Rwanda, the deep meaning of genocide. Interview with Tarcisse Seminega

 Rwanda, the deep meaning of genocide. Interview with Tarcisse Seminega

June 29, 2023

Tharcisse Seminega is a prominent personality in the post-genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda of 1994. Born in Rwanda in 1941, his life path has gone through enormous and dramatic historical moments: first the transition from Belgian colonial rule to independence, then that of religious studies to a doctorate in biotechnology, to teaching at the National University of Rwanda and until that dramatic 1994, when he, his wife and their 5 children managed to survive the genocide and, in 2003, immigrate to Canada.

Tharcisse Seminega related these experiences in the book "L'amour qui enraya la haine. Comment ma famille survécut au génocide du Rwanda" (The love that took hate): they are "petrified memories” of an "unimaginable horror". In this conversation with Prof. Tudor Petcu, Professor of Philosophy of Religions at the University of Bucharest, Romania, several very interesting and often little-known aspects arise, such as the violence against Jehovah's Witnesses in Rwanda, at the time of the Genocide, that is, the religious confession of Dr. Seminega.

1) To understand the scope and weight of the Genocide in Rwanda, can you place it in its historical and geopolitical context? I ask because many Europeans, and in particular the Eastern Europeans whom I know directly and intimately, do not have a concrete idea of what the Rwandan Genocide really meant, which is a very important chapter in recent history.

This question reminds me of the controversy that took place in New York, at the headquarters of the United Nations in April 1994 during the so-called "Rwandan genocide". The problem was that if a Tutsi was systematically murdered by a Hutu, in that case it was a real genocide. But if a Hutu was killing a Tutsi and a Tutsi was killing a Hutu, then it was a tribal conflict. Some people have even suggested the idea of a double genocide. But finally, it was soon recognized that the Hutus were systematically killing unarmed Tutsis because they were simply Tutsis. In January 2018, the United Nations General Assembly designated April 7 as the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda.

2) So, more directly: what is the meaning of the Genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda?

Especially outside Rwanda, no one can understand the significance of this genocide without having accurate information about the historical events that led to that tragedy. Let's briefly say that Rwanda was composed of three social groups: Hutu (about 84%), Tutsi (15%) and twa (1%). The Hutus were mainly farmers and the first immigrants in Rwanda. The Tutsis were mainly cattle herders who came to Rwanda after them. Rwanda ruled for almost seven centuries before Germans and Belgians arrived in this country in 1885 and 1916 respectively, when Germans and Belgians entered they improved the social differences by considering the Tutsis superior to the Hutus because they were amazingly organized and governed. They also introduced the idea that the Tutsis were descendants of Noah's son, Ham. Like, the camitic theory was born. Rwandans were classified into Hutu, Tutsi and twa and in 1931 they were granted an identity marked as Hutu, Tutsi or twa. From 1885 to 1959, a family dynasty ruled the country together with the German and Belgian rulers, who favored the Tutsis over the Hutus until 1959, when the monarchy was overthrown by the Hutu revolution with the help of the Belgians. Why did that change happen? The Belgians switched sides because the then Tutsi King Mutara III Rudahigwa demanded immediate independence, following the African independence movement in the 1950s. This measure was not well received by the Belgians who until now had collaborated with the Tutsis, guaranteeing them the best educational and administrative opportunities, supporting them financially through a system of institutionalized patronage and using them to impose work on the majority of Hutus. The Hutu revolution supported by the Belgian colonial rule resulted in the slaughter of many Tutsi, burning their houses and killing their cows (one of their hallmarks and source of wealth in society) and forcing many more to exile in neighboring countries (in 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1973), particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Uganda and Tanzania. Some have fled to other foreign countries, especially to European countries such as Belgium and the United States of America. The descendants of these refugees organized armed forces under the name Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and attacked Rwanda in October 1990 to regain power. With this historical background in mind, it can now be understood why the conflict turned into an ethnic or racial conflict and why the propaganda made by the Hutu government tried to convey to the Hutu people the idea that the oppressors of yesteryear had returned trying to unite with their Tutsi brothers inside the country and become stronger than the Hutus and exterminate or oppress them as they had previously done for centuries. As you know, genocides are always organized and perpetrated under the cover of an armed conflict. This was the case of the Holocaust|(World War II), the Cambodian genocide and the Armenian genocide. In the case of Rwanda, the genocide was organized and perpetrated under the cover of the armed conflict between the Hutu government in Kigali (Rwanda) and exiled Tutsi rebels attacking from neighboring Uganda. Therefore, killing Tutsis inside the country was part of the strategy of weakening the attacking Tutsis to prevent them from joining the Tutsi rebels who were making great military advances, well trained as guerrillas and backed by superpowers like the United States and the United Kingdom. United, while the Hutu government was supported by France and some African countries such as Kenya, Angola, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To prepare for this genocide, the Hutu government spread hate propaganda against the Tutsis inside the country, trained the Hutu militia to kill as many people as possible in a short time, bought weapons, including machetes, which Rwandans usually use daily for different domestic and agricultural jobs, involved the entire Hutu population (84% of the total population) in the project. Therefore, since the Holocaust was mainly directed against European Jews, the Rwandan genocide aimed to kill and exterminate the Tutsis of the interior in 1994 as a final solution to the conflict between the Hutu government and the Tutsi army of exile. That is why, as mentioned above, instead of calling this genocide the “genocide in Rwanda”, the United Nations decided to call it the “genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda” – the reason is that no one was killed because they were Rwandans.

3) In the context of a tragedy of enormous proportions such as the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, there are many minor, but equally profound and lacerating tragedies of some minorities, such as the community of Jehovah's Witnesses in her country, which she knows well. How much have historians talked about it? Is there a historiographical production about the suffering suffered by Jehovah's Witnesses during that genocide?

