March 30, 2004

• Great link, BBF. I recommend the work of the American artist Vivian Bower, who has devoted an immense effort in bearing witness to the Rwanda Genocide through her 'Rwanda Series'. It's a complete conundrum that these massacres and genocidal catastrophes have continued throughout the 20th & 21st centuries: Armenian genocide, Holocaust, Cambodian killing fields, Balkan conflicts, African conflicts...and I doubt we have witnessed the last.
• Great Link. Recently I saw Romeo Dallaire speaking here at school about his experiences in Rawanda, based upon his book. It was really a moving talk that really showed out a lot of intricate details of life in Rwanda and the UN mission there. I too never fully realized the scope of what went on there until I attended.
• I'm sorry, I couldn't even finish that article. As I now have children, accounts like this affect me far more than I ever could have imagined. It is horrific events like this that make me wonder by what guidelines do we make the decision to interfere? At the time this was happening I was wondering the same thing. Why weren't we trying to stop this? If I remember correctly, it seemed that we were busy interfering with something that was likely bringing in money or more manuevering power, etc... I have reached the point (actually some time ago), where I always assume there is an ulterior motive to anything we do when giving a 'helping hand'. When I say 'we' I mean the U.S. government.
• Darshon: I'm sorry, I couldn't even finish that article. I couldn't even start the article. I read some first-person accounts in Harper's from perpetrators, and they were so horrifying, I can't look at anything about Rwanda possibly ever again. The perpetrators didn't come off as evil at all, just regular people in a horrible situation. One was from a mother who killed her own children with rat poison at the insistance of her neighbors (the kids were mixed race). The neighbors said if she didn't do it they would both kill her and the kids, so she did it. Needless to say, she now wishes she was dead. I periodically think about that account out of the blue, and it upsets me so much I have to consiously try to turn my attention to other things in order to keep functioning for the rest of the day.
• help. I read this article about 1/2 hour ago and I am just reeling. I have done nothing productive since. and I knew the massacre was bad when it was happening 10 years ago, I just had no idea how bad. I cannot even process this. I hate to have my fatalistic-gloom perspective on human cultures re-inforced.
• Wonderful link-thank you. I remember listening to the accounts of this on NPR ten years ago and wondering why I wasn't hearing about it from any other news source. Reading it today, ten years later, I still have the same sense that this must be unreal-surely if something like this had actually happened we would have done something to stop it. Right? What happened (is happening) is awful and tragic almost beyond comprehension, and yet I'm always confronted with blank expressions when I mention this as an example of modern genocide.
• I wish I could help, Medusa, but I can't. Nobody can. There's nothing to be done. I once considered studying this stuff, but decided not to because I couldn't handle the nightmares. Reading about atrocities is traumatic. Not as traumatic as experiencing them, of course, but you woudn't be human if it didn't shake you up some. Nonetheless, being aware of this sort of thing is one of your vital responsiblities as a human being. So read, get traumatised, and reflect on what it did to you and what it meant to you. I'd like to take this oportunity, though, to raise a few points: a) keep in mind that whatever you just read was the tame stuff. I know it's hard to beleive, but they censor what they show to the public. There's no need for you to see the really disturbing stuff, so they don't show it. Take some time to thank an atrocities researcher, a peace keeper or an aid worker, all of whom have the unenviable task of running -towards- these catastrophes. b) Keep in mind that the Rwandan genocide was entirely preventable. UN peace keepers on the ground knew precicely what was going to happen, but the world didn't act because key leaders didn't want to think such a thing was possible. There will come, again, a time in which we grow complacent, and we think that these things belong in the past and that we are somehow different and better than once we were. Learn from history. c) Keep in mind that Rwanda was unusual in its scale, but not in its ferocity. Right at the moment, in western Congo, in norther Uganda, little Rwanadas are playing out while the world does absolutly nothing. Equally heart-rending, the terrible AIDS plague is scourging entire generations while we do next to nothing. Get angry. d) Keep in mind that Rwanda was a human event. All those caught up in that terrible time were human beings acting in human ways, and that means that it cannot be beyond our comprehension. There are people who spend their entire professional lives trying to understand how and why these kinds of things happeen. If they are successful, then we will be able to take better steps to catch mass murders before they can reach this kind of horrible scale. However, research into the history of war and killing is under attack from two sides. On the one side, partisans from newer areas in the humanities think that this kind of research is old fassioned, dirty and imorral. On the other hand, there are those who would rather see funding to the humanities in general clawed back in favour of 'useful' research in the service of short term monitary gain. These are events of great human cruelty. But our human ability to reason and understand, our human capacity for curiosity and for horror, these precious human gifts can save us. Support research into the humanities, and into the history of human violence.
• I hate to have my fatalistic-gloom perspective on human cultures re-inforced. Ditto. The part about Rwanda's current Tutsi president employing fascist tactics to keep the nation from Hell By The People... President Kagame apparently doesn't think people can be trusted with political power; I hate that I can't fault him in this case. Democracy is as horrible as the humans practicing it. <--- attempts to erase World on Fire from memory
• President Kagame apparently doesn't think people can be trusted with political power; I hate that I can't fault him in this case. I don't know... The Rwanda genocide was characterised by strong top-down leadership. These things almost always are. It is, or at least it was before the massacres, a minutely organised society, with government systems going right down to the street level. Only by exploiting this system was such mass scale coordinated killing possible.
• An informative and well-written article about a horror I did not know enough about.
• There are no less than 7 articles today in the New York Times about what's going on in the Sudan -- namely warfare, murder, and genocide, African business as usual. Seems like the rest of the world, including the U.N., just can't be bothered doing anything to help what has become a profoundly Lost Continent. 'Civilization' has written them off, and no leader, no country, no indignant outcry has forced the wortld to get involved or even pay much attention.
• A BBC take on one aspect of this: Rwandan's fleeing the Catholic Church many officials of which were involved in the massacres.
• Oh. A misplaced apostophe. I die of shame. *expires*
• Rwanda remembers its dead. Thousands of Rwandans crowded into Kigali's packed national stadium today at the start of a week of mourning for the 800,000 people killed in the genocide that started 10 years ago to the day. A black banner across the presidential podium in the stadium bore the plea in French and English, "Never Again, Plus Jamais." Rwanda: 100 days of genocide.