- 2 days ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:01This program contains graphic descriptions and imagery of the consequences of war and genocide. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:00:22It took just 100 days.
00:00:25800,000 single individuals murdered to death.
00:00:35Everyone in my mother's family died except me.
00:00:38They took away my friendships.
00:00:42They took all that from me.
00:00:47In a tiny African nation, neighbors killed neighbors.
00:00:51It was done literally by hand.
00:00:54We found ourselves in the middle of it, surrounded with nowhere to go.
00:00:59The authorities instructed us to take machetes, clubs and any other weapons to kill Tutsis.
00:01:10We just killed a brother, someone that we live with. Cut him in pieces for no reason.
00:01:18Today, killers live freely among those they terrorized.
00:01:23When I see these killers, it really, really bothers me.
00:01:28It brings back a rush of terrible memories.
00:01:31And survivors are asked to bury their malice alongside the dead.
00:01:56It is a land of breathtaking beauty.
00:02:01Squeezed into the landscape of Eastern Central Africa, Rwanda is one of the smallest countries on the continent, and also
00:02:09one of the most troubled.
00:02:12In the southern province of Gikangaro, banana groves and earthen dwellings ring the slopes of lush green hills.
00:02:20Nestled into this pastoral setting is the Murrumbi Technical School.
00:02:24In stark contrast to its stunning surroundings, the campus is a grim reminder of a chapter of history almost impossible
00:02:32to comprehend.
00:02:34In April 1994, more than 30,000 men, women and children sought refuge at the school.
00:02:49Many are still here.
00:02:52Many are still here.
00:03:12Almost all who fled to the school were viciously killed.
00:03:18Today, their corpses lie in classrooms, frozen in the twisted agony of their violent deaths.
00:03:26Preserved as a graphic memorial to a savage atrocity.
00:03:31It was chaotic and loud and bullets were flying.
00:03:35If anyone attempted to run away, the entire arm way would cut them with a machete.
00:03:42Armed with only sticks and stones, Emmanuel Muranguera and other men battled the attackers.
00:03:50His family hid in a classroom.
00:03:54They were in there, in that building.
00:03:57We were defending ourselves.
00:04:00And I saw the killers go in and throw a grenade.
00:04:03I saw it.
00:04:05I was shot here in the head.
00:04:08They were bringing bodies out and I didn't know what was happening.
00:04:12I fell in a pile of bodies over there.
00:04:18Emmanuel survived.
00:04:20His family did not.
00:04:24Please refrain from asking me about my wife and children.
00:04:29It is difficult.
00:04:33The massacre was ruthlessly efficient.
00:04:36In just a few days, 30,000 battered corpses were stripped of their clothes and bulldozed into mass graves.
00:04:47In Rwanda, incidents like the Murambi massacre were not uncommon.
00:04:54In 1994, this small country was awash in blood.
00:04:59An estimated 75% of Rwanda's Tutsi minority population was slaughtered in a systematic genocide.
00:05:06The architects, extremists in the majority Hutu-controlled government.
00:05:12In just 100 days, more than 800,000 people were killed.
00:05:17A staggering average of 333 murders per hour.
00:05:22Five per minute.
00:05:24If you think about what happened in Cambodia, you think about what happened under the Third Reich, these things took
00:05:29years.
00:05:29In Rwanda, it was unbelievably fast.
00:05:32The killing was on an industrial scale.
00:05:35But the carnage was not inflicted in industrial fashion.
00:05:39Unlike other genocides, ordinary citizens were enlisted as executioners.
00:05:53So much of the killing was done by people who knew each other well.
00:05:57It was done literally by hand, to a large degree.
00:06:01And it was done by priests of their flocks and doctors in the hospitals and school teachers of their students
00:06:07and neighbor against neighbor.
00:06:10We were going to shoot them and finish them off.
00:06:13They said, if any of them escape, we will kill you.
00:06:17That's when I killed a young boy.
00:06:19In addition to Tutsi casualties, at least 50,000 politically moderate Hutus, possibly many more who opposed the extremist agenda,
00:06:28also perished.
00:06:30Of those that survived, tens of thousands were maimed.
00:06:34Women and children were raped.
00:06:36More than 100,000 were orphaned.
00:06:39All suffered emotional scars.
00:06:42Rwandans have a kind of internal hauntedness.
00:06:46Rwandans are not emotive in the way that we are.
00:06:49That's just cultural.
00:06:50Here, we would kind of expect and to some extent want to see somebody cry to kind of know that
00:06:54they were feeling it in a way that we could relate to and then we could also pat them on
00:06:57the back.
00:06:57A Rwandan would just say something very quietly.
00:07:04Those who died, my father, my two brothers, and a few other young men from my father's side, including my
00:07:15dad, that makes 12.
00:07:16So those who died, oh, plus there were six other little children.
00:07:24It literally defies our capacity for comprehending 800,000 single individuals murdered to death, sometimes with the most primitive instruments.
00:07:37Each one of those 800,000 has a story.
00:07:43The stories of loved ones killed still haunt survivors.
00:07:47They battle demons never explained by numbers.
00:07:53Everyone in my mother's family died except me.
00:07:57They took away the education that my grandparents were going to give me.
00:08:04They took away my friendships.
00:08:07They destroyed my property.
00:08:10They took all that away from me.
00:08:18They just wanted to know something.
00:08:19They just wanted to know how to live.
00:08:19They were so inclined.
00:08:20They still wanted to know how to live.
00:08:21They just wanted to know how to live in their lives, so how to live in their lives.
00:08:22The fact that they did want to live here, you know,
00:08:29And they did.
00:08:30What did they kind of live here?
00:08:33It was a restaurant that they left.
00:08:39They tried to live by the way they do.
00:08:43My grandmother told us to be quiet and lay down.
00:08:49I lay down between a lot of grown-ups.
00:08:52But when I looked up, I saw someone hit my younger sister with a bat upside her head.
00:08:58She fell down and blood started coming out of her mouth.
00:09:02One person opened my grandmother's mouth and put a whole brick between her teeth.
00:09:07She had that brick in her mouth when she died.
00:09:12Terrified, Janet hid under her grandmother's corpse.
00:09:17All the screaming slowly quieted down, and the only voices I was now hearing were those of the killers.
00:09:26One of them, who was a woman, said to the others,
00:09:31I think that little thing is still alive.
00:09:37I could see what they were doing, and a man said,
00:09:41let me cut her with a machete to see if she is dead.
00:09:43If she moves, I'll know she is alive.
00:09:47All of a sudden, I felt something hit me hard on the back of my neck.
00:09:54The scar on Janet's neck is fading.
00:09:57The scar on her soul remains.
00:10:00Recently, Janet learned that the Hutu father who abandoned her is now in prison,
00:10:05accused of genocide crimes.
00:10:07He's joined there by thousands of other suspected genocide criminals.
00:10:13Today, the current government calls for reconciliation.
00:10:17They urge victims and perpetrators to live together,
00:10:20no longer as Tutsis and Hutus, but as Rwandans.
00:10:24There is a lot at stake in terms of not being able to get together again as a nation.
