GORILLAS, SAVAGES, AND REDEMPTION

Hotel Mille des Collines, Kigali, Rwanda.  Ever see the movie Hotel Rwanda?  It’s about the manager of a hotel in Africa who did his best to provide a refuge from one of the greatest atrocities in history – the slaughter of over 800,000 innocent people in 100 days.  I’m writing this from that hotel.

This is a story of grotesque horror and magnificent inspiration.  Let’s start with a question:  Which one is the murderous savage?

Hint:  gorillas are vegetarians. 

I took the bull silverback gorilla’s picture two days ago on the slopes of the Gahinga volcano in the Virunga mountains of Rwanda.  He paid almost no attention to me at all.

The picture of the guy with the "panga" knife was taken in 1994 by a journalist who was lucky he wasn’t hacked to death – like hundreds of thousands of others butchered by this guy and his buddies.  Sure enough, he’s the savage.

Yet the savages of Rwanda are not all natives, for this is a story of Belgian and French savages as well, with one of the latter being the president of his country at the time.

It’s a small place, smaller than Massachusetts, along the Congo-Nile watershed, remaining unknown to the West until Germans began exploring the outer reaches of their East African colony of Tanganyika in the late 1880s.

They found two kingdoms, Ruanda east of Lake Kivu, and to the south of it, Urundi reaching down to the top of Lake Tanganyika.  Both were composed of a Bantu people calling themselves Banyar-wanda, ruled by an aristocracy that called themselves Tutsi and the commoners they ruled Hutus.

The Germans incorporated both into German East Africa as their colony of Ruanda-Urundi in the late 1890s, then told the ruling Tutsi elite to govern it for them.  Few German colonists settled there, but at least they kept the Belgians and their King Leopold II (1835-1909) out who were engaged in a madness of greed and violence next door in the Belgian Congo.[1]

World War I ended that.  The victorious Brits stole most of German East Africa called Tanganyika, while Ruanda-Urundi was awarded to the Belgians as a League of Nations Mandate.  With Leopold long gone, however, the Belgians began developing their colony in a more civilized way.

While both parts of the colony continued to be ruled by the Tutsi elite, the highlands of Ruanda (as opposed to the lowlands of Urundi) gained a reputation as a tropical Switzerland, a place of magical beauty with a hard-working, peaceful and Christian people.  From the 1920s through the 1950s, save for two short drought-famines, Ruanda flourished.

The flourishing stopped with a Hutu grievance-monger named Gregoire Kayibanda.  Egged on by left-wing "liberation theology" Catholic missionaries, in 1957 he formed a political movement called Parmehutu, the Hutu Emancipation Party based on racist hatred for Tutsis, whom he claimed were racially/ethnically different from Hutus which (confirmed by DNA analysis) they weren’t.

The Tutsi-Hutu split was reflected in that of their colonial masters, as the dominance of French Belgians (Wallons) gave way to that of Dutch Belgians (Flemish) in the 1950s.  As the Wallons had favored the Tutsis, now the Flemish favored the Hutus – to the point of helping Kayibanda seize power and conduct, via his Hutu militias, a Tutsi-killing program called Winds of Destruction in 1960, which murdered tens of thousands of Tutsis in cold blood.

This in no way stopped the Belgian government from granting independence to Ruanda – renamed Rwanda – in 1962 with Kayibanda as president.  Over 100,000 Tutsis fled the new nation which promptly became a Hutu dictatorship that impoverished the entire country.  Among the Tutsi refugees was a young boy named Paul Kagame (ka-gah-mee) who fled with his family to Uganda.

Kayibanda was overthrown and killed in a military coup in 1973 led by Gen. Juvenal Habyarimana, who continued scapegoating Tutsis for any problem and Jim Crow-like discrimination against them.

An example of how the country deteriorated under Habyarimana is what happened to famed gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, author of Gorillas in the Mist, who had been studying the "gentle giants" in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda since 1967.

