Rwanda and Genocide

As I mentioned in the last blog arriving in Rwanda was a breath of fresh air compared to Tanzania and my favourite place so far.

Kigali was very different than I was expecting. It seems like quite a prosperous city with huge mansions springing up all over the place, the government is in the process of tearing down the city slums and providing houses for the locals with plumbing and electricity, where they have up to 40 years to pay off and own these homes, if they wish. There are very professional looking business men and women wondering about the city and very cosmopolitan places to eat out. There is more of a middle class here than we have seen for a while too. It was also much bigger than I expected, our lonely planet guide, being 4 years out of date, said the population was only 300, 000, but it was clearly much bigger than that! It's now closer to 1, 000, 000. My guess is an influx of Rwandan refugee's returning to Rwanda now things seem much more stable from their troubled past. There is a really good vibe in Rwanda and there is an optimistic feel as the people here look to the future and move on from bad times.

Rwanda is a really clean place, especially compared with other African countries. There is no rubbish anywhere. Every last Saturday of the month Rwandans spend their mornings cleaning up and planting trees etc. They also have no plastic bags here.

The landscape is stunning! The land of a thousand hills....and most of them cultivated with banana's and various crops.

The roads here are good, something we really appreciated after our experiences in Tanzania. Plus transport is well regulated, so everyone gets a seat and it's super cheap.

While in Kigali we did a city tour where we went to the genocide museum among other things. It was such a moving experience. There was a section of the memorial/museum that had some poster sized photo's of children and under the photo some info. Here is an example:

Name: Michael
Age: 7
Favourite drink: Tea
Favourite food: Ice-cream
Best Friend: His mum
Attached to death by machete

I couldn't read all of them it was too hard. It still brings tears to my eye just writing about it.
It's hard to comprehend how such atrocities could have happened. How even neighbours turned on one another...men, women and children were hacked to death within their own communities.
In April of 94 approx 1, 000, 000 Rwandans were killed within about 6 weeks..that's close to 1 in 20 Australians!

I think there is probably the misconception that the 2 tribes of Rwanda (the Hutu and the Tutsi) have been fighting amongst themselves for centuries, but the Hutu and Tutsi have lived in Rwanda happily living side by side and in inter tribe relationships for a long time. Tensions started between them during colonial rule when the Belgium's and their European obsession with classification introduced identity cards to separate them in a bit of a random way.

During Belgium rule they took a preference to the Tutsi and gave them more privileges and more positions of power. This obviously lead to worsening conditions for the Hutu and a feeling of inferiority. There were some uprisings and subsequent murders that followed back and forth.

By 1962 Rwanda was granted independence like most other African nations during that time. Belgium placed a Hutu Prime Minister to power. The Belgium influences meant politics split down ethnic lines....not so good for the Tutsi who were the minority. So it followed then that the conditions worsened for the Tutsi and many fled into the neighbouring countries.

In the 70's, a General, who was a Hutu extremist seized power and ruled Rwanda like a dictatorship, allowing anti-Tutsi propaganda on the radio and in the media.
Meanwhile a group of exiled Tutsi formed a group called the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) .
Tensions continued between the Rwandan army under Hutu rule and the RPF until the 90's.
In the 90's an even more extremist group formed within the Generals government called the Interhamwe militia and it was this group that planned and carried out the genocide of the Tutsi and any Hutu holding liberal views.
The Generals plane was shot down upon landing at Kigali airport after peace talks with the RPF in Tanzania, within minutes the killings started. All Hutu were encouraged to kill their Tutsi neighbours. Reading about the way the people were killed was disturbing and I won't repeat it. I just can't understand how someone can have that much hate inside them. I guess a few decades of propaganda helps!

As I walked through the streets of Rwanda it was hard to comprehend what these people have been through. Anyone over the age of 14 had lived through this. Most have lost numerous family and have mostly friends these days. I'm sure it's something Rwandans can't forget and the scares both physically and emotionally still remain.