00:10:33And it's difficult, but we are doing it, and we have to do it.
00:10:38No one knows this better than Janet.
00:10:40Now 20 years old, she's finally found the courage to confront her father.
00:10:45What I want is for him to explain to me why he is in jail
00:10:49and tell me why he did what he did.
00:10:51As Janet travels to a prison in southern Rwanda,
00:10:54she wonders how she will react upon seeing her father.
00:10:58Should she lash out in anger or forgive him?
00:11:04The same dilemma haunts an entire nation.
00:11:22To fully comprehend the divisions that led to the unthinkable,
00:11:25one must understand the time Rwandans call before.
00:11:31Several centuries ago, three groups came to inhabit what is today Rwanda.
00:11:36The Twa Pygmies would eventually make up just 1% of the population.
00:11:41The majority Hutu would come to outnumber the Tutsi almost 8 to 1.
00:11:45Hutus and Tutsis were defined mostly by class and clan, not by ethnicity.
00:11:50Generally Hutus were peasant cultivators, Tutsis were cattle owners.
00:11:56Wealth gained from cattle ownership helped propel Tutsis into political power.
00:12:01But in pre-colonial Rwanda, class lines were blurred.
00:12:05You're talking of a population where the vast majority
00:12:08has Hutu and Tutsi parentage in their background.
00:12:13Anybody who was a Hutu who became prosperous enough
00:12:17could ritually shed their status of being Hutu and become a Tutsi.
00:12:22So Tutsi was a porous identity.
00:12:24Europeans who ventured to the African continent in the 19th century
00:12:28further clouded identification lines.
00:12:30After an expedition to Rwanda in the late 1800s,
00:12:34explorer John Hanning-Speak first hypothesized about Tutsi superiority.
00:12:38This is actually very standard 19th century Victorian racism.
00:12:44He describes it as the flat-nosed, flab-mouthed Negro
00:12:47whom he compares to the baboon and is utterly uneducable and quite a disgrace.
00:12:53But then he says, but amongst them is this other group
00:12:55who are in every way superior.
00:12:58In 1919, under a League of Nations mandate,
00:13:01Rwanda became a protectorate of Belgium.
00:13:04The Belgians institutionalized Catholicism, the French language,
00:13:08and furthered the faulty racial science.
00:13:11They brought in the usual tools of colonization.
00:13:13They brought in some guns and they brought in some administrators,
00:13:15but they also brought in things like calipers
00:13:18in order to measure the cranial capacity
00:13:20to determine what's a true Hutu, what's a true Tutsi.
00:13:24They actually had something called the nasal index
00:13:26by which they measured the size and shape of people's noses
00:13:29to determine who was racially superior and racially inferior.
00:13:33This is Third Reich stuff.
00:13:35And this was the foundational stuff of Rwanda.
00:13:38Belgian missionaries and Tutsi leaders collaborated
00:13:41to cement notions of a Tutsi aristocracy.
00:13:44Hutus were denied government positions, higher education,
00:13:48and were subject to forced labor.
00:13:50An ethnic divide became institutionalized.
00:13:53They are defined as blood types, in a sense.
00:13:56They would relate more or less as would white and black in South Africa
00:14:00or in the American South.
00:14:02By the late 1930s, any confusion about ethnic identity was eradicated.
00:14:08Every Rwandan would be given an identity card which said your name
00:14:12and then it also said your ethnicity.
00:14:15And these cards became like apartheid ID cards.
00:14:18They became a tool of social control.
00:14:20This was the apparatus of the colonial state.
00:14:22It was the apparatus of oppression of Hutu.
00:14:24By the 1950s, the Tutsi elite were clamoring for an independent Rwanda,
00:14:29but the Hutu's simmering resentment toward the Tutsi establishment
00:14:32and the Belgians who supported them had reached a boiling point.
00:14:36It was almost a civil rights movement at that point,
00:14:38and it quickly became a revolutionary movement
00:14:41that identified Tutsis and colonialism as two wrongs to be gotten rid of simultaneously.
00:14:47In 1959 and 1960, social tension exploded into social revolution.
00:14:53Elections organized by the Belgians resulted in the majority Hutus winning by landslide margins.
00:14:59A violent backlash against the Tutsis ensued.
00:15:02It was the flipping on its head of an unjust system.
00:15:05The oppressed became the oppressor, and in 1959, 1960,
00:15:10as this revolution took place, as violence flared,
00:15:14you saw the first massacres of what many people consider to be the genocidal order.
00:15:20Almost immediately, Tutsis began to flee the country.
00:15:24Then, in 1962, Belgium granted Hutu-controlled Rwanda its independence.
00:15:29The truly poisonous institutional legacy of the colonial state
00:15:33was that Hutu and Tutsi were two different races.
00:15:37The real tragedy was that the Rwandan revolution failed to transcend this legacy.
00:15:43The Tutsis, once the ruling aristocracy, now became the persecuted minority.
00:15:50At the time, things were bad.
00:15:53We were constantly harassed.
00:15:55As farmers, we didn't know if we'd be around to see the next harvest.
00:16:00There was a lot of unpredictability then.
00:16:03This was a very dangerous time.
00:16:06Over the course of the next decade, more than 20,000 Tutsis were killed.
00:16:11The number of Tutsis who fled to neighboring countries swelled.
00:16:14In 1973, Hutu army commander, Juvenal Habyarimana, took power in a bloodless coup.
00:16:22The new president offered security to Tutsis still in country,
00:16:26but failed to effectively respond to the trouble brewing across Rwanda's borders.
00:16:31The problem the Second Republic could not solve,
00:16:33and did not even wish to address,
00:16:37and thought would go away in ostrich-like fashion,
00:16:41was the problem of the Tutsis exiles.
00:16:44But Tutsi exiles would not go away.
00:16:47In Uganda, they formed a rebel army soon to be known as the RPF,
00:16:51the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
00:16:54One of the leaders was Paul Kagame,
00:16:56who would later become Rwanda's president.
00:16:59But in the 1980s, he had only one concern.
00:17:02It came to a point where we could no longer continue being stateless,
00:17:07and we could not be stateless forever.
00:17:08The RPF prepared for a day they might win the right of return for Tutsi refugees,
00:17:14by force if necessary.
00:17:17When that day came, the Hutu government would respond with a precisely defined plan of extermination,
00:17:23what extremists called the final solution to the Tutsi problem.
00:17:32When President Habiyarimana took control of Rwanda in 1973,
00:17:37wide-scale attacks against Tutsis stopped.
00:17:40The president promised security to Tutsis,
00:17:42and granted the minority population proportional participation in social and political institutions.
00:17:48The country experienced relative calm and prosperity,
00:17:52but long-standing resentments lingered.
00:17:57In schools, seeds of division were planted in the impressionable minds of both Hutu and Tutsi children.
00:18:05My children, who were a little older and in high school,
00:18:11were being taught that there were differences between Hutus and Tutsis.
00:18:17It would often be told,
00:18:20Hutus please stand, or Tutsis please stand.
00:18:24A child would go home knowing for sure they were Hutu or Tutsi.
