The Rwandan genocide started on April 6, 1994, twenty-five years ago.
In less than four months, 800,000 had been murdered. The news did not come out at once. Indeed, it made headlines only when the number of bodies floating into Lake Kivu, on Rwanda’s border with Burundi, caused international news outlets to realize something horrific was happening. As we learned more, my reaction, like that of most Americans, was a kind of generalized concern.
It seemed one more horror story from the Third World: almost like an ebola outbreak, or the effects of a typhoon. We have come to know, now, that Rwanda was very different. It was not a natural disaster. Rather, it was the calculated, systematic attempt (and near success) to eradicate one ethnic group by another, making use of institutions of government, church, public media, and thousands of individual average citizens.
Rwanda had more than 1 million members of the Tutsi ethnic group in April of 1994. By July, it had less than 300,000. The killing was carried out by ordinary people who turned on their fellow men, women, and children, with machetes. The killers were neighbors of their victims.
As a congressman, I served on the International Relations Committee, and specifically, the subcommittee on Africa. Soon after the genocide, my wife and I traveled to Rwanda. We returned four times since, including longer stays teaching at two Rwandan colleges. We learned that almost every family of the targeted ethnic group had lost a member. Although it is now illegal in Rwanda to identify as a member of an ethnic group, it is impossible to wipe away the average Rwandan’s ability to “tell” the two major ethnic groups apart.
Further, despite the remarkable economic progress Rwanda has made, helped by generous contributions from the US and many other developed countries, we perceived among our students and others a resentment that not all the benefits have been shared equally. The government is run by members of the ethnic group that had been targeted, a 15% minority in the country. Members of the 85% majority ethnic group, who are not in power, expressed to us the fear that the 15% who are in control would never relinquish authority to those who tried to kill their parents, brothers, sisters, and children.
What I found in Rwanda is that the consciousness of the “otherness” of some humans persists; even in the face of the starkest historical evidence of what extreme labeling of an “other” can do. Therein lies the lesson for Americans, Europeans, and Asians who are also facing pressure to identify “others” within our societies.
The Rwandan genocide did not happen because of the Belgian colonial legacy, or French military aid to the previous government, or traditional enmities between farmers and herders, though each factor existed. Some might suggest that the institutions of diverse democracy were weaker in Rwanda than in America or Europe; but had Rwandan institutions been as strong as ours, the genocide would still have happened. Nor was the influence of organized religion lacking in Rwanda.
Ninety-four percent of Rwandans identify as Christian — yet instances of killings inside churches were common. Nor did Rwanda lack courageous individuals. Rwandans hid possible targets in their own homes and businesses (as in Hotel Mille Collines, fictionalized as “Hotel Rwanda” in the film of that name), risking their own lives to protect the vulnerable. Still, the killing came. The reason was because, over many decades, the “other” had been dehumanized in Rwanda. “Cockroaches” was the term most often used in the radio broadcasts urging the killings.
When we encounter economic or political adversaries, we often discount their worth by denigrating them as somehow “other” than us — less deserving, less hygienic, less honest, even less human. We said “never again” in 1945. We said “never again” in 1994. But dehumanizing the ”other” makes it more likely that “again” can recur.
Tom Campbell is a professor of law and a professor of economics at Chapman University. He served five terms in the US Congress, and was chairman of the World Affairs Council of Northern California. He and his wife have taught as volunteers in Rwanda, Eritrea, and Ghana.