CHAPTER 4: AFTER THE GENOCIDE: 1994-1999
4.3. The silenced narratives
4.3.1. The refugee exodus
Forges, 1999, 855). The following section will examine some of the narratives that were silenced to make room for this new dominant narrative.
families, peasants, businessmen, abandoned children, priests, nuns and even madmen (1995, 195).
Khan describes the scene at one of the largest refugee camps these hundreds of thousands of people would arrive at. “The road from the airport was full of
starving, sick and dying refugees. Scores of dead bodies lay strewn about rotting in the sun, with people simply stepping over the dead carcasses … Dead children lay next to mothers who were also dying of cholera, hunger or simply exhaustion”
(Khan, 2000, 33). Prunier further describes scenes of corpses falling into the lake, spreading the cholera epidemic that had traveled with the fleeing refugees (1995, 302).
But one of the foremost issues in the camp was that of security. Apart from several hundred thousand civilian, there were several thousand known genocidal leaders amongst the refugees. This ‘criminal element’ in the refugee camps would result not only in continued suffering for the masses of civilians but in eventual war that would spill over into several countries in Central Africa for at least another decade. Prunier quotes a former leader during the genocide as saying,
“Even if the RPF has a won a military victory, it will not have the power. It only has the bullets, we have the population” (1995, 314). Soon after the establishments of the camps, it became apparent to humanitarian aid workers that former genocidal leaders had taken over control of the camps, organizing the masses of refugees into the same commune structures as in Rwanda, guaranteeing that the same extremists would hold power and have influence over the civilians (Prunier, 1995, 315; McCullum, 1995, 43; Khan, 2000, 72). Apart from this, Khan describes a Human Rights Watch report that cited clear evidence for the training and
recruiting of refugees by the former genocidal leaders with the support of the DRC government (2000, 141). These trained forces would undertake cross-border raids into Rwanda, causing further insecurity within the country.
It was thus strongly to the advantage of former leaders to hold onto the civilian refugees, and they did this by continuing the genocide-fear-propaganda
campaign. Ian McCullum describes how many refugees “believed the propaganda that the Tutsi-dominated RPF would exterminate them. Radio Mille Collines, now on wheels, pumped out stories of massacres, although few could be confirmed by
the UN … Most of all, the people were cowed by the intimidation and terrorism practiced by the former government and its army and militias … Those who tried to return to Rwanda were beaten, tortured or killed” (McCullum, 1995, 55).
Very soon after the new government was in place, efforts were on the way to encourage refugees to return to Rwanda. Many felt that the only way forward in terms of reconciliation would be for all Rwandans to be together in one country and for justice to be meted out. However, the bulk of the two million refugees in the DRC, Tanzania, and Burundi refused to return. Suggested reasons for this included that the conditions in the camp were better than what many of the refugees had ever experienced back home, that they were guilty and therefore afraid to face justice, or that they were genuinely afraid of the revenge of the RPF and Tutsi.
Khan describes how in the refugee camps, refugees were guaranteed food for the children, medical assistance, schools, and even in some camps, cinemas, night clubs, churches and educational and upliftment activities (2000, 146). Both he and McCullum write how some two million dollars were poured into the refugee camps by international donors every month, ensuring the absolute comfort and ease of the refugees (McCullum, 1995, 88; Khan, 2000, 146). However, the stories of refugees themselves differ with this somewhat. Umutesi speaks of receiving only enough food for one week on a bi-weekly basis, resulting in malnutrition amongst children. She describes how many refugees were forced to hire themselves out to the locals to supplement their diet, receiving a handful of grain in return for a full days labour. Provision of heating wood was also insufficient, resulting in refugees scrounging every piece of usable resource in the surrounding area. She mentions the humiliation of having to wash her rags during periods in full view of those around her, and the rivulets of blood that ran with water between their temporary shacks (2000, 85).
Apart from the physical challenges, she speaks of the suffering of the refugees at their own uselessness. She describes the frustration of someone else deciding how much you will eat and when, and having to beg for extra when the little you are given is not enough. “To forget their uselessness, refugees threw themselves headlong into drink and debauchery” (2000, 83). Pottier also counters the idea of
well-fed refugees in describing how the food distributed was not culturally
appropriate – maize grain, which is costly and difficult to ground – was the staple diet, whereas Rwandans were accustomed to cassava (2002, 80). The reason why refugees may have given the impression of being well-fed, argues Prunier, is that the top leadership was well-fed, having taken over food distribution from humanitarian aid workers, ensuring that most of it would be channelled to themselves at the expense of the greater civilian population (1995, 315).
