Genocide in Rwanda and Burundi — 25 years on — Visiting as the 30th commemoration arrives
As triggers cause inner calm to be broken – Social Justice Where are You?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent — Isaac Asimov
The Frustrated and the Disenfranchised are easily manipulated to resort to violence when they are not listened to — Crook
Those without education know, no better when their minds are manipulated by the few controlling media and power — Apposite
Last year, I had been awoken by the cries of pain and the sound of a gurgling, as if a person is caught, drowning in their own spittle, with their nose blocked and being sucked into their lasts breaths. The sound of banging then reaches my ears, as if something heavy is being beaten on to a coconut shell, the sound resonates just a little because of the changes of density inside the shell.
These are differing elements reaching me and I fear since, as we all would, putting the sounds together and only come up with horrifying pictures in my own mind. A mind full of images stored out of the way and only recalled when something happens to make the small hairs on the back of your neck come up as terrifying thoughts resonate again.
I shout, in the primeval manner to send a battle cry. Powerless to physically intervene within the next five minutes, which adds to my bravado I sense. The barrier, a solid stone wall topped by an electric fence, is testament to the general manner we acknowledge the dichotomies in society. Those with and those without. In this setting, the majority of people are law abiding, following social customs, rules and respecting others with feelings of mutual, social, responsibility.
But we have seen, time and again, attacks when social order has broken down. Boys, young men, go on the rampage as supposed leaders play to the frustrations, the disenfranchisement. The ignorance. Rhetoric whips up crowds and mob actions kick in. This does not lead to mob justice but it does lead to circuits of recriminations as action causes reaction. Social harmony built over generations is destroyed in minutes of rampant violence.
I worked in Burundi in early 1994 assisted those fleeing the Rwanda Genocide. It immunised me to seeing people hit with stones and bricks, mercilessly and ruthlessly attacked. When arriving in Rwanda in August 1994, I now recall the gangs of youths running through markets in south west Rwanda with machetes, pangas, heavy bladed working tools for agriculture put to use in the harvesting of people. Ethnic cleansing on unprecedented scales. I had expunged the memories from my head and heart. This grey Sunday morning , my mind does go back, my immunisation worn off.
30 years ago, setting up camps for Rwandans fleeing the Genocide, or the consequences of the Genocide, we watched as Burundian soldiers searched those arriving on open lorries. Blood was already flowing where the convoy had been stoned. The doctor, a highly qualified teacher from University College Dublin, was definitely not afraid of blood, but he was no longer used to emergency departments and the sights and sounds overwhelmed him. He panicked and, no training and with too many ham films watched, I slapped his cheek, gripped both his arms and talked into his face from all of 20 centimetres away.
We got our act together, started receiving people. as they gathered together their few belongings. Those caught with weapons were taken away. As bags of beans were emptied out I, at first was aghast at the crass behaviour of the Burundian soldiers. Swords, home made guns and machetes sharpened not for weeding beans but possibly implicating in the killings across the region as ethnic cleansing left blood and guts everywhere.
I had already encountered Burundian armed forces appalling actions when working inside an MSF team to learn more about refugee set ups. With shit, blood and pieces of flesh caught in my Clarks shoes, I spent days in informal settlements where people cowered from men and boys with guns. Women were raped and people slept close together at night. If the call of nature came, then answer it here and now as death stalked the darkness wreaking awful crimes on men with women and children being abused at every opportunity. Appalling behaviour of cowards empowered by a uniform, a gun and mob mentality.
A UNHCR man wanted us to officially complain about the Burundian soldiers interfering with refugees. He was here as ‘an observer’ — get real, how can you stand and observe with open wounds dripping blood, home-made guns and sharpened machetes ready. Yes, need for defence was very apparent. But defence from who when the UNHCR were there as ‘observers’. Due deference shown by who to whom? The UNHCR gent asked my name, which I wrote down for him, as he was going to report me for unprofesional behaviour. I told him, in far fewer words, to go forth and multiple with himself, and let us get on with helping people in what was an emotionally and physically fraught time for all of us.
Why this appalling situation? What ever drives someone to chop people up? To rape and abuse women to the point they want to take their own lives rather than continue to be subjected by the brutality of rape by AIDS infected thugs. To rip the shirt from another person’s back while holding on to him to hit him with a stone?
The man with the stone that Sunday morning stopped and realised he was now having another person bearing witness to his actions. His crime; fore it is a crime even if this is a vigilante move now known, his face seen and remembered. His partner in crime broke off as other people reacted to the gurgling cries of the victim. They run. Reaction did happen. Justice? Not in the sense of the rule of law but these boys, with two or three others, were ‘taken out’. Yes the drone talk of US films and TV shows is there. The actions cannot be ignored with the click of the remote control. Police, not trusting the system where crime does still pay, took action.
People are sanitised in this 24/7 reporting of violence somewhere else, never happening to us. Gun crime happens in the bad neighbourhoods — doesn’t it? Bombs, bullets and brutal behaviour belong in those places where we send drones. Let us defend our borders, and yet violence is insidiously creeping through in different forms as we sanitise it. In more recent times, the appalling violence has come to be closer to more of us. People look around on the London Tube, who is the mad man with a knife? People know people who were blown up in Manchester or London. Someone you know went to get married or watch cricket in Sri Lanka. In all cases they now recall those places where heinous acts of violence have happened.
Those days in Burundi and Rwanda were put away, hidden deep in the part of the brain triggered by events. I faced worse situations when becoming the person not just managing the situation but a victim of violence. Now, as we see more and more fragile settings, respect for law and order breaking down among our leaders, my recollections of how isolated incidents can easily become mob rule return.
Sadly, I realise we have not moved forward from the thuggery witnessed. For all the pompous talk of justice and the constant reports of human rights abuses, the abuses propagated and injustices remain too apparent. For all the sophistication of law and order in the UK and elsewhere. For all the talk of targeted killings set in technological warfare, the underlying tenet is:
We are a violent and self-serving bunch — us human beings, this part of the Anthropocene Era.
We are designed to live socially,
Bedevilled by manipulation undoing any sociability in the name of greed, power and the pursuit of domination.
No peace without justice. No justice without equity.
There really can be no peace without justice.
There can be no justice without truth.
And there can be no truth, unless someone rises up to tell you the truth.
Louis Farrakhan