00:18:29The teaching of Hutu started back in 1959.
00:18:38When you teach a primary school child,
00:18:41you teach him to Hutu,
00:18:4317 years, 20 years later,
00:18:45you cannot change,
00:18:46because the brain is like a computer.
00:18:50If you put a virus, then you change completely.
00:18:53By the 1980s, Rwanda was changing.
00:18:56Economic crisis and famine devastated the country.
00:19:00Citing overpopulation,
00:19:02President Habyarimana locked Rwanda's borders to exiled Tutsis wanting to return home,
00:19:07effectively leaving an estimated 700,000 refugees in neighboring countries.
00:19:12In 1986,
00:19:13Uganda granted Tutsis in its country citizenship,
00:19:16but after a public outcry revoked it four years later.
00:19:21Stateless,
00:19:22the Tutsi rebel army,
00:19:24the RPF,
00:19:25decided to fight their way back home.
00:19:27On October 1st, 1990,
00:19:30they invaded Rwanda.
00:19:35Civil war engulfed the tiny nation.
00:19:38The RPF was accused of targeting innocent Hutu civilians,
00:19:42but fighting was brutal on both sides.
00:19:44President Habyarimana's support evaporated.
00:19:48You'd have political divisions within the large Hutu majority.
00:19:52You'd have different parties or different factions.
00:19:53And whenever that happened,
00:19:55whoever was in power would try to consolidate the Hutu political center
00:19:59around the idea of a common enemy.
00:20:01And sure enough, conveniently,
00:20:03the RPF attacks at that point,
00:20:04and the thing actually starts to have a kind of narrative logic to it.
00:20:08The RPF attacks increased Hutu anger toward Tutsi civilians.
00:20:12The common enemy soon was considered to be not just the invading army,
00:20:16but every Tutsi man,
00:20:18woman,
00:20:19and child
00:20:20still in Rwanda.
00:20:22I think in the absence of civil war,
00:20:25I doubt
00:20:25if there could have been a genocide in Rwanda.
00:20:28Most genocides have been
00:20:31rationalized,
00:20:32mobilized,
00:20:34organized,
00:20:35explained
00:20:36as preemptive actions.
00:20:39Do to them
00:20:40what they will do to you
00:20:42before they do it to you.
00:20:44A common philosophy emerged
00:20:46from extremist political factions.
00:20:49Hutu power
00:20:49espoused a virulent Hutu supremacist philosophy.
00:20:53Under the guise of self-defense,
00:20:55many parties formed armed youth wings,
00:20:57some like the Interahamwe,
00:20:59translated as those who attacked together,
00:21:02received training from the government
00:21:04and French military advisors.
00:21:07A systematic campaign of hate rhetoric
00:21:09engulfed Rwanda.
00:21:11Their worst fears could be played upon,
00:21:14and indeed were played upon,
00:21:16by the leadership of Hutu power.
00:21:18Purveyors of fear abounded.
00:21:22Newspapers mocked Tutsis
00:21:24in malicious cartoons.
00:21:33In 1990,
00:21:35the overtly racist newspaper Kangura
00:21:37published the Hutu Ten Commandments,
00:21:40a manifesto
00:21:42defining rules of conduct
00:21:43between Hutus and Tutsis.
00:21:45The friends of Tutsu,
00:21:46employ the Tutsu woman,
00:21:48shall be considered a traitor.
00:21:50The Hutu should stop
00:21:51having mercy on the Tutsi.
00:21:55Hate sermons turned
00:21:56to thinly veiled threats.
00:21:58In 1992,
00:21:59Leon Mugacera,
00:22:00a high-ranking party official,
00:22:02delivered an inflammatory warning
00:22:04to Tutsis.
00:22:15Leon basically said
00:22:17the Tutsis were an impurity.
00:22:19They had come from elsewhere.
00:22:20They had come from Ethiopia.
00:22:22And they must go back to Ethiopia.
00:22:25And they must go back to Ethiopia
00:22:27not as living Tutsi,
00:22:29but as dead Tutsi.
00:22:36Extremists supported RTLM radio
00:22:38became the voice of vitriolic hate.
00:22:41The enemy was dehumanized,
00:22:43called snakes and cockroaches.
00:22:54The radio station
00:22:55was a brilliant instrument
00:22:57of propaganda.
00:22:59First thing they did
00:23:00is they played rock music
00:23:02and good music
00:23:03that enticed people
00:23:05to listen to it.
00:23:07The voice of the radio
00:23:09was nearly the voice of God,
00:23:10because that was the only means
00:23:12of communications
00:23:13that they had.
00:23:14It was a very interactive radio.
00:23:16People used to call them,
00:23:19talk with them.
00:23:20You know,
00:23:20they used to come,
00:23:21and it was direct, you know.
00:23:23It was always like improvisation.
00:23:31Tutsi men, women, and children
00:23:33were subjected
00:23:34to daily insults and threats.
00:23:36Soon,
00:23:36the Interahamwe militia
00:23:38began conducting
00:23:38military exercises openly.
00:23:40The warning signs
00:23:42could not have been clearer.
00:23:46You have to understand,
00:23:47the Interahamwe
00:23:48would train and prepare
00:23:50for what they were about
00:23:51to carry out.
00:23:53Their cars or trucks
00:23:54would go by
00:23:55while they chanted,
00:23:57elimination.
00:24:01But around the world,
00:24:03the turbulence in Rwanda
00:24:04had not gone unnoticed.
00:24:05In August of 1993,
00:24:08President Habiyarimana
00:24:09relented to pressure
00:24:10from his international allies
00:24:12and signed
00:24:12the Arusha Accords,
00:24:14a peace treaty
00:24:15that promised power sharing
00:24:16with Tutsis.
00:24:17As part of the agreement,
00:24:19the United Nations
00:24:19agreed to send
00:24:20a small peacekeeping force
00:24:21led by Lieutenant General
00:24:23Romeo Dallaire.
00:24:25What they required
00:24:26was a neutral
00:24:27international force,
00:24:29which included political
00:24:31and humanitarian components,
00:24:32of course,
00:24:33to be referee.
00:24:37But as UN peacekeepers
00:24:39deployed,
00:24:40Hutu power extremists
00:24:41developed a final solution
00:24:43to the Tutsi problem.
00:24:45In addition to utilizing
00:24:46government soldiers
00:24:47and militias,
00:24:48they devised plans
00:24:49to mobilize
00:24:50Hutu citizens,
00:24:52civilians who could attack
00:24:53their Tutsi neighbors
00:24:54in local villages
00:24:55and towns.
00:24:56Fear was skillfully exploited.
00:24:59And in a history
00:25:00like that of Rwanda,
00:25:01where victim and perpetrator
00:25:03had traded places,
00:25:04where the Hutu
00:25:06had living memories
00:25:07of having been
00:25:08victims of Tutsi power,
00:25:11it was not very difficult
00:25:14to convince them of that
00:25:16in the context
00:25:17of a civil war.
00:25:19Genocide was talked about.
00:25:20There were stories.
