Fifteen years ago, I lived on another continent, in a land that was (and is) home. Ten or so years prior to that, I lived on yet another continent. Counting back that far makes me feel so old. The former of course was Asia, the latter, Africa. Fifteen years ago, a man named Bill Clinton was President of the free world. Jean Chretien was Canada's big shot in Parliament. John Major was the Prime Minister in the United Kingdom. Maggy Thatcher's dear friend Mitterrand was President of the Fifth Republic. And fifteen years ago, on that continent of Africa, something started.
Something so vile that the word used to describe it (legally as per the IGO called the UN and colloquially) does not quite convey its cruelty and indiscriminate nature. What happened in Central Africa by those great lakes was truly horrible. Genocide. A word made up from a couple of Latin words. An estimated 800,000. In about 100 days. Do the math. That's about 8,000 a day if you assume a uniform distribution. That's a lot of deaths. How many people do you think you see in a day? How long before you can count up to 8,000 unique people? That rate incidentally was about 5 times faster than that of the Nazis.
What was a battle between a set of people who thought they were different from each other... called Hutus and Tutsis, turned into the mass murder of one set of people along with moderates from the other side who didn't want to participate or did not necessarily agree with the activities. What makes it worse is that the world sat by and watched, looked the other way, pretended not to hear, pretended not to care. Some even actively took part in making matters worse, helping the murderers.
At some point in the mid 20th century, once the horrors of the so called final solution were realised by the world, we all took a collective vow of never again. Not on our watch. Not in my lifetime. Yeah right. If we learned anything from the horrors of that final solution and similar ones carried out in the far east, it was that human beings have an incredible ability to be cruel. To forgo all norms of decency. To throw away the veil of pretending to be nice. To do unimaginable torture to one another. The cruelty that makes places like Treblinka and Belżec horrible names and hallowed grounds at the same time and names like Himmler, Mengele, Ishii reviled. Ishii incidentally is alleged to have lived and worked close to where I now live, in Maryland.
And yet, we either forgot or didn't care about those vows. We let it happen again and again and again. We definitely watched while it happened in Rwanda. Fifteen years ago, we could have done something about it. But instead, we looked the other way. Cynics would say, there is no oil there, so why should we care. I don't know what to tell them. But fifteen years ago, because of our actions or lack thereof, we let something come into being. Something that took away about 800,000 of our fellow men, women and children. By some of the cruelest ways possible. Chopped by a machete, left to bleed to death. Hacked to pieces. The Germans were at least clinical; they gassed and shot their victims. And any time someone says something like that, you have to stop and wonder.
We as the world had sent a bunch of blue helmets out there to try and keep the lunatics away from the others. We sent them with a half-assed Chapter VI mandate. What does that mean? You can shoot if shot at. But you cannot enforce the peace if they shoot at each other. My country sent a General and his assistant. The UN gave it a pronounceable name... UNAMIR. Because a blackhawk helicopter fell out of the sky in Mogadishu, the Americans didn't bother with Rwanda. Who cares if another bunch of Africans kill each other eh? The French were busy meddling and supporting the murderers. Canada sent a General and his assistant and that was about it. The rest of the world was busy worrying about other things. The blue helmets were made up of a bunch of ill equipped and poorly trained third world soldiers. Why? Because they get paid more on UN peace keeping duty than they do sitting at home in their barracks.
And what happened? A bunch of Africans took up machetes, incited by the radio, out to kill 'cockroaches', they hacked their neighbours to pieces. And what happened to not on our watch? It went by the wayside. The few that cared could do little. The UN failed. Days, weeks before the beginning of the massacres, the general in command asked for more troops, equipment, supplies. He got nothing. His own country left him stranded. The former colonial masters of that land had sent some troops. Decently trained, professional, armed to the teeth type Belgians. But then they withdrew because they lost a bunch of soldiers to the murders. That left the UN force commander with next to nothing. He had about 270 soldiers to command and his bosses at the UN told him to abandon ship. He chose not to for whatever reason.
This isn't really the story of General Dallaire. He was but one pawn in that tragedy. He survived, experienced it all, returned, got discharged from the Canadian forces on medical grounds, tried to kill himself and when that failed, decided to write a book. Go read Shake hands with the Devil if you want to see what 15 years ago looked like from his point of view. He now spends his time as a senator in the Upper house of Parliament and as a witness at the ICTR trying to convict the many devils that did what they did in those days.
But what of those people who lived and died back then? Did they not have dreams and hopes? Were they not human? Was their life not worth something? How were we able to look the other way? What if the shoe was on the other foot, you know the foot where you and I have to run for our lives because some crazy machete wielding fellow is out to cut us into pieces because of who we are? Would we not have felt anguish at the lack of care of our fellow man in America and Canada and China and France and Russia and India and the rest of the world?
Doing nothing is doing something. By doing nothing, we chose to side with the perpetrators of those crimes. I am not saying that we need to be super heroes and fight crime in every shape and form... but when we send a bunch of people to represent us and defend fellow man from such acts of senseless violence and then we look the other way or choose not to care, what are we saying about ourselves? That we care when it suits us? That's what it boils down to. We'll protect you if none of our people get hurt and someone else pays for it right? But then why pretend to care? Why have the UN? Why not just live by the adage every man for himself? Why the façade?
And what of those that committed the crimes? When do they face justice? When they meet their maker? I am not a religious person, but if there is a god, I sure as hell hope these people have their day of judgement. And so too the people in power who chose not to do anything knowing full well what would happen.
Fifteen years ago, we had a choice to make. And we chose wrong. We looked the other way while 800,000 people just like us got chopped to pieces. They may be dead, but they deserve some dignity in death at least. So, spare a thought for those men, women and children. There is no list of people saved or a Steven Spielberg movie (ironically, released a year earlier) to give us an idea of what their lives were like and how they lived and died. Just an estimated number. And whatever weighs on our souls.
