Tutsi, a member/supporter of UPRONA living on Nyakero Hill explained how he had fled from the killers: “They wanted to exterminate only the ethnic group of UPRONA -- Tutsi. We fled into the bush. When the soldiers arrived, most were dead. Three of us escaped out of a group of eighteen. I fled when I saw that my brothers and neighbors were being killed. I was saved by a Hutu from my hill, who hid me. Then I went to my Muslim boss, who hid me in his ceiling until the military arrived."
13. On Wednesday, after the 7 AM mass, the parishioners again went to clear the road near Mubarazi River. After the road had been cleared, the soldiers fired on the people who had helped them, killing about fifteen or twenty of them. A student was able to escape, as was a young teacher from Muyange, called Félix, who had a bayonet wound. We thought he was going to die. But the Tutsi nurses who had been hidden in the parish cared for this young Hutu. The priest recommended that they not say anything to the soldiers. Félix was transported to the Kibuye Hospital by the Red Cross.
14. Church staff from the parish stated that they were aware of numerous cases of solidarity where Hutu had risked their lives to save, hide and feed neighbors.
***** Lancing a Stereotype I would like to comment on the Muslims in the previous section who were involved with saving people. The stereotype that I want you to "lance" is that Islam is a religion of violence, jihad, Al-Qaida, and terrorism. This stereotype underlies much of the reporting about Islam in the US – particularly those from Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In the January 9, 2008, Daily Nation, the main newspaper in Kenya, there is an article titled, "Muslims urged to shun violence". Somewhere between 10% and 20% of the population of Kenya is Muslim. Hamad Kassim is the chief kadhi in Kenya and a leader of the Muslim community.
Here is the report in the paper from his speech in Mombasa on the Muslim celebration of Idd ul Adha. The chief kadhi yesterday asked Muslims to refrain from engaging in practices that cause bloodshed. Mr. Hamad Kassim said Islam does not allow its followers to kill anyone...Muslims should maintain peace at all times. “I see no reason why people are killing one another. As Muslims, we should avoid taking part in any acts that can cause bloodshed because our religion is against such acts."
I have heard the following in Rwanda many times over the years. At the time of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Muslims were 2% to 3% of the population. They are now approximately 6% of the population. Why this increase? Because the Muslims were the only major religion that did not participate in the genocide. I myself have heard first hand the story of one Quaker youth who was hidden in a mosque during part of the genocide. In Christian denominations, many priests, pastors, and religious leaders actively participated in the genocide. So Muslims say, "This shows that Christianity doesn't work!" This argument is hard to refute. In this case, the stereotype that Muslims are violent is incorrect since it was the Christians who were violent. If we realize that Islam is a religion of peace, as Christianity is supposed to be, then where does this lead us when considering the anti-Islamic propaganda in the United States which is used as the basic fear for promoting the "War on Terror?" Christian and Muslim peacemakers should come together and confront those who are using Christianity and Islam as excuses for violence.
*****You Cannot Do Much for Peace if You Fear Dying for Peace In January 2010, I received an email from an American asking for help/advice on getting a Kenyan out of Kenya because he was being threatened due to his possible testimony in the International Criminal Court about the 2008 post election violence. There is no doubt that Kenyans were being threatened. Two human rights workers had already been assassinated. But the request was from an American in the United States and I saw no indication that the Kenyan had asked to be rescued. Perhaps he wanted this, but I would want to hear it directly from him.
This illustrates one of the major differences between Western thinking and African thinking. American thinking puts individual survival as the highest priority. African thinking, under the concept of ubuntu (humanness), considers the individual only in the context of the larger community. Let me give you a number of examples illustrating how this plays out.
The first occurred with a report I received from Adrien Niyongabo, the HROC Coordinator in Burundi, about a project we planned to do in Burundi for the upcoming Burundi elections. HROC/AGLI planned to train citizen reporters who have attended our HROC workshops and join them together in Democracy and Peace groups to observe and try to make the elections fair and non-violent. Since the citizen reporters would be known by the population and government authorities, there is a certain amount of risk in doing this work. The response of one of the HROC committee members was, "You cannot do much for peace if you fear to die for peace".
I have observed this before. A number of years ago I was at an AVP meeting in Kigali, Rwanda and Eddie Kalisa, a young Tutsi facilitator, brought up the request from Kaduha government officials for AVP workshops. In this remote hilly area, Hutu were still killing Tutsi. Among the eight or so people at the committee meeting, not one, including Eddie who would be an obvious target, expressed any comment or reservation about going to do three day workshops in this clearly dangerous place. Their work was to bring reconciliation and that was what they were dedicated to do, without any qualms or hesitancy whatsoever over safety.
Alison Des Forges, the friend and human rights expert who wrote the report above, once told me that before the genocide, when she was doing investigations of the small massacres that were then taking place, whenever she asked a Rwandan informant if she could use his/her name, he/she always replied in the affirmative. A frequent comment was, "These people massacred here have died for no reason whatsoever and, if I die because of what I have told you, then I will have at least died for a reason”.
Theoneste Bagasora, the "architect" of the genocide, and the other genocidaires understood this westerners' individualistic thinking. They realized that, when they brutally killed and mutilated ten Belgian UN peacekeepers, all the Europeans and Americans would flee the country enabling them to do the "work" – as they called the killing of Tutsi – by themselves without outside knowledge or intervention. They were absolutely right. President Bill Clinton was very concerned about getting the 254 Americans out of Rwanda, but when this was accomplished, the plight of the 500,000 plus Rwandans who were killed in the genocide was not his concern.
