It’s hard to believe that the Rwandan Genocide happened 12 years ago. If you are unaware of the incident I can’t stress the importance of learning about it. A good source of course is wikipedia, pbs, and gendercide.
But here’s a very quick and over-simplified synopsis. There are two major tribes in Rwanda, the Tutsis and the Hutus. The Hutus shot down the President’s plane and launched a campaign to rid themselves of the Tutsis. Over the course of 100 days, they killed roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, most by machete. The entire world watched from the sidelines as this genocide unfolded right before our eyes.
The criminal investigations from this horrible incident still continue to this day which is not too surprising. What is surprising however, are some of the people convicted for aiding the Hutus in this genocide.
The latest conviction goes to a Roman Catholic nun named Theophister Mukakibibi who worked at the National University Hospital during the genocide. According to court records, the nun selected Tutsis sheltered in the hospital and threw them outside to the militias. Witnesses also reported that the nun held meetings with the militiamen and was even escorted by an army officer during the killings.
Sadly, Mukakibibi is not the only Catholic nun found guilty of this unforgivable act. Two other Catholic nuns, Julienne Mukabutera and Consolata Mukangango, were found guilty in a Belgian court for even worse acts. They helped provide the fuel to burn 500-700 Tutsis trapped in a health care centre garage that lie adjacent to the convent amongst other heinous acts.
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here’s a good article on the nature of the participant sin the Rwandan genocide. http://psweb.sbs.ohio-state.edu/faculty/jmueller/is2000.pdf
Yet the United Nations has never been held responsible for refusing to act.
If you get the chance, see Hotel Rwanda. It pisses me off to no end that I have to recommend people go watch a damn movie, but that’s the way it is these days.
This is really just another story of how “well” the five permanent members of the Security Council work together
Boutros-Ghali insisted that he does not wish to understate his own responsibility in Rwanda. “I said publicly that I failed in Rwanda. I did not succeed in convincing Security Council members to act. The United States with the strong support of Great Britain did everything they could to prevent the UN from intervening, and a majority of countries followed their lead.” It should be noted that Boutros-Ghali declared on at least two occasions, including once to me in November 2002, that the “Rwandan genocide was 100 percent American responsibility”.
from: http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/2005/2602.html
I must protest, gasmonso. You’re close, but off. The “Hutus” didn’t shoot down the president’s plane, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (current, post-war government) shot down the presidential plain, which was carying the Hutu president of Rwanda, and the first, democratically elected president of neighbouring Burundi. (Significant because the Tutsis had brutally repressed the Hutu majority in Burundi, and this was the fruit of the first democratic elections in that country.
This presidential assassination caused a backlash which sparked the genocide. The Hutus in Rwanda had been building to a frenzy of paranoia about the Tutsis for decades, fueled in part by Uganda’s arming of Tutsi militias, and by the repression of the Hutus in Burundi by the Tutsi-controlled army, which included a genocide attempt in 1972, which caused massive influx of angry Hutus into Rwanda, as well as several subsequent civil wars.
There were no clean hands in that fiasco, and there were so very many opportunities to stop the thing before it escalated to genocide. Certainly the media which has simplified the conflict didn’t help at all.
Small correction to my comment above – the first democratically elected president of Burundi, was a Hutu named Melchior Ndadaye, and he was killed by Tutsi army officers in 1993, sparking a civil war. His successor, Cyprien Ntaryamira was the president killed along with the Rwandan president Habyarimana, sparking the Rwandan genocide.
References for further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burundi_genocide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Burundi
cgruber, to be exact isn’t quite clear who did shoot the plane down. There are conspiracy theories abound and some that even suggest the CIA was involved. The popular blame is on the Hutus because they had a clear motive. However, until it is proven, I guess we can say it’s up in the air and irrelevant to the hundreds of thousands that died :(
Thanks for pointing that out though. Like I said I gave a quick overview in hopes that it would cause people to go read more and learn.
gasmonso
Philip Gourevitch’s “We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow We will be Killed with Our Families” is definitely the easiest read (to the extent that reading about genocide doesn’t make you queasy), and possibly the best book about Rwanda. Millions of copies on amazon, probably for a buck or two.
Hey Gas… I’ve read fairly well on this, my wife having been an exile from Burundi since her extended family slaughtered in 1972, and I simply don’t believe the Hutu-killed-the-president theory is credible. It’s in the “The CIA caused 9/11″ category. There was motive for extremists, but there was plenty of motive for the RPF with no conspiracy necessary. Of course, none of it justifies the genocide which followed. My point was that however horrific we find the actions of the Hutu-led government and the mobs they incited, if we get a demon/victim mentality around it, the problem will never be solved. That genocide is a straight-line computation from the 1972 genocide in Burundi in which some 200,000 Hutus died in a 3 month campaign with lists and co-ordination with the army. Until both Hutu and Tutsi feel that they live in a just situation, this COULD HAPPEN AGAIN!
In some ways, however flawed, the experience of South Africa does provide a certain hope, the TRC’s having explicit forgiveness and honesty as a key factor. Part of justice is having your story told.
