This week, Rwandans are marking the of the in which Hutu militias killed more than a million people in 1994.
Beginning on April 7, 1994, extremist Hutus murdered more than a million Tutsi minorities as well as fellow Hutus, who refused to participate in the slaughter or who chose to protect their Tutsi neighbors.
Now, survivors and perpetrators of the are coming together to commemorate and reflect on a crime against humanity that rocked a nation, and indeed the world.
When making friends becomes a minefield
of today did not experience this genocide first-hand, and most of what they know is typically what they heard from family and friends. Still, many are struggling to cope with the aftereffects of the genocide.
“It is my duty and my responsibility to respect every single moment of the commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi,” 19-year-old Francis Mugisha told DW.
“And secondly, as a Rwandan, I feel concerned about everything happening in my country, so I take it not only as a responsibility, but as something like something I should live with, something I should socialize with,” he explained.
But what does that mean in everyday life for younger generations? How does one ‘socialize’ with the demons of the past?
For Emmanuel Ishimwe, this question is, in fact, quite literal: The now 30-year-old told DW that, for example, the act of socialzing with new people and making friends can become tricky:
“Some may choose friends based on ethnicity but will not openly show or say it,” Ishimwe said, adding that people often have to tread carefully along ethnic lines — lest they want to be perceived as sectarian.
He stresses though that personally, he doesn’t “think ethnicity plays a role because we now understand that we are all Rwandans,” adding however that not every young person will agree with that assessment.
Genocide studies in school
In certain cases, you don’t have to look long to discover persisting faultlines of division: Following reports of students scribbling hate speech messages in washrooms or even on school blackboards, the government decided to introduce genocide studies in high schools in hopes of promoting unity among the younger generations.
Freddy Mutanguha, a former vice president of IBUKA — the umbrella group of genocide survivors, told DW that seeing the youth engaging in divisive actions is something he finds “incomprehensible.”
“The young generation is the future of this country,” Mutanguha explained, adding that the introduction of the genocide studies was supposed to counteract such polarizing currents.
A survivor of the genocide himself, Mutanguha advocates bringing Tutsis and Hutus together in a constructive ways, focusing on dialogue and remembrance.
Not enough guidance
But the problem among the youth may already begin at home: Despite Rwanda’s many efforts to foster unity and reconciliation, there remains a cloud of silence in many families when it comes to the shadows of the past. Few dare to openly discuss ethnicity issues with their children at all.
“Some parents don’t want to explain to their children what happened in 1994. That means most children hear about the genocide only during the commemoration period,” Ishimwe told DW, highlighting that this is partly why he feels he lack the skillset to address issues like ethnicity as a grown-up now.
Others find that what they learn might be too little, too late — or even too much, but too late: 27-year-old Christian Nshimiyimana told DW that he only got to grasp the full extent of the genocide that took place in his country when he was sixteen years old.
“From the discussions I heard from my family and friends, I think the youth need to be taught more about the country’s history and the genocide that happened in Rwanda,” he stressed, adding that in today’s political climate, the dangers of the ideology behind the genocide remain rife.
A new Rwanda?
Despite these ongoing challenges and legitimate fear among the youth, most Rwandan adolescents say they want to put the country’s dark history behind them and build a new Rwanda where all ethnic groups can live together.
This is also how President Paul Kagame wants Rwanda to be seen by the outside world: a united nation, where Hutus and Tutsis live together in peace, where the economy flourishes, and where the streets are always clean — often at any cost.
With dissident voices of any background being muted or silenced in this artificially constructed and painstakingly manicured present under Kagame’s direction, many young people feel a sense of loss of identity, as the echoes of the past reverberate all around them.
Their inability to truly grasp the genocide in constructive and forward-looking ways — instead of merely subscribing to the government’s brand of window dressing.
This is only compounded by underlying fear that this apparent failure to move on from the traumatic events of 1994 could be labeled as a rejection of President Kagame’s “new Rwanda,” which many both inside and outside the country are viewing as an increasingly authoritarian regime.
Edited by Sertan Sanderson
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