More on Rwanda

I actually posted my thoughts on the Rwanda genocide on the Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Forum and several travellers actually replied to my post. It provides a deeper insight into what exactly was the cause and bits of Rwanda’s history. Very useful info and I’ve certainly gained much knowledge from the information provided. Many of the travellers are actually ‘veterans’ in the area of travel to Africa and some actually are scholars in the area of African studies. Below are some snippets of what some of the travellers wrote and hope they will give you a better understanding of the whole situation then.

Quoted from me:
"How could human beings be so cruel to one another? Especially when everyone are fellow men in the same country? Is it due to a lack of education, I often wonder?"

From one responder:
"Wonderful you got interested in what happened in Rwanda due to the film, but know that the reasons behind the whole thing are hugely complicated and not to be explained by a 'bunch of savages' that weren't educated. Rwandese are a very, very proud people with a high level of education, especially up to the runup to the genocide. A film is always a film (especially when it's hollywood) and I encourage you to read books, talk to Rwandese, visit Rwanda, talk to ex-soldiers etc when you want to try to grasp more of how this happened. Tutsis and Hutus were living in harmony before the Belgians since they both had their specialities. Because Tutsis look wore 'western and refined' they were indeed put on a piedestal by the Belgians. Only after the Belgians left, the French promoted the Hutus in power...in my eyes the whole thing was almost a nasty secret war between the French and the Belgians if you read some books. Also when you know that the massacre was being extremely carefully prepared (eg census were taken in schools of Tutsis months in advance, so all the dead-lists were ready for when the 'the signal' came; the Interahaiwe was a dedicated and highly effective deadsquad being hyped up with the task of infiltrating and brainwashing, months in advance by the Hutu government; there was radio Milles Colines that slowly started preparing the masses, run by a Belgian I believe....). Also realize that some other countries were also hardcore involved; eg Uganda...Kilama helped Museveni to overthrow Obote, with the idea that Museveni would help overthrow the Hutus later on; Museveni however made a 180 and was trying to kick out the Tusti refugees out of Uganda back into Rwanda after he came into power - things that all added to the momentum. Finally, know that even saying it was Tutsis versus Hutus is very untrue; many moderate Hutus were also killed and eyed for when the madness began."

From another responder:
“With one or two exceptions, eg Ethopia, most of the countries in Africa were created and imposed on Africans by European imperialist powers in the 19th century. So just because people ended up in the same country may have been just luck. They may have hated their neighbours for centuries, then found themselves under the one government.About 10,000 separate clans/tribes/kingdoms were condensed into about 50 states.�

Yet another responder:
“Nigeria is a perfect example of this. Nearly 200 different tribes exist there alone. Look at countries like Liberia which are the product of America forcing slaves to return to an Africa they may not necessarily have even been born in. This in combination with the West's thirst for shiny stones makes Liberia a pretty f*cked up place really. Before the carving up of Africa tribes certainly had their own boundaries (roughly speaking) and certainly might not have got along with one another in some cases....but it worked in significantly better harmony than today’s jigsaw of European created borders.�

“I agree with #1's sentiments, and also a little with #3's contrary opinion. It is true that one of the reasons the West pulled out and left Rwanda to annihilate itself, was because a bunch of Belgian UN workers were kidnapped and killed. It was felt that the whole situation had reached a state of irreversible chaos, and that there was nothing to be done but pull out.This is interesting considering the amount of people who are being kidnapped and beheaded in iraq every week. BUT...as #2 said, there is plenty of oil in Iraq to be sacrificing a few hundred truck drivers' heads for."

"let's not forget that most of the torture methods used by the Hutus and by the likes of Mengistu, Mobutu and Idi Amin etc. werelearnt from the colonialists. The Belgians had a true passion for cutting off hands in Congo. And the Portuguese were quite fond of it in Angola as well.The west is really to blame for all of Africa's problems. I don't know how anyone can argue with that.�

There’s actually quite a lot more details posted by other travelers, but I shall just paste these here. Anyone interested to know more can just drop me an email and I can send u the webpage that I saved. There's a BBC article that is recommended reading as there's links to other information: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4211621.stm