WOUNDS OF THE PAST

This month Rwanda will commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the start of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Known as one of the fastest genocides in history, in just 100 blood-stained days 800,000 tutsi and moderate hutu were but to machete, its legacy however has sustained through 20 years.

At the beginning of this year I visited Rwanda with the Aegis Trust, they had arranged for me to meet and photography many of the survivors of the genocide at the memorials where they gather each year on the anniversary. I have been working with the trust a long time and had met many survors of many genocides and heard their stories, they are without exception hard to get your head around. How do you begin to understand from our place of safety the horror they experienced and how they manage through this to be such positive people?

As I touched down in Rwanda I could not have imagined how this would play out in Rwanda. There are so many reminders of the hatred that over took the country, memorials where the belongings, clothes and bodies the victims can still be seen. I knew Rwanda's story but to see it was hard to take in, you stand in a memorial, just four walls, often a church then your mind starts to fill in the thousands who squeezed in there frightened for their lives and eventually tries to imagine the killing that followed. Imagine being faced with that when it is not just a mental picture but a memory and yet the survivors return to these places that were for them almost their graves, every year. They do so because they all know how important it is to tell their story so that it never happen again but not only that they come to promote reconciliation, education and a future for Rwanda. It a beautiful mystery how Rwanda and its people can keep the wounds of their past so open and yet be such positive forward looking country. 

The full story is posted below this picture, if you have time to read it.

The Aegis Trust are a charity working tirelessly in the UK and Rwanda to make sure no one can ever turn their back on genocide and that eventually never again becomes a reality.

Please click on the picture to see the full series of portraits or on this link to see how the Daily Mail used them.  

Mukamudenge Donatille aged 69 in Nyamata Church, a genocide memorial to remember her ordeal in the nearby marshes where she was hacked by machete and left for dead.

Rwanda’s memorials and survivors are inextricably linked, a reflection of each other with a key role to play in the education of a country. They share the essential contradictions that keep Rwanda moving forward, both are calm and reflective while being shocking reminders of the horror of genocide, they are windows to the brutal past but also Rwanda’s bright future. Just below the surface of both are the consequences of genocide, one is death the other is division and hatred but where memorials must display their dead, lest anyone forget the genocide the survivors must bury their hatred lest it be repeated.

Every year in April for 20 years Rwandans stand on the spot where they lost family, were tortured or were left for dead not just to pay their respects to the dead but to tell the truth of what happened there in the hope that by remembering the Genocide’s horror they can break a cycle of revenge that has marred many African countries. Never again is taken very seriously here and in the case of most survivors, memories of what happened to them lead only to a will to remove the division that brought genocide to their doors. Neither Tutsi nor Hutu, survivor nor perpetrator are badges of honour in Rwanda, a Hutu lady called Theodette and her classmates are some of the few people called hero here. When they where attacked at Nyange School three years after the end of the genocide and asked to separate in to races so the Tutsi could be killed, they faced death with the words “we are all Rwandan.” With those values taught in just three years that stuck even in the face of death you can see why many believe that the future of Rwanda was born in that classroom.

20 years ago this year Rwanda’s Tutsi were marked for extermination and in 100 days of slaughter 800,000 or up to 70% of the Tutsi population were wiped out. There was long history of tension between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda ever since it became a colony first of the Germans then of the Belgians but it had been growing exponentially since Rwanda’s independence under the Hutu rule in 1962. Killings followed and many Tutsi fled to neighbouring countries while radio and government did their best to dehumanise the Tutsi in the eyes of ordinary Hutu. When all this came to a head in 1994 following the assassination of Rwanda’s president the Tutsi fled to churches and schools that had served as sanctuary during previous times of killing, but this time one was to be spared. The planning had been meticulous and the goal made perfectly clear but the killing was mostly done by hand. Government troops simply hung back as a threat, conserving ammunition while people were hacked to death with machetes and clubs. Neighbour killed neighbour, priests betrayed their congregation and the international community just looked on. This was whole country genocide, there are no Tutsi who lived through that time left unscarred by what they saw or had done to them and all too few Hutu who knew no one involved in the killing, looting and rape of the Tutsi.

20 years on this lies at the heart of every survivor, how do you forgive when you must face someone you saw kill in the street every day. You can’t imprison all those involved and while many survivors feel the government did their best to achieve justice, it is often up to the people to achieve reconciliation through the Gacaca courts. This is why Rwanda and its people are part of one the most ambitious, long term social reforms ever attempted. The government has outlawed the terms Hutu and Tutsi as divisionism, everyone is Rwandan. The policy has its critics, who say they are simply burying the problem not solving it; and that it is a thinly veiled excuse for suppression of opposition. However it is important to know most people agree that Hutu and Tutsi only became racial identities in 1935 when the Belgian colonists introduced them as such along with ID cards stating each person’s race, before this it is believed they were fluid social distinctions. So why if one people can be split to the point one wishes to wipe out the other in less than 60 years can they not be brought back together in as much time.

It of course a dangerous policy to keep so many of the wounds of the past open while asking all those involved to forget how it divided them but they seem determined to invest in a future without ethnic division. 20 years will mark a mile stone for Rwanda as the Rwanda Peace Education program led by UK based charity the Aegis Trust, with funding from the Swedish government will travel the country to show teachers how they can teach children the history of the genocide for the first time and at the same teach reconciliation. It is hoped that in another 20 years’ time when these children are grown and have children of their own they will all know the truth of their countries bloody past but identify with none of its hatred.

All too often genocide is never forgiven just forgotten, hatred directed at its perpetrators blinding people to its repetition. Rwanda knows that if they are going to have another 20 years of peace it is essential they forgive but never forget.