00:25:23There were different sources
00:25:25of information
00:25:25giving very clear picture
00:25:29of what was going to happen.
00:25:30and there was clear information
00:25:32of how the government
00:25:33was preparing the genocide.
00:25:36By the end of 1993,
00:25:38unprecedented quantities
00:25:40of machetes and munitions
00:25:41had been imported.
00:25:45In local communities,
00:25:46hit lists of Tutsis
00:25:48and Hutu moderates
00:25:49were prepared.
00:25:51My grandfather once
00:25:53came across a list
00:25:54of all the Tutsis
00:25:55who are going to be executed
00:25:56in the near future.
00:25:57The first name on the list
00:25:59was the minister's family,
00:26:00and my grandfather's name
00:26:02appeared as number two.
00:26:06On January 10th, 1994,
00:26:09preparation for genocide
00:26:10was in its final stages.
00:26:12An informant tipped off
00:26:14the commander
00:26:14of the UN peacekeeping force
00:26:16that Hutu extremists
00:26:17were plotting
00:26:17large-scale massacres.
00:26:19He provided us
00:26:20with details on arms caches,
00:26:24where they were
00:26:25and what they were,
00:26:26how they were distributed,
00:26:29details on the hardliners,
00:26:32who they were,
00:26:33what were their planning.
00:26:35He provided us
00:26:37with concepts of operations
00:26:39that they had
00:26:40where they could kill
00:26:401,000 Tutsis in 20 minutes.
00:26:43General Romeo Dallaire
00:26:45immediately faxed
00:26:46the United Nations,
00:26:47informing them
00:26:48he planned to intervene
00:26:49and raid the arms caches.
00:26:51The next day,
00:26:53Kofi Annan,
00:26:53then head of UN peacekeeping,
00:26:55ordered Dallaire
00:26:56to suspend his operation.
00:26:58New York responded
00:26:59by telling me
00:27:00that that was way beyond
00:27:01my classic mandate,
00:27:02that I did not have
00:27:03authority to do it.
00:27:04The only use of force
00:27:06that you're allowed
00:27:07is in self-defense.
00:27:10The decision to stay
00:27:11within the strict mandate
00:27:13would be costly.
00:27:16On the night of April 6, 1994,
00:27:19a plane carrying
00:27:20President Habyarimana
00:27:21and the President of Burundi
00:27:23was shot down
00:27:23on its approach
00:27:24to Rwanda's Kigali Airport.
00:27:28The next morning,
00:27:30RTLM radio accused
00:27:31the RPF
00:27:32of killing the President,
00:27:33a charge they deny
00:27:34to this day.
00:27:35No matter who was to blame,
00:27:37Hutu power leaders
00:27:38exploited the assassination.
00:27:40The plane crash
00:27:42was Wednesday night
00:27:42and on the next day
00:27:44in the morning,
00:27:45we received another list
00:27:46of all the people
00:27:47who were going to be killed
00:27:48and we were on it.
00:27:51Implementation
00:27:51of the final solution
00:27:52was at hand.
00:28:06In 1994,
00:28:08approximately 1 million Tutsis
00:28:09and 7 million Hutus
00:28:10lived in Rwanda.
00:28:12On the morning of April 7,
00:28:14they awoke to alarming news.
00:28:19An old man we knew
00:28:20came to tell us
00:28:22very early in the morning.
00:28:24He proceeded to tell us
00:28:26that this time
00:28:27you are finished.
00:28:29Habyarimana is dead.
00:28:31The President's plane
00:28:32had been shot down.
00:28:34Radio reports
00:28:35blamed the RPF.
00:28:38They announced
00:28:39we should search
00:28:39for all RPF members
00:28:41from the baby
00:28:41to the oldest.
00:28:42Don't leave anyone alive.
00:28:44They killed our leader.
00:28:45We have to kill
00:28:46all of them.
00:28:49In the capital of Kigali,
00:28:51the well-prepared plan
00:28:52of extermination
00:28:52was launched.
00:28:54Moderate Hutus
00:28:55were targeted first.
00:28:58Within hours,
00:29:00government soldiers
00:29:00gunned down
00:29:01Prime Minister
00:29:02Agatheya Wiliyamana.
00:29:03Their agenda
00:29:04was that
00:29:05all political voices
00:29:06that represented
00:29:07the middle ground
00:29:08must be wiped out.
00:29:09And they proceeded
00:29:10very methodically.
00:29:15Ten Belgian peacekeepers
00:29:17sent to protect
00:29:18the Prime Minister
00:29:18were also killed.
00:29:20Their bodies
00:29:21were mutilated.
00:29:24RTLM Radio
00:29:25announced that
00:29:25Colonel Theoneste Bagasora,
00:29:27one of the alleged
00:29:28architects of the genocide,
00:29:30had taken control.
00:29:31They were saying
00:29:32that he's now
00:29:33a strong man,
00:29:34not like that lady.
00:29:35They just killed
00:29:36the Prime Minister
00:29:37and saying that
00:29:38ah, we don't know
00:29:39where she is
00:29:40and laughing.
00:29:41Hutu citizens
00:29:42were urged
00:29:42to join the battle.
00:29:48After we heard
00:29:50that the plane
00:29:50had crashed,
00:29:51they were saying
00:29:52that this
00:29:53confirms everything.
00:29:54They have killed
00:29:55the president.
00:29:56It was time
00:29:57to act
00:29:58and protect ourselves
00:29:59or else
00:30:00they would kill us too.
00:30:02Machetes and firearms
00:30:04were distributed
00:30:04to Hutu citizens.
00:30:18As soon as
00:30:19we walked out
00:30:19of the house,
00:30:20we saw them
00:30:21pick up weapons
00:30:22and they completely
00:30:23destroyed our house,
00:30:24breaking doors,
00:30:25breaking glass
00:30:26so they could
00:30:27get in and steal.
00:30:29Thousands
00:30:30of terror-stricken
00:30:31Tutsis attempted
00:30:32to flee the capital
00:30:33but were trapped.
00:30:34They set up
00:30:34these rule blocks,
00:30:35sometimes 100 meters apart.
00:30:37And the roadblocks
00:30:39were manned
00:30:39by the militia,
00:30:41some military
00:30:41and general population
00:30:43who were either
00:30:44joining in
00:30:45because a lot of youth
00:30:47were disenfranchised
00:30:48and joined in the fun.
00:30:49There was booze there,
00:30:51there was drugs.
00:30:56We found ourselves
00:30:57in the middle of it,
00:30:58surrounded
00:30:59with nowhere to go.
00:31:01We waited
00:31:02for whatever God
00:31:03had planned for us.
00:31:04Those stopped
00:31:05at roadblocks
00:31:06were ordered
00:31:07to show their
00:31:07identification cards.
00:31:09A colonial tool
00:31:10of oppression
00:31:11was now
00:31:12a Tutsi death sentence.
00:31:16If it was Tutsi,
00:31:18they'd just take
00:31:18them aside
00:31:19and usually
00:31:21didn't kill them
00:31:21outright
00:31:22because machetes
00:31:23is very tiring.
