Drash Given on the Second Day of Passover

Given by Naomi Sully on April 4, 2007 (12 Nissan 5767 )

It is difficult for me to describe what it feels like to stand in a room filled with skeletons of children shielding their faces, ripped from their mothers who tried so hard to save them...

In 1994, over a period of 100 days, from April to mid-July, government sponsored Hutu extremists massacred about a million Tutsis.

As some of you know, I spent a month last summer in Rwanda. I was one of 14 American youth selected to participate on a delegation with Global Youth Connect, an organization that sends youth interested in international human rights, genocide prevention, and other related issues, to connect with youth in post-conflict countries in a unique type of learning experience.

I firmly believe in the power of education in preventing future genocides. Education leads to awareness and awareness leads to action. I have been doing a lot of genocide education work recently, and this is why I am here today. My hope is that by sharing my experience in Rwanda with you, this may help spark action to help put an end to the current genocide in Darfur.

About an hour outside of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, there is a village on a grassy hillside, like most other villages in the country. Also, like most other Rwandan villages, the Tutsis were massacred by machetes, clubs and other makeshift tools. I met three young people there- Joseph, Francoise, and Philomen- the girls are 24 and Joseph is 25. I spent most of a day with them, in this village they had lived in, on that grassy hillside where their families were murdered. The bodies of their parents and siblings who were killed there had been thrown into an unmarked grave, obviously without a proper burial. Philomen knew where the grave was because she was laying close by, nearing her own death as they raped, killed and then pushed her mother into the open dirt grave on top of the others. Philomen showed me her scars. She had been shot 4 times and also had a large cut on her head from a machete. As I came to understand, Rwandans, like us, value the proper burial of their loved ones, and Joseph, Francoise and Philomen were three of a larger group of youth who had been preparing their families' bodies for such a ceremony. They had come together and established contact with a non-profit organization that provides services to orphans of the genocide. The youth applied for funding to build a memorial and mass grave for the bodies, which they were finishing the construction of when I was there. These young men and women had spent the previous few months gathering and meticulously cleaning the bones that remained of their families and friends. They showed me the neat piles of bones and skulls, separated by body part.

I could tell you the numbers and statistics, but I think you need to hear these stories. People were not simply killed, even though that would have been enough; they were dehumanized, tortured, and traumatized. And they are still suffering today, 13 years later. So while I apologize for my crudeness, this is the reality. It is the reality of what happened in Rwanda, and it is happening again in Darfur.

I can understand that the distance may seem great between us, here in this room, and the Rwandans. I want to recognize that there are probably survivors in this room and the distance probably doesn't feel as far for you, as it does for others because you and the Rwandans share an inexplicable experience, something none of us can fully understand. My intention by going there and standing here today is to begin to close the gap, that distance that can so easily make their lives seem incomprehensible or irrelevant to most people who have not had that experience. I am now going to share with you some aspects of the genocide that you may not be aware of. You will notice that there are many similarities between the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.

The genocide was planned months in advance. There was a document sent to the White House describing plans to kill the Tutsis. There had been an informant who had been one of the key planners who finally wanted out when he realized how far the others around the table wanted to go. He wanted passports for his family to leave Rwanda in exchange for giving the U.S. administration all the names of the other masterminds so they could actually prevent this from happening. The Clinton administration said they would see if it got worse before taking any action. And the rest is history- it all happened exactly as the informant said it would, and the Clinton administration never did anything except reject requests for giving troops to the UN peacekeeping force and apologize when it was all over.

These identifications of Hutu and Tutsi are usually referred to as "ethnic" distinctions, but really they originated as socioeconomic classes, and in fact, it was possible for a Hutu to climb the social hierarchy and become Tutsi, which was the wealthier class. While Tutsis are believed to be taller, lighter and more European looking, I think it's possible that these stereotypes came from their respective economic classes. For example, Hutus could have been darker because they were the peasant class, working outside in the hot sun for long hours and shorter from malnutrition. But I can't see how it would be possible to tell the difference, especially because in the 20th century, inter-marriage was not uncommon. When the Germans colonized Rwanda in the late 19th century, they ruled the country indirectly through the Tutsis, exacerbating the inequality and resentment between them and the Hutus. Then, in 1959, the Belgians- who had been given power over Rwanda after WWI- gave Rwandans free elections and the Hutus, which made up about 85% of the total Rwandan population, of course, elected a Hutu government. And this is when a lot of the violence towards the Tutsis started, and many left at this time- and since they were generally wealthier, they could. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front was created by Rwandans who grew up in exile. They wanted the right to repatriate and have a place in the country's political system since they still considered Rwanda their home. They invaded Rwanda and the civil war between them and the government's national army went on until 1993 when they signed the Arusha Accords which would share power more equally between them. On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana's plane was shot down, killing him. This was the beginning of the genocide. While there is still no evidence as to who was responsible for killing the President, it is widely accepted that it was the Hutu extremists that were responsible, outraged that their President would turn on them to make a deal with the Tutsis.

Within hours, roadblocks were set up and the killing started. The efficiency with which the killing happened was unbelievable. Think about it: one million people killed in 100 days. That means, 10,000 people killed each day by the hand of another human being. One of the points compared to the Holocaust is the efficiency. The Interhamwe, the government-sponsored Hutu extremist group responsible for perpetrating the killings, was training boys to use machetes and other easy-access tools to kill people for months before, in preparation. Lists of Tutsis were being created and circulated. First, it was politicians, professors, doctors- people of higher profile. Then it was everyone. They knew if a Hutu was married to a Tutsi, and they would either have them kill their spouse, or they would kill both of them.

