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Rwandan genocide was work of 'devil;' Rwandans still recovering
Photo Courtesy of Sarah Lischer
A church in the village of Ntarama holds bloody clothes of those who tried to find refuge from the killings.
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Published: July 6, 2009
As an expert in international conflicts and security, Sarah Lischer has an extensive understanding of the Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the slaughter of more than 800,000 people in a 100-day period in 1994.
But none of the books and essays she read prepared her for a visit to a church in the village of Ntarama, about 20 miles from the capital city of Kigaili.
About 5,000 people died in and around the church. Inside the church, which now serves as a memorial, tattered and bloodstained clothing of the victims hang from the rafters. Bones and skulls of the dead fill shelves. A metal shard is wedged into one skull.
Against a wall sits a pile of cooking pots, utensils and mattresses and other possessions people brought with them to the church, which they believed would provide sanctuary.
"There is a huge difference in reading about something and seeing it," said Lischer, an assistant professor of political science at Wake Forest University. "You open the door and there are racks of bones. And there you are. Americans are kind of distant from death in general."
Lischer visited Rwanda recently to research the genocide for a project financed by the International Peace Research Institute in Norway. Lischer and a colleague are planning a series of articles on refugees based on their research (her colleague is studying Afghan refugees). While in Rwanda, Lischer also gathered information for her own research project on the causes of human-rights atrocities.
In April 1994, long-simmering ethnic tensions exploded after President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was mysteriously shot down. Habyarimana belonged to the majority Hutus, who ruled over the minority Tutsis in Rwanda, which is a country of 10 million people in central Africa.
The Hutus perpetrated most of the atrocities, killing thousands and systematically raping women and young girls. Eventually, the Hutus fled to refugee camps when the Tutsis gained control of the government and restored order.
In the years since the genocide, Rwandans have worked hard to overcome that legacy. It is considered a safe country with little corruption and a burgeoning economy. The infrastructure has been rebuilt, Hutus and Tutsis live as neighbors and there have been no major outbreaks of violence.
Despite such progress, Lischer said she believes that Rwandans are still recovering from the aftermath of the massacre.
"It felt like such a traumatized country," she said. "Everyone had a story of losing somebody. Everyone had a story of being in exile or everyone knew someone who was a perpetrator. There was pain everywhere."
The country's continuing struggle to come to terms with its bloody past were most evident to Lischer in the countryside, where people scrambled to find work that would pay them $2 a day and children orphaned by the genocide serve as heads of households.
"People are saturated as far as how many foster children they can take in," she said. "It is probably the poorest country I've been to."
Remains of victims are still being uncovered.
Some private trauma counseling is available. However, Lischer said it is typically out of character for Rwandans to talk about their grief.
When Lischer asked Rwandans to explain how neighbors who once lived peacefully could turn on each other, many blamed it on the devil.
"At first, people would say, ‘We don't know why it happened' because it was incomprehensible. Then, people would turn to a more spiritual explanation," she said.
Many people did not want to talk about the genocide on the record. The government has offered an official version of the genocide and people who interpret it differently risk punishment, Lischer said.
The international community was slow to act in Rwanda, said Lischer, who called it "an international embarrassment."
Last year, former President Clinton said that one of his biggest regrets in office was not acting more aggressively to stem the violence.
The United Nations and Belgium, which pulled its peacekeeping force from its former colony at the beginning of the genocide, have also been criticized for not doing more to prevent the massacre.
But whether the world has learned from its inaction is unclear, Lischer said.
"We always say ‘Never again.' But when it comes down to it … look at Darfur," Lischer said. "It becomes very complicated. But I think it is clear that in Rwanda, a lot more could've been done."
■ Lisa O'Donnell can be reached at 727-7420 or at lo'donnell@wsjournal.com.
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