00:31:25So they would
00:31:25hack them enough
00:31:26and throw them
00:31:26into latrines
00:31:27and ditches
00:31:28and let them die there
00:31:29piled up for days.
00:31:33The ever-present
00:31:34voice of RTLM radio
00:31:36fanned the flames.
00:31:46They were congratulating
00:31:47people on the roadblock.
00:31:49They said,
00:31:49ah, that roadblock
00:31:50so-and-so,
00:31:51congratulations,
00:31:51you did a very good job.
00:31:53There was a man,
00:31:54they were indicating
00:31:55where he's or whereabouts
00:31:56who was fleeing.
00:31:57When they caught him,
00:31:59they said,
00:31:59ah, very nice,
00:32:00very nice.
00:32:00We had more news
00:32:01that the job was done.
00:32:05The call to arms
00:32:06spread nationwide.
00:32:08Tutsis were stalked
00:32:09in every corner
00:32:10of the country.
00:32:15That's when
00:32:15the Tutsi hunt began.
00:32:17The authorities
00:32:18instructed us
00:32:19to take machetes,
00:32:20clubs,
00:32:21and any other weapons
00:32:22to kill Tutsis.
00:32:23The enemy of Rwanda
00:32:25is a Tutsi.
00:32:26So we went there
00:32:27and we killed
00:32:28the Tutsis.
00:32:35Tutsis fled their homes
00:32:37and hid in empty buildings,
00:32:39swamps,
00:32:40even latrines.
00:32:42Their abandoned houses
00:32:43were often destroyed.
00:32:44At great risk,
00:32:46some Hutus hid Tutsis
00:32:47in their own homes,
00:32:48but many Tutsis
00:32:49sought sanctuary
00:32:50in numbers.
00:32:55In the village of Interrama,
00:32:57thousands flooded
00:32:58to the grounds
00:32:59of the local
00:32:59Catholic church.
00:33:01Among them
00:33:02was Jean de Dieu Marenzi,
00:33:04nine years old
00:33:05at the time
00:33:05of the genocide.
00:33:07We came to this church
00:33:08every Sunday.
00:33:09It is very sad
00:33:11that the world
00:33:12turned it into
00:33:13what it is today.
00:33:15Anastasia Moukantasale,
00:33:17her husband
00:33:17and four children
00:33:18thought the church
00:33:19would provide protection.
00:33:25Many truly believed
00:33:26that if they went
00:33:27to the church,
00:33:28no one would dare
00:33:29to commit a crime
00:33:30inside God's house.
00:33:34Thousands flocked
00:33:35into the church
00:33:36either for both safety
00:33:38and to pray
00:33:39for what was happening.
00:33:42The Interrahamwe
00:33:43assured Tutsis
00:33:44they would be safe
00:33:45and urged them
00:33:46to gather others
00:33:46at the church.
00:33:48In just a few days,
00:33:49more than 5,000 convened.
00:33:51Once the grounds
00:33:52were filled to capacity,
00:33:54the Interrahamwe
00:33:55and local Hutus
00:33:56attacked.
00:33:59Surrounded,
00:34:00women and children
00:34:01barricaded themselves
00:34:02inside the tiny
00:34:03church buildings.
00:34:04Men who tried
00:34:05to fight back
00:34:06with stones
00:34:06were easily overwhelmed.
00:34:08The attackers
00:34:09lobbed grenades
00:34:10inside the church.
00:34:11As Tutsis raced
00:34:13from the building,
00:34:14they were slaughtered.
00:34:15It was so chaotic.
00:34:18There were so many
00:34:19doing the cutting
00:34:20and so many
00:34:21being cut.
00:34:22And then someone
00:34:23would make a run
00:34:24for it.
00:34:25As you can see,
00:34:27this place was destroyed
00:34:28mainly by grenades.
00:34:32It is when my husband
00:34:34was killed
00:34:35because he had been
00:34:36one of the men
00:34:37fighting back.
00:34:38He and the other men
00:34:40had sworn that
00:34:41even if they were
00:34:42going to die,
00:34:43they would not die
00:34:44like dogs,
00:34:45that they would die
00:34:46fighting.
00:34:47A grenade was
00:34:48thrown at him.
00:34:49That's where he died.
00:34:52Anastasie and her
00:34:53children hid in the
00:34:54swamps near the church
00:34:55but were detected.
00:35:02When they found us,
00:35:03they were carrying
00:35:04machetes and clubs
00:35:05that had nails
00:35:07sticking out of them
00:35:08and all kinds of tools
00:35:10that they used
00:35:11to stick into my body.
00:35:13They started
00:35:14cutting up my children.
00:35:15Three of them
00:35:16were killed
00:35:17and one managed
00:35:19to hide.
00:35:23They wanted to start
00:35:24beating me.
00:35:25I turned my head
00:35:26expecting a blow
00:35:27that would cut my head
00:35:28off and hopefully
00:35:29I would die
00:35:30in an instant.
00:35:33Instead,
00:35:34they hit me
00:35:34with a sharp machete
00:35:35cutting me
00:35:36at the back
00:35:36of my left ear.
00:35:40That's when
00:35:41you see this,
00:35:42you see this scar?
00:35:44You see this scar
00:35:46behind my ear?
00:35:54They were sticking me
00:35:55with this sharp thing
00:35:56and they shoved it
00:35:57and then stuck me
00:35:59here with it
00:35:59and they kept
00:36:00stabbing and stabbing
00:36:01and sticking it
00:36:03into my body.
00:36:07Eventually,
00:36:07I couldn't even see
00:36:09what he was doing
00:36:10to me.
00:36:16Those who remained
00:36:17inside the church
00:36:18were butchered.
00:36:23Yogacarachara
00:36:29Yogacarachara
00:36:31Yogacarachari
00:36:47Yogacarachari
00:36:54By divine providence, or perhaps sheer luck, Jean survived, but in April 1994, he became
00:37:02an orphan.
00:37:05Someone told me that my father had committed suicide when he believed that I was killed.
00:37:10He had just seen my mom and the baby getting shot.
00:37:14As soon as I found out, I felt like the weight of the world just dropped on me.
00:37:22Horrors like those experienced by Jean and Anastasie were replicated across Rwanda.
00:37:29Two weeks into the genocide, as many as 200,000 had been massacred.
00:37:35The commander of UN peacekeepers pleaded with his superiors to bolster his force.
00:37:39He told them that with just 2,500 more troops, he could stop the slaughter in a few weeks.
00:37:46They were already up to their ears in Yugoslavia and many other missions.
00:37:49And so the last thing they wanted was a shooting mission in Africa.
00:37:55The Somali, without question, cast a pall over any discussion about whether or not we and
00:38:05the UN were overextended.
00:38:07On April 21, the question moved to the UN Security Council, where, in 1994, one of the rotating
00:38:14seats was held by Rwanda.
00:38:17This is a guy representing a genocidal regime, when there's a discussion about what's going
00:38:20on in his country, sitting on the Security Council and being treated in normal diplomatic
00:38:24terms.
00:38:25The Security Council not only denied General Dallaire's request, but cut the peacekeeping
00:38:29force by 90 percent.
