As a genocide survivor, I am troubled by the New York Times opinion piece “They Committed Genocide. Their Neighbors Welcome Them Home,” which removes “responsibility from the individuals who perpetrated the violence” by placing blame on historical colonialism and government.
Many ordinary Hutus made a deliberate choice to do evil, just as others chose not to kill, including Simeon, who hid and saved me and a dozen other Tutsi during the genocide.
Given the scale of the genocide and the sadistic violence individual Hutus used to annihilate the Tutsi in 1994, it is simply false to reduce their responsibility to following government orders, fear or the legacy of colonialism.
Widespread rape by HIV-positive Hutu men, body mutilations, cannibalism, and many other inhuman acts show that the ordinary Hutu, regardless of their level of education and social status, zealously enjoyed the “work,” the code word for killing during the genocide.
As for neighbors coming from “near and far” to welcome home génocidaires released from prison, the context matters. Survivors are estimated to be a little over 2% of the Rwandan population today. So, who are these neighbors exactly? Mainly the genocidaires’ friends and family.
There is a great vacuum in understanding the social dynamics of post-genocide Rwanda and the unique situation of genocide survivors, not helped by a dominant focus on forgiveness and reconciliation, especially when it comes at the expense of talking about the lack of reparative justice for survivors who lost so much in 1994.
By Albert Gasake
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