As the poaching of gorillas increased in the 1970s, with poachers trying to capture infant gorillas (for sale to zoos) which required killing of several adult gorillas trying to protect the baby, Fossey did everything she could to stop it.  As recompense, in 1985 she was murdered in her Virunga cabin, her skull split open by a panga wielded by a poacher.  (Three years later, her book was made into a movie starring Signourey Weaver.)

By the mid-1980s there were 500,000 Tutsi exiles in Uganda.  Many of them had gained considerable guerrilla experience fighting with Yoweri Musaveni’s National Resistance Army which finally succeeded in ridding Uganda from Idi Amin’s successor (and almost as bad), Milton Obote in 1986. 

Among them was Paul Kagame, now 27, who, with Musaveni’s grateful assistance, organized them into the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF).  As an officer in the Ugandan Army, Musaveni sent him to Fort Leavenworth for training by the US Army.

This scared Habyarimana into asking the French for help, who were happy to comply as they considered Rwanda part of la francophonie Africaine, French-speaking Africa (thanks to those Wallon French Belgians).

Perhaps you remember from The Newest African Farce last week the mention of Fashoda in southern Sudan, where the Brits in 1898 spoiled France’s attempt to colonize northern Africa from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Red Sea.

The resulting bitterness developed into a trauma lasting generations known to European diplomats as "the Fashoda Syndrome" – the French obsession of preserving Francophone Africa as their one preserve of grandeur in the world, particularly against any encroachment upon it by the hated British and Anglophone (English-speaking) Africa.

Sounds goofy, doesn’t it?  But remember, we’re talking about the French here, who still can’t stand they lost at Waterloo. 

From 1981 to 1995, the president of France was Francois Mitterrand, who had inherited the Fashoda Syndrome in spades.  There wasn’t a dictator in French Africa he wasn’t buds with, including Habyarimana.  Starting in late 1990, Mitterrand poured money, weapons, equipment, and military advisors into Rwanda, building Rwanda’s army from 9,000 to 28,000 – enabling Habyarimana to imprison and torture anyone, Hutu or Tutsi, who opposed his rule.

The backlash to the increased oppression so strengthened support for Kagame’s RPF that by the summer of 1993, Habyarimana, having blown through every dime the French had given him and broke, signed a peace agreement with the RPF known as the Arusha Accords (as they were inked in Arusha, Tanzania.)

This so enraged Hutu extremists they formed a group called Hutu Power, with a militia called Interahamwe, meaning "those who work together" – with "work" as the code word for murdering Tutsis until they were extinct.

Their leader was the Director of the Rwanda Defense Ministry, Col. Theoneste Bagosora.  Among his preparations for what he called apocalypse deux  (the second apocalypse as the first was Kayibanda’s Winds of Destruction in 1960) was the importation of 580,000 panga machetes and their distribution to the Interahamwe, along with detailed death lists of Tutsis to be targeted in every district in the country.

Bagosora organized the Interahamwe into groups of 40, had them trained in army camps on how to "kill 1,000 Tutsis in 20 minutes," then scattered them throughout the capital of Kigali and other cities.  He set up a radio station, Radio Mille Collines (Thousand Hills, Rwanda’s nickname), run by a Moslem Hutu, Hassan Ngeze, spewing outright genocidal hatred: "The inyenzi (cockroaches, the Hutu term for Tutsis) must be exterminated!"

Bagosora had also developed a relationship with Mitterrand’s personal military emissary to Rwanda, Paul Barril, a former leader of French elite special forces units.  When Bagosora told Barril he wanted to acquire shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, Barril arranged, via a cutout set up by arms dealer Dominque Lemonnier, for delivery of 15 Mistral surface-to-air missiles to the Anti-Aircraft Battalion (French initials LAA) stationed at the Kanombe military camp next to the Kigali airport.

On April 3, 1994, in response to Habyarimana’s announcement at a conference in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, that he would be implementing the Arusha Accords when he returned to Kigali, Hassan Ngeze commented on Radio Mille Collines that "a little something" was about to happen.