00:38:31As they left Rwanda, Belgian peacekeepers shredded their blue United Nations berets, disgusted they
00:38:37were not allowed to stop the slaughter.
00:38:39We get a feeling that many in the international community maybe don't care what happens in some parts
00:38:48of the world.
00:38:49And I think Rwanda is a very good example of that.
00:38:53Emboldened by the lack of intervention, Hutu extremists escalated the bloodbath.
00:38:58Horrific images from inside Rwanda spread across the world.
00:39:07Pressure again mounted on Western governments to take action.
00:39:10Again the response was hollow.
00:39:12On May 17, the UN Security Council voted to send 5,500 troops to Rwanda.
00:39:19The United States stalled the deployment.
00:39:22Sending a UN force into the maelstrom in Rwanda without a sound plan of operations would be
00:39:28folly.
00:39:29If we do not keep commitments in line with capabilities, we will only further undermine
00:39:35UN credibility and support.
00:39:37Due to several disagreements, including arguments over who would pay for the action,
00:39:42the deployment was delayed for months.
00:39:45There was great and growing nervousness, both within the administration and certainly
00:39:49in the Congress, about the extent to which we were involved in all of these local conflicts
00:39:54around the world.
00:39:55But the end result was that there was an unconscionable delay.
00:39:59With no international intervention, more lives would be lost.
00:40:03The immediate future held only unrelenting bloodshed.
00:40:12As the extermination of Rwanda's Tutsi population and moderate Hutus entered its second month,
00:40:17the losses were staggering.
00:40:19By the middle of May, an estimated 500,000 were dead.
00:40:25In response, the West debated the definition of genocide.
00:40:29The US government undertook, for at least two months of the genocide, a kind of genocide jig.
00:40:37You know, it was literally a dance to avoid what became known as the G word.
00:40:41Under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention, if mass killings are defined as genocide,
00:40:48the signatory countries are obligated to intercede.
00:40:50Is it true that you have specific guidance, not to use the word genocide in isolation,
00:40:56but always to preface it with this word to acts of?
00:41:01I have guidance to which I try to use it as best as I can.
00:41:07There are formulations that we are using that we are trying to be consistent in our use of.
00:41:09I have phraseology, which has been carefully examined.
00:41:20It didn't even matter what the spokesperson said, because everybody knew what was going on.
00:41:24But at the crucial time, when there was internal knowledge within the US government,
00:41:28when, you know, US Embassy officials had communicated about the bodies on the road,
00:41:33about the intent of the perpetrators, when you had General Dallaire pleading for troops,
00:41:37for the first two, three, four weeks of the genocide,
00:41:42to be avoiding use of the word was not only deceptive and just, I mean, an outright lie.
00:41:50With little hope of international intervention, an RPF victory seemed the only way to end the slaughter.
00:41:57By June, the Tutsi rebel army controlled most of northern and eastern Rwanda.
00:42:03But their advances didn't slow the carnage being inflicted by Hutu extremists in the rest of the country.
00:42:11The more they lost in the war with the RPF, the more determined they became to handle the internal Tutsi,
00:42:21and the more the genocide proceeded with greater fervor and greater energy.
00:42:27Large-scale massacres took a heavy toll.
00:42:36At Kibuya Stadium, 8,000 killed.
00:42:41The church at Kansi, 10,000.
00:42:45At Nyong, a pastor is accused of gathering 2,000 parishioners inside his church, then having it bulldozed.
00:42:54And in the hills above Bisicero, almost 50,000 Tutsis perished.
00:43:02But across the country, much of the violence was chillingly intimate.
00:43:08It is very unfortunate what happened between us, because this man, Pierre, his big brother was one of the people
00:43:16in whose death I participated.
00:43:19Ezekiel Ntampaka, a Hutu, and Pierre Turambe, a Tutsi, grew up together in the small village of Gasharara, on the
00:43:27banks of the Nyaburango River.
00:43:31Yes, we lived next to each other. They were great neighbors. We lived well together, worked well together. In fact,
00:43:40on many occasions, we played soccer together.
00:43:43Everything was okay, until the time of the killing.
00:43:50In 1994, they were caught in the swift current of brainwashing that swept through Rwanda.
00:43:59People were fleeing across the river, fleeing towards us. The next thing we knew, there were fires everywhere.
00:44:08The entire Hamwe showed up and said to us,
00:44:10Are you crazy? What are you doing with these people? Don't you know what has happened?
00:44:18Don't you know that the cockroaches are going to kill us all?
00:44:24One entire Hamwe told us to find every Tutsi you know and kill them.
00:44:31With the help of militias, Hutu villagers rounded up Tutsis and dragged them to the riverbank, where they were bound
00:44:38and cut by machetes.
00:44:40They threw us in. Nobody was left. They hurried us all to the river, all of us, even the little
00:44:47children and the babies.
00:44:49On the riverbank, Ezekiel held his lifelong friend, Pierre's older brother, as his hands and feet were tied.
00:44:59When we got to the river, he turned around and his final words were,
00:45:04I am begging you, please, don't cut me with a machete or hit me in the head. I will just
00:45:12throw myself in.
00:45:15The young Tutsi's plea went unheeded.
00:45:18As a human being, I was thinking to myself, this is a person just like me. He bleeds like me.
00:45:27I am thinking, we just killed a brother, someone that we lived with, cut him in pieces for no reason.
00:45:36Pierre and his family were bound and tossed into the river.
00:45:41By the grace of God, I don't know how it happened. The ropes that they tied me up with came
00:45:49off.
00:45:50Pierre survived, but not unscathed.
00:45:57We were brothers. The best way I remember them is in my dreams.
00:46:06It is only in my dreams that I am able to speak to them again.
00:46:10In fact, I see them so clearly, just like I see you right now.
00:46:16And then, when the dream ends, it's all over again.
00:46:22Three months into the genocide, the horrors experienced by Pierre and the rest of Rwanda's Tutsis
00:46:27were not enough to provoke international intervention.
00:46:31Then, the French stepped forward.
00:46:34The French, then, when everybody else in the world was running away, said,
00:46:37Look, we'll go in for a humanitarian rescue. If you give us a UN mandate, we'll send in the French
00:46:42forces.
00:46:42The UN quickly agreed. 2,500 French troops were dispatched.
00:46:48But given France's longtime patronage of Rwanda's Hutu government, the mission seemed to serve two masters.
00:46:55As they roll into Rwanda, this will tell you how they were perceived in Rwanda.
00:46:59The Interahamwe militias, the guys who have been doing all the killing, go out in the street with big signs,
00:47:05and they're chanting, Welcome, French Hutus.
00:47:07They understood them to be completely and totally on their side.
00:47:10They weren't entirely wrong.
00:47:14On July 4th, the RPF secured Kigali.
00:47:17Sensing defeat, Hutus fled west towards Zaire.
00:47:21French soldiers set up a safe zone in the west, a barrier between fleeing Hutus and the advancing RPF.
00:47:28The way that the French went into Rwanda, they went in there as much to stop the RPF's advance
00:47:34and to rescue the perpetrators as they did to stop the killing.
