60 Through radio transmission, the Hutu extremists taught listeners that the Hutu and Tutsi were two different people and that the Tutsi were foreign conquerors who had refused to accept their loss of power in the 1959 revolution. The RTLM broadcasts warned the Tutsi: ‗You cockroaches must know you are made of flesh! We won‘t let you kill! We will kill you!‘ The same themes appeared in propaganda both before and during the genocide, suggesting a ‗deliberate coordination among propagandists and between them and government officials‘.
Radio transmissions were a critical component of the genocide. In fact, during the genocide, when communications and travel became difficult, the radio became, for most people, the sole source of news as well as the sole authority for interpreting its meaning. After the RTLM identified and criticized an individual, the Interahamwe would immediately seek him out and kill him. Therefore, the RTLM exercised extensive and pervasive influence over the militia. In addition, the RTLM recognized that the participation - both direct and indirect - of the entire Rwandan population was necessary to the success of the genocide. For example, during a broadcast after the genocide had begun, an announcer stated: ‗Stand up, take action . . . without worrying about international opinion‘. Additionally, the RTLM employed various narrative techniques to convince the Hutu population that the Tutsi posed a significant threat to Hutu lives and livelihoods. The messages conveyed the idea that the Hutu must ‗kill or be killed‘ and emphasized that the deaths the Hutu would face at the hands of the Tutsi would be particularly gruesome.
61 and interference so that the family of the victims and of the perpetrators share the aftermath of the genocide.
The social identification of the Rwandan community is open to suspicion and has a long way to go (Smith 2004: 4). Memorials of genocide are some of the consequences of genocide. Their integration into Rwandan symbols of memories is having social, cultural, religious and economic implications in the local community. Rwandan history cannot be represented in the memorials, but the roots of genocide are highlighted through the articulated moments of history. The community is sensitized to visiting those heartbreaking symbols that are open to discussion and are influential in their ordinary, daily communication.
How will the community manage the neighbourhood of thirty memorials that carry a traumatic aspect into their social space and which affect their everyday life? There are visual symbols that each Rwandan has to face and try to integrate and understand. The most predominant feature is surrounded by the reality of genocide memorials every day on Rwandan national television. The copious information provided about the genocide indicates that they occupy an important place in the country and this becomes more impressive for the hundred days of Rwanda‘s genocide.
Although the human subject is rational, that rationality is influenced by the social construct that the milieu in which she/he is plays an important role in regulating the behaviour. The subject is a human being with relative rationality influenced by experiences that create an understanding of the world. Kant says that the human subject‘s capacity to reason about the world is to be explained by examining the complex relationship between experience and understanding. This understanding may be objective or subjective about concepts or symbols such as memorials. The capacity to reason or to understand and to interpret the environment could be produced by conscious or unconscious cultural or social forces (Ashe 1999: 91-93 ) that are needed by human beings to have experience of an objective world.
62 The genocide demolished those Rwandan values and norms considered as the frame of reference.
As Giddens (2001: 22) states, ―These abstract ideas, or values, give meaning and provide guidance to humans as they interact with the social world. Norms are the rules of behaviour which reflect or embody a culture‘s values. Values and norms work together to shape how members of a culture behave within their surroundings‖.
Harmony in a given society relies on these abstract constructions, in its understanding. These constructions facilitate the relationships between individuals. Within cultural behaviour, the most influential surroundings of the cultural values are the memories of those who perished during the genocide. There is a suspicious atmosphere which does not allow the local community to feel comfortable about the fact that those memories keep two irreconcilable poles within the same community. These redefinitions of the Rwandan social world are the social and psychological consequences of the genocide.
Many survivors have been left without any support and are living in tragic conditions. They are searching for the meaning of life through what happened to them. Orphans are another crucial issue in the whole country. Some of them are heading families and are still minors. Widowhood is another issue that increased the critical condition of survivors, because most of them are very poor and HIV positive. The loneliness, trauma, large numbers of prisoners and refugees are hindrances to wellbeing in the community. It is within this environment that the local community has kept its individual and social memory.
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