Part of why I get so engaged about this, is that during 1994 we (at my University) knew something was brewing, because several Rwandan Tutsis who were going to school with us suddenly left to go to Uganda, (months before the presidents’ plane was shot), and these were people with rank in the RPF. Some of these are now members of the government. Students of the politics of the area were quite aware of the situation, and various Hutus and Tutsis in Canada and the USA and so-forth were writing their M.P.’s and Congressmen warning of the impending crisis. No one thought it would become genocidal, but we expected another vicious civil war. And then, once things became clear, the media reported the thing in such simplistic terms, that the actual causes that underlay the violence were washed away in a sea of western-guilt and self-flagellation, which turned the RPF into some great saviour coming to rescue the Tutsis from the evil Hutus.
Subsequently, no media attention has been paid to the deals Kagame made with Laurant Kabila to support him in his revolt in Congo, in exchange for a blind eye to raids and indescriminate and extrajudicial slaughters in refugee camps, ostensibly made to root out genocide organizers. Or other violence of a genocidal character, but smaller scale, by either side.
The whole thing is a mess, and everyone should be held accountable. These nuns should go to jail forever, but the truth is, that in these great-lakes conflicts, the person in power at any given moment probably has blood on their hands. If we vilify whole races (which you weren’t doing, gas, but many do) we remove the possibility of peace in the future. And if we decide that vilification is appropriate, then there’s enough blame to go around, if you look at things beyond what was reported on CNN.
None of that helps the next generation which has to find a way to learn to love their neighbour. And if both Burundi and Rwanda are not healed, the wounds of one will spark violence in the other, and the cycle will continue.
I was thinking about what Aktis said about the UN being held responsible for not acting, and I think it underlies a common misunderstanding about the UN. The UN is not a sovereign, independent government agency. It is a forum for collective action of sovereign national governments. “The U.N.” can’t do anything without the permission of its contstituent governments, subject to the approval of the Security Council, subject further to any of five Veto-wielding nations.
What’s criminal, isn’t that the UN didn’t do anything, what’s criminal is that governments played with language to avoid calling things “Genocide”, language which if invoked requires, by treaty, the action of all member states of the U.N. What’s criminal is that vetos and various procedural “hacks” were used to avoid taking responsibility. The UN is a reflection of its member states. Some agencies are better, like UNHCR, UNICEF, and UNESCO and WHO. These agencies tend to operate pro-actively. But the general assembly and the member states, on any issue where they want to avoid doing stuff – they can play tons of procedural games to avoid it. And the veto-wielding nations can shut the whole place down.
It’s easy to get angry at the U.N., and Romeo Daillaire’s book is certainly good fuel for that. But Romeo Daillaire while was begging for orders to move in and help, his higher-ups were required to get sanction to order him to do so, and they couldn’t get such sanction, precisely because the U.N. structure prevents the U.N. from taking independent action, without approval of member states in various forms. National-sovereignty guarrantees built into the U.N. charter errode its ability to prosecute emergency action quickly and effectively, and the Rwandans certainly suffered for it.
I really think that the role of catholic nun in such a massacre is pretty irrelevant in the greater picture.
With so many people slaughtered and such foolishness from the African people of rwanda, talking about one nun is silly.
Just funny to see self-rightous, heaven-going people do things like this…
maybe some problems just need to solve themselves…
Personally, it just underlies the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” metaphor. I don’t have much trust in anyone who claims a spritual vocation greater than that of a poor, single mother (to pick an example out of a hat). That these were Nuns, just means that, like so many others in all walks of life, these were people whose words and personal claims did not match their actions and hearts. Good and bad people, in their natural proportion (whatever that is) are, I believe, equally spread through all walks of life, all vocations.
There are, to contrast this, great stories of personal heroism from Rwanda, and great examples of healing, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice to protect the innocent.
In Burundi, to take an example I know more of, my Aunt-in-law escaped the massacres, because a Tutsi classmate warned her that the Army was coming for her, and gave her some Congolese clothing which allowed her to pass her self off as other than Hutu. Some missionaries then helped her escape to the border where she crossed through a razor-grass swamp. These are evangelical missionaries, whom I’ve met, and however imperfect in their greater lives, they rose to the occasion, and I have great respect for them, despite our spiritual differences.
It’s good to hear the positive stories too, so we don’t all lose faith in our common humanity.
Is the picture you put on this article from the Convent in Sovu where the two nuns accused were from? Where is that picture from? Please email me with an answer if you can. My email is GhostlightMuse@gmail.com
Thanks
You punk ass cgruber motherfucker, we should send your fingers in your mom mail box for you to stop talking shit. You’r probably not the one that saw his parents,brothers and sisters getting chopped out by hutus extremists and tell me shit was not planned from time. I should burn out these white motherfuckers that were the mastermind as y’all dumb with 85% majority and never had the balls to govern your country both in Rwanda and Burundi from kings and kings now y’all trynna exterminate us thinking it will be over, watch us running your ass again, you asswhole, talking shit like genocide was in both hands… of course after killing my people I’ll cut your balls, even stick them up in your mouth, Punk ass…talk about what you know.
Excuse me Joey, but you are illiterate so if you have a point, get someone else to write it for you. Otherwise, suck a lemon you racist pig.
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