00:47:40In the weeks to follow, the RPF would take control of the majority of Rwanda, effectively ending the genocidal murders.
00:47:48But the nightmare was far from over.
00:47:59Having secured almost all of Rwanda, on July 18th, 1994, the RPF declared victory in its war against the Hutu
00:48:07extremist government, ending the genocide.
00:48:09As the RPF swept through the country, they were accused of revenge killings.
00:48:15Then, a new set of horrors befell the ravaged nation.
00:48:18You've got this large part of the population that is Tutsi survivors.
00:48:26Hundreds of thousands of people who are psychologically affected, from women who've been raped, to orphans, to people who've been
00:48:36injured.
00:48:37Throw on that HIV-AIDS.
00:48:43Dazed survivors emerged from hiding.
00:48:47RPF field hospitals overflowed.
00:48:49A generation of Tutsis had been orphaned.
00:48:53Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi refugees finally returned home.
00:48:59The country was destroyed.
00:49:02There was no shelter, no leadership whatsoever.
00:49:07It was broad daylight when we arrived.
00:49:10All we saw were bodies, everywhere.
00:49:14Bonds and skulls.
00:49:18We saw dogs feeding on the dead.
00:49:29Fearing reprisal, over one million Hutu civilians, government soldiers and Interahamwe fled Rwanda in July.
00:49:38Most taking refuge at squalid camps in Tanzania and Zaire.
00:49:43A humanitarian disaster loomed.
00:49:46Food and medicine were in short supply.
00:49:49At the Goma camp in Zaire, a cholera epidemic broke out.
00:49:54In just a few weeks, 30,000 people died.
00:50:05Almost immediately, a guilt-ridden international community rushed to help.
00:50:11In what became one of the largest deployments of humanitarian aid in history, food and medicine flowed to the camps.
00:50:18Among the recipients were thousands of Interahamwe, military units and Hutu civilians complicit in genocide crimes.
00:50:29Protected by a sea of legitimate Hutu refugees, armed extremists ruthlessly terrorized the camps for two years.
00:50:39Between July and November of 1996, the camps were shut down.
00:50:44More than one million exiles flooded back to Rwanda.
00:50:48Among them were tens of thousands who participated in crimes during the genocide.
00:50:54Many returned to live in the same villages they had terrorized just two years earlier.
00:51:00When I see these killers, it really, really bothers me.
00:51:04It brings back a rush of terrible memories.
00:51:08There's no secret that they have admitted that they have killed and they are free.
00:51:15In Rwanda, just as there was neighbor killing neighbor, later there was neighbor living next to neighbor again.
00:51:21There's perpetrator and survivor living side by side.
00:51:24I met people quite frequently who, when you said, well, you know, who did this to your family?
00:51:29They'd say, the guy who lives right over there.
00:51:33Imagine if Jews had taken over in Germany after the genocide and had the Nazis at their disposal.
00:51:41I mean, to figure out what to do with bystanders, with perpetrators, with low-level people who followed orders, with
00:51:46high-level plotters.
00:51:47That's what the Rwandan government has to deal with.
00:51:50It has the perpetrators at its disposal.
00:51:53By 1998, more than 135,000 returning Hutus were incarcerated in overcrowded prisons.
00:52:01While most deserved to be there, some were no doubt falsely imprisoned.
00:52:08Several thousand were convicted and more than 400 sentenced to death.
00:52:12But Rwanda's justice system was overwhelmed by the monumental caseload.
00:52:17The solution, adapt a traditional village justice system known as kachacha.
00:52:23The hearings invite community members to come out and discuss what happened to them.
00:52:29Seeing their neighbors collaborate and their neighbors come in and steal their furniture or their cows
00:52:35or just profit in some way from their plight.
00:52:42Historically, civic disputes in Rwanda were settled by a local wise man
00:52:46presiding over hillside gatherings.
00:52:48In the genocide version of kachacha, begun in the summer of 2004,
00:52:53nine-person panels sit in judgment.
00:52:55Sentences consist mostly of community service.
00:52:59Genocide was committed by Rwandans against Rwandans.
00:53:02And the same Rwandans, the perpetrators, the families of the perpetrators, the bystanders, the victims,
00:53:08they are the ones who have the truth.
00:53:11So by bringing them under the gachacha system at the village, try to discover the truth.
00:53:18Each and everybody contributing on what he or she knew.
00:53:22I know this is healing.
00:53:25Yet many are apprehensive.
00:53:28Some perpetrators who have hidden their complicity fear being exposed.
00:53:33Some survivors fear retaliatory violence if they implicate others.
00:53:39So now you have the beginning of a conversation, which in the short term is going to mean more hatred
00:53:44and more fear and more resentment.
00:53:49How does a country haunted by the scourge of its past recover?
00:53:55It's a question Rwandans, both survivors and perpetrators, confront daily.
00:54:02I strongly believe that the people who killed others should be punished.
00:54:07But if they plead guilty and apologize for their bad actions, they should be forgiven.
00:54:12The problem is that most of them don't admit they were wrong.
00:54:18How can you forgive a person who doesn't ask for forgiveness?
00:54:27In post-genocide Rwanda, three questions spark national and personal reflection.
00:54:33What is justice?
00:54:34What is reconciliation?
00:54:36And can they co-exist?
00:54:38If the political community called Rwanda is going to be a community of both Hutu and Tutsi,
00:54:44then it will have to fashion its future as a community of survivors, both Hutu and Tutsi.
00:54:51At least 800,000 Tutsis died in the genocide.
00:54:55More than 50,000 Hutus who opposed the extremists also perished.
00:55:00In an effort to create a nation simply of Rwandans, the new leaders abolished the ethnic identity cards
00:55:06used over the previous 70 years.
00:55:09But decades-old ethnic animosity is harder to destroy.
00:55:13From the very beginning, the definition of Hutu and Tutsi as races is an imported idea,
00:55:20alien to Rwanda, imposed from without and artificial.
00:55:24But the blood that's been shed has made that real.
00:55:28It's a reality that bears heavily on Rwanda's new leaders.
00:55:33In August 2003, former RPF commander Paul Kagame was elected Rwanda's first post-genocide president.
00:55:43With killers and survivors living side by side, he seeks national redemption in the act of reconciliation.
00:55:49Those who perpetrated genocide have to be held accountable and in a very serious way.
00:55:58But on the other hand, we have got to bring together the country and we have to see this reconciliation
00:56:06take place.
00:56:08But can forgiveness and due process find an equitable balance?
00:56:12In a move equivalent to legal triage, Rwanda divided genocide crimes into four tiers.
00:56:18Those accused of robbery, destruction of property and even some civilians who admit to murder can gain freedom by agreeing
00:56:26to stand before Gacaca.
00:56:28In 2003, nearly 60,000 prisoners were released.
00:56:35One of those killers is Ezekiel Tampaka.
00:56:38While imprisoned for five years, he became a born-again Christian.
00:56:42Upon his release, Ezekiel returned to his village, the place he participated in the murder.