Something so vile that the word used to describe it (legally as per the IGO called the UN and colloquially) does not quite convey its cruelty and indiscriminate nature. What happened in Central Africa by those great lakes was truly horrible. Genocide. A word made up from a couple of Latin words. An estimated 800,000. In about 100 days. Do the math. That's about 8,000 a day if you assume a uniform distribution. That's a lot of deaths. How many people do you think you see in a day? How long before you can count up to 8,000 unique people? That rate incidentally was about 5 times faster than that of the Nazis.
What was a battle between a set of people who thought they were different from each other... called Hutus and Tutsis, turned into the mass murder of one set of people along with moderates from the other side who didn't want to participate or did not necessarily agree with the activities. What makes it worse is that the world sat by and watched, looked the other way, pretended not to hear, pretended not to care. Some even actively took part in making matters worse, helping the murderers.
At some point in the mid 20th century, once the horrors of the so called final solution were realised by the world, we all took a collective vow of never again. Not on our watch. Not in my lifetime. Yeah right. If we learned anything from the horrors of that final solution and similar ones carried out in the far east, it was that human beings have an incredible ability to be cruel. To forgo all norms of decency. To throw away the veil of pretending to be nice. To do unimaginable torture to one another. The cruelty that makes places like Treblinka and Belżec horrible names and hallowed grounds at the same time and names like Himmler, Mengele, Ishii reviled. Ishii incidentally is alleged to have lived and worked close to where I now live, in Maryland.
And yet, we either forgot or didn't care about those vows. We let it happen again and again and again. We definitely watched while it happened in Rwanda. Fifteen years ago, we could have done something about it. But instead, we looked the other way. Cynics would say, there is no oil there, so why should we care. I don't know what to tell them. But fifteen years ago, because of our actions or lack thereof, we let something come into being. Something that took away about 800,000 of our fellow men, women and children. By some of the cruelest ways possible. Chopped by a machete, left to bleed to death. Hacked to pieces. The Germans were at least clinical; they gassed and shot their victims. And any time someone says something like that, you have to stop and wonder.
We as the world had sent a bunch of blue helmets out there to try and keep the lunatics away from the others. We sent them with a half-assed Chapter VI mandate. What does that mean? You can shoot if shot at. But you cannot enforce the peace if they shoot at each other. My country sent a General and his assistant. The UN gave it a pronounceable name... UNAMIR. Because a blackhawk helicopter fell out of the sky in Mogadishu, the Americans didn't bother with Rwanda. Who cares if another bunch of Africans kill each other eh? The French were busy meddling and supporting the murderers. Canada sent a General and his assistant and that was about it. The rest of the world was busy worrying about other things. The blue helmets were made up of a bunch of ill equipped and poorly trained third world soldiers. Why? Because they get paid more on UN peace keeping duty than they do sitting at home in their barracks.
And what happened? A bunch of Africans took up machetes, incited by the radio, out to kill 'cockroaches', they hacked their neighbours to pieces. And what happened to not on our watch? It went by the wayside. The few that cared could do little. The UN failed. Days, weeks before the beginning of the massacres, the general in command asked for more troops, equipment, supplies. He got nothing. His own country left him stranded. The former colonial masters of that land had sent some troops. Decently trained, professional, armed to the teeth type Belgians. But then they withdrew because they lost a bunch of soldiers to the murders. That left the UN force commander with next to nothing. He had about 270 soldiers to command and his bosses at the UN told him to abandon ship. He chose not to for whatever reason.
This isn't really the story of General Dallaire. He was but one pawn in that tragedy. He survived, experienced it all, returned, got discharged from the Canadian forces on medical grounds, tried to kill himself and when that failed, decided to write a book. Go read Shake hands with the Devil if you want to see what 15 years ago looked like from his point of view. He now spends his time as a senator in the Upper house of Parliament and as a witness at the ICTR trying to convict the many devils that did what they did in those days.
But what of those people who lived and died back then? Did they not have dreams and hopes? Were they not human? Was their life not worth something? How were we able to look the other way? What if the shoe was on the other foot, you know the foot where you and I have to run for our lives because some crazy machete wielding fellow is out to cut us into pieces because of who we are? Would we not have felt anguish at the lack of care of our fellow man in America and Canada and China and France and Russia and India and the rest of the world?
Doing nothing is doing something. By doing nothing, we chose to side with the perpetrators of those crimes. I am not saying that we need to be super heroes and fight crime in every shape and form... but when we send a bunch of people to represent us and defend fellow man from such acts of senseless violence and then we look the other way or choose not to care, what are we saying about ourselves? That we care when it suits us? That's what it boils down to. We'll protect you if none of our people get hurt and someone else pays for it right? But then why pretend to care? Why have the UN? Why not just live by the adage every man for himself? Why the façade?
And what of those that committed the crimes? When do they face justice? When they meet their maker? I am not a religious person, but if there is a god, I sure as hell hope these people have their day of judgement. And so too the people in power who chose not to do anything knowing full well what would happen.
Fifteen years ago, we had a choice to make. And we chose wrong. We looked the other way while 800,000 people just like us got chopped to pieces. They may be dead, but they deserve some dignity in death at least. So, spare a thought for those men, women and children. There is no list of people saved or a Steven Spielberg movie (ironically, released a year earlier) to give us an idea of what their lives were like and how they lived and died. Just an estimated number. And whatever weighs on our souls.
Comments
It's only gonna get worse, I fear. It's taking NGOs to force the world to show compassion today. Tomorrow even their words will fall on deaf ears.. we really are regressing arent we ?