Habyarimana flew back aboard his private Falcon 50 jet, a present from Mitterrand, on April 6.  As the plane approached to land at Kigali airport at 8:15pm, two Mistral missiles were fired from Kanombe camp, blowing it out of the sky.

Within minutes, Radio Mille Collines was broadcasting that Kagame’s RPF had shot the plane down and murdered Rwanda’s beloved president.  Within an hour, the Rwandan Genocide – the mass slaughter of between 800,000 and one million Tutsis regardless of age or sex – began.

Bagosora had organized his genocidaires well.  Radio Mille Collines’ slogan became "The graves are not yet full."  As the slaughter continued, averaging ten thousand butchered by Hutu pangas every day for over three months (and some half-million Tutsi women and little girls were raped repeatedly), United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali did nothing.  President Bill Clinton did nothing.  French president Francois Mitterrand did everything he could to help the Hutu kill the Tutsis.

One of the more sickeningly heart-breaking aspects of the genocide was Hutu Christian priests abetting it.  When Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana sent word for Tutsi refugees to seek sanctuary at his church in Mugonero, some 2,000 came – only to find they were surrounded by government soldiers and Interahamwe militia.

They wrote a letter to their pastor, writing:  "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families."  The pastor replied with a short note:   "There is nothing I can do for you.  All you can do is prepare to die, for your time has come."  

All 2,000 were butchered to death, with many first having their Achilles tendons cut so they couldn’t escape while the Interahamwe were wielding their pangas on others.

When American journalist Phillip Gourevitch wrote what is the best account of the Rwanda Genocide, he appropriately entitled it:  We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families.

The horror finally began ending when Paul Kagame secured a refuge for Tutsis escaping the horror in the Virunga mountains, incorporated them into his RPF guerrilla army, and by mid-May, had gained control of the eastern half of the country. 

While thousands continued to be hacked to death in churches, hospitals (mothers and their new-born babies), and villages in the western half, Mitterrand became desperate to save the Hutu regime.  He ordered a French invasion force called Operation Turquoise into western Rwanda from Zaire-Congo as a "humanitarian mission" to save Hutus from the "genocide" he claimed the Tutsis were committing!

Radio Mille Collines broadcast the message:  "You Hutu girls – wash yourselves and put on a good dress to welcome our French allies.  The Tutsi girls are all dead so now is your chance."

When the French soldiers saw they were supporting the killers not the killed, they refused to obey orders and retreated.  On July 4, Kagame took Kigali, the capital.  Bagosora ordered a mass evacuation, forcing over one million Hutus to leave their villages and escape to Zaire.  Mitterrand blamed the resulting refugee camps on Kagame, Clinton called it the "worst humanitarian crisis in a generation" while saying not a word about the genocide, and the UN began spending $1 million a day on the crisis created by the French-protected genocidaires on purpose.

By July 18, Kagame had control of the entire country, a government of national unity was sworn in with 12 of the 18 ministers being Hutu moderates, and Kagame as vice-president.  The new president was a Hutu committed to reconciliation, Pasteur Bizimundu.

Between 800,000 to 1,000,000 human being had been slaughtered in 100 days – "more people had been killed more quickly than in any other mass killing in recorded history," as one historian put it.  The entire country had been destroyed, millions of survivors were homeless and starving.  Rwanda was now the poorest country on earth.

While across the border in Zaire-Congo, the French were re-arming and supplying Theoneste Bagosora and his Interahamwe for a new offensive. 

But by now, Mitterrand was dying of cancer.  Jacques Chirac replaced him as president in May, 1995 and he died eight months later.  A rebellion against Zaire dictator Mobutu broke out, the forces of which attacked the Interahamwe who fled, allowing 600,000 Hutu refugees to pour back into Rwanda in late 1996.

Eastern Zaire-Congo disintegrated into a catastrophic maelstrom – but Kagame was determined that Rwanda would not. 

