00:15people who we had again going to the same school going to the same church began you know chasing
00:21us from our homes with machetes with clubs with nail study clubs with spears saying that we were
00:28we were cockroaches and all tutsis were cockroaches and all tutsis that deserve to be exterminated
00:57so we lived as neighbors and and um and for children for us we you will play with
01:04your neighbors it's it's a very community-oriented country so um there were no like gates between
01:11homes so you will in the neighborhood in a village you will play with all the kids
01:16for children you really didn't understand i didn't understand the difference between
01:20the hutus and tutsis the adults knew um and they will tell you
01:27which homes you should never go to but they won't tell you why
01:36hutus and tutsis were you know lending each other you know daily items like salt like sugar
01:42so there was you know a bit of like sharing and coexisting that's why when the genocide began
01:49and our hutu neighbors started you know uh like chasing us with machetes it was it was a huge shock
01:55to some level because we had believed that these people were you know our neighbors and that they
02:00were they were friends
02:08the 7th of abril se cumplen 30 años del día en el que en ruanda un país de áfrica oriental
02:14el odio y
02:15la diferencia étnica incentivada durante más de 100 años llegó a un punto crítico que terminó con el
02:21exterminio de por lo menos 800 mil randeses pertenecientes a los tutsis uno de los dos pueblos
02:27mayoritarios del país a manos de extremistas del grupo rival los hutus and all these stereotypes
02:35had their roots in colonialism when the germans came to rwanda and then later on the belgians the
02:42belgians began measuring heights of rwandans and noses of rwandans so they became up the belgians
02:50came up with what was how a tutsi was supposed to look like an image of a hutu so growing
02:56up you hear
02:57somebody say oh he has a tutsi nose or he has you know his toes so he's a tutsi so
03:03i was very exposed
03:05to that type of like ethnic best conversation a very early early on desde el fin de la época colonial
03:14en
03:14ruanda cuando fue reconocido por la onu como país en 1962 el apoyo belga la misma influencia que había
03:22regentado el país sirvió para instalar gobiernos mayoritariamente hutus que incentivaron el odio
03:28entre grupos en un periodo de más de 30 años antes del genocidio y que incluyó guerras civiles y la
03:35creación de grupos paramilitares so it's not an overnight hate that took over people's hearts it was
03:45a world constructed well structured well thought through a process political process political machine
03:54um and it's unfortunately when it culminated in the killings of almost 1 million tutsi people
04:05uh in 1994 there had been already uh massacres in the past that most people don't talk about or don't
04:15know even about um so i think it's it's um it's something that already took time to get there took
04:24time to organize seeing as a kid you never i never really thought too much about it of course as
04:30i got
04:31older a little bit being a teenager that's when i realized how how bad things were getting in the
04:36country so one of the memory that i have when i was young um in in elementary school is when
04:43we were
04:43asked to stand up in the classroom so being asked as tutsis and hutus to stand up in the classroom
04:50and that also never really made me feel really think of anything but when i was in junior high
04:58school being bullied by a classmate um because of you know at that time the tension was so high
05:04and um and throughout the country the propaganda you know hatred against the tutsi other time you know
05:13it was really bad the teacher like a hutu teacher would ask tutsi students to stand this side and
05:19the hutu students to start to stand this side and then the teacher would begin telling the hutus the
05:26hutu children the hutu classmates about how tutsis were bad they were not to be trusted they were invaders
05:31they were foreigners they were foreigners they were foreigners so my hutu classmates at the very early
05:36age were indoctrinated to to to in anti-tutsi propaganda and to see tutsis not as like equal
05:43neighbors equal citizens but to see them as foreigners who deserved you know to be treated to be treated as
05:49as less than that
05:51in the months previous to the genocide the tension aumented significantly the propaganda anti-tutsi
06:07se intensified through the media of communication when the murder of the military and political juvenile
06:15have ya rimana quien había llegado a la presidencia tras un golpe de estado en 1973 la violencia
06:21desmedida contra los tutsi estalló en tan solo un día is the radio so you know as a kid also
06:34ice
06:35to listen to the radio like everybody else is so and is using kehr me but not to the extent
06:41where i felt
06:42you know i was still young i was still you know young teen so not to the extent where i
06:47thought
06:48there would be a genocide where they will want to kill and exterminate um want to exterminate
06:54the minority tutsis so and at that time i knew that i was a tutsi of course um but at
07:02the same
07:02time it was um not something that i never imagined that it would go through or have gone through
07:13during 99 days se llevó a cabo el genocidio contra los tutsis en ruanda la confrontación
07:18entre las etnias que históricamente habían ocupado este territorio alcanzó un punto
07:23de decadencia que destrozó por completo a un país joven
07:42it brings to mind uh friends it brings to mind neighbors it brings to mind uh schoolmates
07:50it brings to mind teachers it brings to mind people i've never met but whose lives were
07:57violently and abruptly halted in 1994. at the end of the day we are all rwandans that we are all
08:06rwandans with the same equal rights with the same right to opportunities educational opportunities
08:12uh work opportunities uh work opportunities and when i hear the word hutu
08:20um i don't immediately uh get startled as i used to um because also hutu is part of the people
08:32of rwanda
08:36um and um i do my best to to not connect hutu extremists and hutus as a general people coming
08:46from rwanda
08:51even though i wish the little child me did not experience what what she experienced at the same time i
08:59don't know what she would have become if she you know if she had a normal upbringing a normal life
09:07rwanda tuvo que reinventarse bajo la promesa de eliminar por completo las divisiones entre tutsis
09:13y hutus para poder identificarse mutuamente en la sociedad les puso en una posición en la que
09:20tuvieron que transitar la tragedia y crear una nueva identidad ser ruandeses
09:27i i don't think we'll go back to where we came from but i feel like that's why we we
09:34we we tell stories
09:36that's why we make sure we we preserve the memory uh of what happened so so that we won't go
09:44back to
09:44where we came from so i have a hope and and and and i feel like um i'm very optimistic
09:52of of the future
10:14you
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