As far as I know, few historians have talked about the pain that Jehovah's Witnesses suffered during the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda. Here are some references on this topic. Under the headline "Only Jehovah's Witnesses are not accused of anything”" the Swiss weekly Reformierte Presse declared: In 1995, African Rights documented the genocide in Rwanda in twelve hundred pages: “It could prove the participation of all churches except Jehovah's Witnesses.” .

Reformierte Presse: Harare: 8 December 1998, https://archive.li/Xxzmu [original link: http://www.ref.ch/ma/meldungen/1664.htm ] (accessed on November 28, 2018)

Other references include the following texts:

Genocidio e crisi nell'Africa centrale, di Christian P. Scherrer

Rwanda before the genocide: Catholic politics and ethnic discourse in the late colonial era, by JJ Carney

Mosco News February 20-26, 1997 p.5, by professor of religious studies Sergei Ivanenko.

But you can also check the following websites:

https://www.jw.org/en/news/legal/by-region/rwanda/

https://diaspoint.nl/love-shines-through-in-rwanda-genocide/

http://reiblingfoundation.org/press

 

4) Could you specify why you were attacked during the Rwandan genocide? Has your membership in Jehovah's Witnesses influenced the persecution you and your family have suffered?

Not exactly. The main reason was because I belonged to the Tutsi ethnic group. I say this because many Hutu Jehovah's Witnesses had nothing to fear in relation to their ethnicity. However, they were persecuted because they refused to participate in the genocide and tried to hide the Tutsi witnesses and non-Jehovah's Witnesses. My family of seven was able to survive because 20 Hutu Jehovah's Witnesses worked as a team for 75 days to hide, feed and protect us in difficult situations, including moving us to nine different places through roadblocks and night vigils.

5) Every historical tragedy obviously represented some kind of uniqueness, like the Holocaust that Jewish historians called "Shoah". What, in your opinion, is the uniqueness of the Rwandan Genocide as a catastrophe in the recent history of the world?

The similarity between the Holocaust and the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda could be explained in these points:

Both the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsis took place under the cover of military conflicts

both events were meant to exterminate a group as a whole

people were attacked and killed simply because of who they were, Jews or Tutsis

the victims were helpless, simply picked up from their homes, taken to “slaughterhouses” where they were killed in various ways

genocide in both cases was seen as a final solution to the prevailing problem.

The differences between the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsi could be summarized as follows:

Jews were murdered by non-Jewish citizens in all European countries, while Tutsis were murdered by fellow Rwandan citizens, only within the borders of Rwanda.

The holocaust was perpetrated mainly by members of the SS with the collaboration of other prominent authorities of the police, the army and civil society, but did not involve the population as a whole, while the genocide of the Tutsis involved not only the Interahamwe militia that could be compared to the SS, the Presidential Guard, the police authorities and the army, but also with the entire Hutu population (about 84% of the total population of Rwanda) that did most of the "work" so quickly.

The Holocaust took place between 1939 and 1945, but the genocide against the Tutsis occurred in just 100 days, between April 7 and July 5, 1994. It is considered the fastest genocide of the twentieth century.

6) I know that there is a considerable literature devoted to the Rwandan Genocide, so there is a lot of research on the study of this genocide. In your opinion, in the light of this important research, did the pain suffered by Jehovah's Witnesses during the Rwandan Genocide fully emerge? If not, what else should be done?

As I mentioned, while much has been said and impressive research has been done on the Rwandan genocide, very little has been done in our day to document the pain experienced by Jehovah's Witnesses as individuals or as a group during the Rwandan genocide. To my knowledge, my book is the first written by a Jehovah's Witness that recounts the hardships suffered by a family of Jehovah's Witnesses and their rescuers during the genocide. To investigate further, one thing that could be done is to interview as many survivors and rescuers as possible, and write down their experiences. More books or stories could be written and more documentaries made to help people explore and understand what really happened in Rwanda in 1994.

7) What are the main documentaries about the Rwandan genocide that could help us understand its uniqueness?

Here is a list of documentaries that I found informative and comprehensive regarding specific historical background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBTWYeeeSDc (Role of false religions in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which a very interesting historical background emerges)

Rwanda, How history can lead to genocide directed by Robert Genoud.

Gacaca Film Series (2002-2009) Official site of the documentary series including "My Neighbor My Killer” (Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival)“ "Gacaca Living Together in Rwanda?"In Rwanda we say... the family that doesn't speak dies" and ”The Notebooks of Memory" by Emmy winner Anne Aghion

Screamers, a documentary by director Carla Garapedian. The documentary examines the repetitive pattern of genocide, from the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust, through Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur today. After its theatrical release in the United States and Canada, the documentary was screened at the United States Congress, the British Parliament and the European Parliament to raise awareness about genocide education. The full documentary can be watched from the official YouTube channel of the film (2006).

Shaking hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (2004). Documentary film directed by Peter Raymont. CBC.

Triumph of Evil (1998). Documentary film about the failure of the United Nations and the West, an adaptation, originally by journalist Steve Bradshaw. A PBS production.

Journey to the Dark (1994). Documentary film shot in Rwanda during the genocide, by journalist Fergal Keane. A BBC Panorama production.

A Culture of Murder (1994). A documentary about the Rwandan genocide and the plight of its refugees by journalist Steve Bradshaw. A BBC Panorama production.

The Bloody Tricolor (1995). Documentary film about France's involvement in Rwanda before the genocide. A BBC Panorama production.

https://www.focusonafrica.info/ruanda-il-significato-profondo-del-genocidio-intervista-a-tarcisse-seminega/?fbclid=IwAR3TSMBw_FJ_V7LPFI5qsOmCL54XoPxHzqdJ45rKQ7Tl5WYpdeApBzVKAzU