What is ironic is that the one American, Carl Wilkens, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary who refused to be evacuated – although he sent his wife and four children out of the country – saved more lives in the genocide than the whole American military with its hundreds of billions of dollars and awe-inspiring weaponry. When Carl saw that one of the orphanages filled with Tutsi boys was about to be attacked by the interahamwe he ran to the nearest government center and happened upon Jean Kambanda, the prime minister and asked him to intercede and call off the interahamwe and their attack. The prime minister agreed and the boys survived. You can hear the event first hand in Frontline's 2004 documentary, "Ghosts of Rwanda". He was one who was not afraid to die for peace.
Then there is the little known fact about the Rwandan genocide. A number of Tutsi men living in Rwanda were married to Belgian, French, or French-Canadian women. When the genocide came, those women had the choice of leaving Rwanda and their husbands and children, who were considered "Tutsi" by the rules used in Rwanda, to almost certain death or staying with their families and risk being killed as well. As far as I can tell, most stayed with their families and most were also killed. But in the weird way that the world thinks of "significant people", when these "white" women married Africans they gave up the privileges of being "significant". Their deaths, like that of so many Rwandans, were little noted and not remembered.
This may all sound academic, but is a crucial issue for me. When the 2008 post election violence occurred in Kenya, Eden Grace, a Friends United Meeting's staff member living in Kisumu, offered to put me on the list of Americans to be evacuated by the US Embassy if necessary. This was not unlikely as the Americans in Kisumu – a city with a lot of violence at that time – were evacuated twice. She indicated that Gladys as my spouse, although not an American citizen, would be evacuated along with me.
I declined for two reasons.
First, I might potentially save myself and Gladys, but what about her father, six sisters, son, daughter, two grandchildren and so many other members of her family? Could we flee leaving them to perhaps perish? While I might be in more danger by staying, there was also the possibility that Gladys and I, having more resources – contacts, money, knowledge of the way the world works – might be able to assist other family members to survive. Would we live with souls at ease if we were evacuated, but other family members were killed?
But the second reason is that if I fled I would be an accomplice to the violence. The whole concept of protecting human rights is based on the fact that an observer – and as an American, whether I like it or not, I am one of those "significant people" – might be a deterrent. Moreover, since I had a cell phone and internet access, might not my reporting from such an out-of-the-way place as Lumakanda where we live be a testimony and witness to what was going on? Might this not alert the rest of the world – at least my contacts – about the unfolding events?. *****Agathe
Here is a testimony of a woman named Agathe, who lives in North Kivu and was greatly affected by the fighting there. Note also how her sister, using what she learned in the HROC workshop, worked with her to keep her out of the army. When I was 15, I was in love with a young man and I got pregnant. When I told him, he told me to go away. After two weeks, he married someone else, not me. When my parents later asked who is responsible, I told them. They had heard that he was married and they chased me away. My brothers said that if they ever met me again, they would kill me. I walked for ten miles, and where I went, I suffered. After birth, my family looked for me. They said we could live together but that they would not provide for me. I must take my child to the father. But the father said “No,” as he would have nothing to do with the child. So I didn’t know what to do with my child. I sold cassava flour trying to sell enough to at least get a little bit of soap. I got no help from my family. They said I just brought them shame. Whenever my child got sick, I had no money. I would go out into the bush and find herbs and try to help my child. I thought of joining the army so that I could come back and kill my family.
But God came through for me. I had already registered and enlisted to join the army. But then I thought that I should not go without saying goodbye. I went to ask advice from my sister, but I asked her not to tell me not to go. Instead, she told me she had just come from a [HROC] workshop. Then she said she would accompany me to the military office if I wanted her to. When she told me this, I cried. Then she called the office and it turned out there were no flights that day for the army. So I stayed the night with my sister. I kept thinking about what I was doing. Even if I went into the army, I was going with my child, my baby. Through the night my sister read to me what she had learned at the workshop. I was not satisfied. After awhile, she sent me an invitation [to a HROC workshop]. She said it might be helpful for me in the army. Then I went to the teachings and felt the facilitators were like my brothers. But then my heart started to loosen up and I chose to not join the army.
***** “Do Unto Others as They Do Unto You” Shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, I was passing through Kampala, Uganda. I read the following story in The Monitor, one of the major papers in Uganda.
There is a group of HIV+ women in Kampala who work together as I described in Chapter 4. Their work is to pound rocks into gravel which is then sold for construction. I have seen these women along one of the roads next to a ridge full of large rocks. They sit on the ground and with a small sledgehammer pound away turning the rocks into a heap of gravel. The paper indicated that they earn about $1.00 per day for this backbreaking work. These women had heard about Hurricane Katrina and how it had destroyed so many homes and possessions of the people of New Orleans. They decided to donate over $900 for the relief of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. When one of the women was asked why they would do this, when their own condition was dire, she replied, “Our custom is to help people when they are in difficulties. We see that those people have lost everything so we want to help out.” It is sad to think how little $900 contributed to the relief of Hurricane Katrina victims. On the other hand the response of these HIV+, rock-breaking women through their humanness, their connection to suffering all over the world, is overwhelming.
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