00:56:50Today, he joins in a reconciliation project run by the Christian relief organization, World Vision.
00:56:57Ezekiel works side by side with Tutsis, helping to build new homes for genocide survivors.
00:57:05Pierre Torambe is the brother of one of those Ezekiel killed.
00:57:09At a recent meeting of villagers, Ezekiel publicly confessed his crimes.
00:57:16We went to a meeting the other day and I asked for forgiveness from two people in particular.
00:57:23When the time comes for me to face Gacaca, I will cooperate.
00:57:30He asked me for forgiveness and I had to really think about it.
00:57:38Can you imagine if I had said no?
00:57:43And he went home saying, this guy refused my apology?
00:57:50It will only be a matter of time.
00:57:56And I have to admit, part of the reason I forgive him is I'm still afraid of him.
00:58:10It's an uneasy peace.
00:58:13Like so many killers and survivors across Rwanda, Pierre and Ezekiel are once again neighbors.
00:58:22We committed evil, I admit it.
00:58:25It makes me very sad deep within my heart and hurts me deeply.
00:58:30But what bothers me the most is that these were like brothers to me and we never had any problems
00:58:35before that.
00:58:43The only favor I need is to give me all revealed to the institution of Gacaca, the names of all
00:58:50the other people that participated in the killings and didn't get prosecuted.
00:58:57Gacaca is going to start soon in this area and there are ongoing investigations right now.
00:59:07If Ezekiel is discovered to have killed more people, they will put him in the category of mass murderer and
00:59:14he will be put back in prison.
00:59:17The way I try to deal with such people is I try not to get involved with them.
00:59:23You have to tread lightly, very lightly.
00:59:28I know that if I would confront somebody or get into an argument with them, they would kill me in
00:59:34a heartbeat.
00:59:45Unlike Ezekiel, genocide leaders face a more customary form of justice.
00:59:50In 1995, the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was formed in Arusha, Tanzania.
00:59:57As of fall 2004, only 23 sentences have been passed down.
01:00:03Another 42 are either awaiting or currently on trial.
01:00:12For Janet Uyasabye, her blood, half Tutsi, half Hutu, still flows as if from an open wound.
01:00:19Two years after she narrowly escaped death, innocent Rwangwa heard of Janet's tragic story and took her in as part
01:00:27of his family.
01:00:30When Janet first came to live with us, we lived very well together.
01:00:35She went to school, but was very unhappy and very withdrawn.
01:00:40We tried to get her to socialize with other children.
01:00:44I could tell she was not a bad child, but that she was profoundly traumatized.
01:00:51Janet's trauma was inflicted at 10 years of age when she witnessed the slaughter of her grandparents.
01:00:56It grew when she discovered her biological Hutu father, who abandoned her as an infant, was incarcerated.
01:01:06He is accused of genocide crimes, including multiple murders, charges Janet's father denies.
01:01:18What I want him to do is to admit his guilt and tell the others that are with him that
01:01:23they have to ask for forgiveness,
01:01:26instead of trying to beat around the bush and avoid facing the consequences of their actions.
01:01:33Janet has no memory of her father.
01:01:35Ten years after the genocide, she has made the difficult decision to confront him face to face.
01:01:44If he did kill Tutsis, he has to realize that the people who bore me and those who raised me
01:01:51are of the same ethnic background as those he slaughtered or persecuted.
01:02:09Hello, Janet.
01:02:11Papa, I have something I want to ask you.
01:02:15Why are you here?
01:02:21You want to know why I am here?
01:02:24I am here because of matters that are related to the genocide.
01:02:28Did you rob people or did you kill them?
01:02:32That is what I want to know.
01:02:36What happened was, somebody that I was acquainted with was about to sell a car to his friend,
01:02:41and they needed a witness to validate their transaction.
01:02:44I accepted to be that witness and was one of the persons who signed on the purchase agreement contract.
01:02:51What happened after that is the police found out that the car was stolen and they arrested the person who
01:02:57sold it,
01:02:57the one who bought it, and those who witnessed the transaction.
01:03:01That is how I got arrested.
01:03:03This is the only reason why you have been in jail for so long?
01:03:08Yes.
01:03:08That is it.
01:03:09Look at what your companions did to me.
01:03:11Do you see it?
01:03:12Do you see it?
01:03:14Tell them that they need to ask for forgiveness.
01:03:16While harming others, they were also harming their own blood.
01:03:24How am I supposed to have a relationship with you if you can't even be honest enough to admit you
01:03:29are wrong and apologize?
01:03:32There is nothing.
01:03:33There can be no reconciliation between us.
01:03:36I don't know what you want me to do.
01:03:38Do you want me to force people to come forward even though they might not want to?
01:03:42I haven't even come forward myself.
01:03:44If there is no reconciliation between us, then that is your problem.
01:03:47It is not my choice to...
01:03:49Goodbye.
01:04:06This is living history.
01:04:07This is the present.
01:04:09And all of the history of Rwanda and of the Rwandan genocide is lived almost daily.
01:04:16Encumbered by a history of discredited racial science, fierce power struggles and rabid inhumanity, Rwanda walks a crooked line toward
01:04:24the future.
01:04:27How do you preserve memory without allowing it to turn into bitter grudge?
01:04:31How do you preserve memory without it becoming revenge vendetta?
01:04:36That's a question that Rwanda is going to be haunted by, I think for a long time.
01:04:42Can there be a version of this history that could appear in a Rwandan textbook that most citizens would agree
01:04:48upon?
01:04:49I mean, maybe that's all we can hope for.
01:04:50Can Hutu, who feel that their suffering has been denied by the Tutsi government since the genocide, can they feel
01:04:58acknowledged and human and not dehumanized in some of the similar ways that the Tutsi prior to the genocide were
01:05:05dehumanizing?
01:05:09Our leaders, they talk about reconciliation, kachacha and so on, in hopes of bringing about true peace and change.
01:05:20However, because they are those who still have evil in their own hearts, and also knowing that no one has
01:05:27ever come to me and asked me for forgiveness or acknowledge my own loss, I don't know.
01:05:37Maybe the government will succeed. Who knows?
01:05:40It is possible that complete reconciliation lies only in the hands of those with no memory of the genocide.
01:05:47If you look at the experience of the Holocaust, when a country experiences a genocide, it's just like a generational
01:05:56problem.
01:05:57If in Rwanda we spent 40 years people being taught hatred, you also have to take more than 10 years
01:06:04teaching people to see that they can come to terms with the past.
01:06:10It's a painful process. At Rwanda's National Genocide Memorial in Kigali, over 250,000 victims are entombed in mass graves.
01:06:21More are added every year as victims' remains continue to be discovered.
01:06:27There are very, very few people who are untouched.
01:06:30In Rwanda, one way that people experienced, you know, what are 800,000 was by the absence.
01:06:37You don't see it, and I don't see it when we visit.
01:06:40But every time they sit down to dinner, they see who's not there.
01:06:45Yoga Chani Jishi...
01:06:52Ake Nye Gye Sibi Savo...
01:07:05Gwihore Se...
01:07:34Transcription by CastingWords
Comments