The mass propaganda that was used against the Tutsi population was used to dehumanize them. It has been compared to the hate propaganda in Nazi Germany, in fact. A Hutu radio station played a key role in spreading their ideology of hate, and making the extermination of the "cockroaches," as they called Tutsis, every Hutu's duty to his people. People were completely brainwashed by the radio, it was an extremely powerful propelling force of the genocide. At the end of 2003, 2 of the DJs from this station were sentenced to life in prison for their role in the genocide. And now, Rwandans really don't have freedom of speech. Since there is still so much hate, there is a fear that if that freedom is given to the people, it will be used in the same way again.

Rwandan youth have had a very dynamic and tragic role in the genocide and its repercussions. The majority of the perpetrators were males between the ages of 15 and 17, they were mostly brainwashed kids with machetes taught to hate. So now you have all these men who are in their late 20s, early 30s sitting in overcrowded, unsanitary prisons, while their hate festers. Another issue here is that there are not really clear lines between victim and perpetrator. Are these kids really the enemy, or are they just victims themselves?

The genocide orphaned lots of children, and these kids are completely traumatized by what they have experienced. It is estimated that 90% of children who survived saw someone they knew die a violent death during the genocide. There are entire communities that are child-headed households. I met a child of 14 years who was in charge of a 6 person household. They have a very difficult life. With that though, youth are also the hope of the future. The kids now have the opportunity to put the violence and hate behind them, but can you really ask a child to forgive its neighbor for killing their parents? And this is really the difficulty in the reconciliation process, it is so complex. You have perpetrators and victims, except for those categories are not even definite since there is some crossover. When the genocide ended: there were 120,000 people put in prison as suspected genocidaires, there was an increased AIDS rate because of the use of systematic rape as a tool of war, there is now a Tutsi-led government, and there are thousands of displaced Tutsis that want to come back to their homes, but a Hutu family has moved in. Along with that, there have been many issues on children's rights to land since in many families, the parents were killed and now the children want to live in the house. Some communities have taken their land, leaving the children on the street, since there is no one to defend them. My point is that there are still a lot of issues that make the genocide not seem so far away. And that while the country is taking steps, there is a lot still going on under the surface that is very worrisome.

Many Tutsis have been ostracized by their communities; some still continue to be threatened. One young man I met told me that he and his family have been poisoned on more than one occasion, and they receive death threats. A Rwandan man, named Albert, I was doing some work with for a Rwandan organization, told me a story about a woman he knows. She was infected with HIV by a man who raped her during the genocide, and she has two children now, 10 and 12 years old. When Albert had visited her last, she called her children out of the room, and showed Albert a piece of paper she had received days before. There was a picture of her on it, and it was circled, and it said "I am still watching you and I can come back at anytime to do what I did again." People are living in fear.

In terms of official reconciliation, there are two court systems that suspected genocidaires go through. The first is the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania that was established by the United Nations. When I was in Arusha, I sat in on a few trials and it seemed pretty inefficient to me. In 10 years, the court has handed down 25 judgments, including 31 accused. Doesn't sound like very much to me. This tribunal is reserved for only category 1 criminals, who are the masterminds or those who played a key role in the genocide. The radio guys ended up in this category.

The other type of judicial process is the gacaca trials. We observed a trial for an entire day and I found it fascinating. Gacaca, which means "on the grass" in the local language, refers to a judicial process that was used traditionally to resolve intra-community disputes. The gacaca initiative was created by the government and implemented in 2002 after the usual courts had difficulty going through the cases at a sufficient speed. The rate was such that it would have taken 100 years to hear all the cases of the 120,000 prisoners being held. These trials look more like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission than anything else, if any of you familiar with that. The goals of the Gacaca Courts are as follows:

To disclose the truth on the genocide events;

To speed up genocide trials;

To eradicate the culture of impunity;

To reconcile and strengthen unity among Rwandans;

To prove the Rwandan Society's capacity to solve its own problems.

Corruption is a major problem with this system, and also that many of the judges themselves have been accused of perpetrating crimes during the genocide. And from what I witnessed, forgiveness seems to be a forced process, and not genuine. A woman who had called the Interhamwe to kill a group of Tutsi women in the neighborhood was released the day I was there. One of the women who was in this group who had survived, testified against her and then was basically forced to forgive her by the judge after she was given a forced apology. It was like watching a teacher work out an argument with stubborn 5 year olds; it was frightening to think that these women would leave this room and go back to being neighbors.

Yet, there are benefits. As I mentioned earlier, the idea that a loved one is buried somewhere in an unmarked grave is a cause for a lot of people's trauma, and the opportunity to bury them properly is a huge step in the healing process. If nothing else, the trials have been very successful in bringing out the truth and there are still unmarked graves being uncovered today based on testimony from Gacaca trials. Families are so grateful for this information that I think it may outweigh the problems of the system in the minds of most Rwandans. And it gives them hope of closure.

It is Passover, the time when we celebrate our own freedom, but also a time when we remember that so many others are not free. And it is also April- the month the genocide started in Rwanda. Times are especially hard during this month for Rwandans, as I was reminded by a Rwandan friend last week, who told me it would soon be April and time for them to mourn for their families. April is also the month when we remember the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust and Darfur. And on that note, I would just like to ask you to please remember the people of Darfur who are suffering as we speak. Time is running out, and there is no excuse for inaction and indifference. Clinton has said that if more people had made noise about what was going on in Rwanda, he would have done something. We cannot be silent anymore. One person is dying every 5 minutes in Darfur. Just during the time that I have been speaking to you, 4 people have died.

Thank you.

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