As small numbers of refugees trickled back and time passed, the growing feeling was that the refugees remaining were guilty of genocide. Pottier writes, “After some 700 000 refugees returned to Rwanda in November 1996, and the US military declared only ‘warring parties remained’, Rwandan officials declared the crises was over” (2002, 148). Those who remained were described as extremists and their camp followers. Pottier describes how the refugees were regarded by the Rwandan leadership and the international community as “one mass who spoke with one (extremist) voice. They were collectively guilty, collectively disposable” (2002, 149). There was even the sense that the cholera, death and suffering of the millions of Hutu in the refugee camps were their ‘just punishment’
for their supposed collective participation during the genocide (Prunier, 1995, 303).
By making the refugee mass out to be a collectivity, a guilty Hutu mass, Pottier argues that aid agencies did not take into consideration the north-south divide, the difference between respected leaders and self-appointed leaders, and that there were skilled and able people amongst the refugees who wanted to take an active part in their plight rather than just be dependencies (2002, 131,2). Even if not all refugees were seen as guilty, they were all seen as ‘hostages, collectively trapped under the claw of the unrelenting extremists’ (2002, 132).
Refugee accounts communicate a deep sense of fear amongst refugees about what would happen to them were they to return to Rwanda which impacted their choice to remain in refugee camps. McCullum writes,
“There is no doubt that the calamity was of apocalyptic proportions and that people were petrified by the advancing RPF army, which had by then taken
about half the country. ‘If Tutsis catch you, they slit your skin from head to foot and skin you alive,’ said one refugee. In fact, aid workers fishing bodies from the swollen Kagera River reported that the corpses bore the same brutal wounds as those inflicted on people slashed to death in churches inside Rwanda” (1994, 43).
He recounts stories of Anglican bishops not wanting to return, saying that they knew of and had spoken to people who had gone to Rwanda only to return to the refugee camps wounded, and with stories of revenge killings and danger
(McCullum, 1994, 83).
Khan further describes the continual mixed messages regarding whether it was safe to return to Rwanda or not. The UNHCR was reporting that the ‘new government is enough in charge to reasonably guarantee [the refugees] safety’
(2001, 132). Other reports were saying that security in Rwanda had deteriorated, and there were arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment. There was a doubling back of returning refugees back into the DRC. Also, many would-be returnees knew that their homes and businesses had been occupied by the ‘old case-load’ refugees, Tutsis who had come to Rwanda from abroad after the genocide, perceiving it as now being ‘their’ country.
The fear the refugees experienced was largely seen as either the result of the genocidal leaders propaganda campaign, or else the refugees own distortions of the truth. More and more, the mass of refugees was painted to be collectively guilty. Pottier argues that this story of ‘the guilty refugees’ was one fabricated and sold by the RPF to the international community to give the RPF a free hand in dealing with the refugees as they saw fit (2002,130).
Whether the international community bought the story as much as Pottier claims they did, they remained largely inactive in doing anything about the refugee problem, apart from doling out enormous amounts of money for humanitarian aid in the first couple of years, and then forgetting about the plight of these refugees after that. In the light of this inactivity, Khan mentions how the Rwandan
government made continued noises that they “might be obliged to reach across the border and ‘sort out the killers themselves’” (2000, 141). He refers to a speech
Kagame made to the effect that it would take them only a couple of days to ‘clean- up’ the intimidators in the camps (2000, 142).
After 1996, Umutesi describes how the refugee camps in the DRC were forcibly closed down, while at the same time the country was swept into a confusion of uprisings and civil war. She describes her harrowing trek across the DRC, while being pursued, she claims, by the RPF who wanted to eliminate every surviving refugee. At this point, Umutesi describes herself as being forgotten by the international community, labeled a genocidaire, and deserving of the hell she found herself in (2000, 102). Some tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of
refugees were killed either in stampedes, from hunger and disease or as a result of direct violence meted out upon them by the RPF and various factions within the DRC who wanted the camps closed and perceived the refugees as a threat (Umutesi, 2000; Pottier, 2001).
The narrative of the ‘cleaning-up’ of the camps remains a largely silent one.
Further, the many stories of suffering of what are referred to as ‘new case-load’
refugees are also silent as they are said to be incomparable, even unimportant, in the light of genocide. But the implications of these stories, and the suffering and agony they hold, remaining unspoken, unheard, and unacknowledged may become a block in the process of healing and reconciliation.