Joseph Mugenga knows first-hand the traumatic reality that comes with genocide after losing most of his family in the Rwanda Massacre in 1994.
Yesterday marked the 10-year anniversary of the genocide attempts in Rwanda. Rwandan natives attending Ohio University spoke last night at a commemorative in the Research and Technology building to share their traumatic experiences.
After World War I, Belgium took control of the colony of Rwanda from Germany. The Belgium colonists considered the tribe of Tutsis more European because of their physical characteristics and the Hutus an inferior ethnicity. In April 1994, a plane crashed over Rwanda, killing then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira. From this event, conflict spurred genocide attempts by the Hutus, killing 800,000 Tutsis.
I am mixed (Tutsi and Hutu)
so I lost my father and all my relatives on my mom's side said Mugenga, an OU graduate student and Rwandan native.
Since the massacre, Mugenga has been trying to cope with the experience, but said it is still too early to deal with the trauma. For Mugenga, it is too early to pardon the people who murdered his family.
Still, 10 years after the massacre, the Rwandan government is trying to restore order and bring justice to the families victimized by the genocide attempts.
The commemorative featured a film titled, Gacaca: Living Together Again in Rwanda showing the attempts by the government to unify the nation once again.
Gacaca is an ancient Rwandan tradition used in villages for small conflicts. Citizens of the village meet for an intimate community trial to reconcile the problem by having the accused stand before the villagers. Members take turns stating their case, and then an elected wiseman decides whether the accused are guilty or innocent.
Ines Mpambara, graduate student and Rwanda native, finds a flaw in the system of Gacaca.
The problem with Gacaca is
where is the truth? said Mpambara.
With the system, the accused person can admit to their crime and ask for forgiveness, which will reduce their sentence. This is allowed because the prisons in Rwanda are too overcrowded to accommodate all the guilty Hutus for a complete sentence.
After the movie presentation, Mugenga and Mpambara answered questions concerning Gacaca, other countries surrounding Rwanda such as Sudan and Burundi facing similar conflict and the current status of the healing process in Rwanda.
Assistant professor of philosophy Alyssa Bernstein attended the commemorative because her father's parents and sister were victims of genocide during the Holocaust.
I assume the same traumatic experiences must be affecting the Rwandan people
said Bernstein. It takes years and generations to come to terms to understand and cope with it.
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Blake Gillespie