Fast forward 15 years later to today.  Rwanda is again a land of serenity, of peaceful magical beauty.  All vestiges of its horrors have vanished.  They are not forgotten.  There is a museum and garden monument to the genocide at a spot in Kigali where 50,000 of its victims were thrown by the genocidaires into mass graves:

 

But there is no revenge and no violence.  How can this be?  Because Paul Kagame is a real Christian who believes in redemption.  He realized that if Rwanda was to overcome its horrors, its people must perform two requirements.

The first was the requirement to Apologize and Forgive. 

While there was an International Criminal Tribunal under UN auspices that tried and convicted to life imprisonment many of the genocide’s main perpetrators such as Theoneste Bagosora and Hassan Ngeze, Kagame set up a National Unity and Reconciliation Commission to deal with over 100,000 captured Hutu genocidaires.

Using traditional Gacaca village trials, prisoners (dressed in pink) had to admit and apologize for their crimes to members and elders of their own community – and in turn, the community, after deciding appropriate recompense (from returning to prison to working in the fields for the families of victims), had to forgive.  With that, the issue was settled and reconciled.

The second was the requirement that there were no longer any Hutus or Tutsis.  That distinction was abolished.  Everyone was now a Rwandan – period.

And with that, the country healed itself.  Rwandans took pride in their country again, so much so that everyone volunteers one day a month to help keep the country clean – including President Kagame.  The streets are spotless, the roads well maintained and landscaped.  The economy is growing in double digits.  There is no corruption and almost no crime.

This is a country that has redeemed itself.  Rwanda has become a thrilling tribute to the human capacity to triumph over indescribable disaster.

The French can’t stand it – especially since Rwandans speak English far more than French now, and in an ultimate insult, Rwanda joined (November 2009) the British Commonwealth.  In revenge, they got a corrupt judge in Paris, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, to issue an international indictment accusing Paul Kagame of ordering the assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana!  The indictment was based on testimony by Mitterrand’s agent Paul Barril.

French vicious pettiness reached another high point last Saturday (March 05), when they persuaded the British equivalent of the National Enquirer tabloid rag, the London Daily Mail, to accuse Paul Kagame of conducting the Hutu Rwanda Genocide.

The Daily Mail is obsessed with pathological hatred of former British PM Tony Blair.  Tired of running hit pieces on Blair’s association with Muamar Gaddafi, it accused Blair of being friends with Kagame, "a despot guilty of even bloodier slaughter"  — with pictures of heaps of skulls from the Hutu genocide that Kagame ended.

No liberal-leftie US newspaper, not even the New York Slimes, comes close to the disgustingly dishonest yellow journalism of London tabloids like the Daily Mail.  The French knew just where to go to peddle their Fashoda Syndrome resentment and hate.

Paul Kagame is not focused on hate, resentment, and revenge.  He has triumphed over it with reconciliation and redemption.  Here’s what he looks like:

 
Hopefully, he’ll be someday recognized for it with a Nobel Peace Prize.  For now, he and all Rwandans are grateful for what they have achieved together. 

It is a lesson in Christian morality that we should all take to heart.  The differences between political and social tribes of Americans – Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives, et al – are nano-scale miniscule compared to those that separated Hutus and Tutsis across such a hideous abyss 15 years ago.

Our battles with the Dems on Capitol Hill and union thugs in Madison, Wisconsin, must be won.  But once we’ve restored freedom in America, we must have reconciliation and redemption.  Forgive, apologize, and all of us be Americans once again.  If Rwanda can do it, surely so can we.

Perhaps someday, you might come here to see this wonderfully inspiring place for yourself.  Here’s the view of Kigali you’ll have from the balcony of your room at the Hotel Mille des Collines:

And of the gorgeous countryside:

You might even see an bright orange waterfall:

Here’s the view from your cottage of the Virunga volcanoes:

 

Of course, trekking through the jungle to get up close and personal with wild gorillas is an experience you’ll never ever forget:

 
I sure won’t:

Trust me, you won’t either.

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[1]   Leopold’s "madness of greed and violence" was immortalized by Joseph Conrad in his novel The Heart of Darkness, which he wrote after being a river boat captain for six months on the Congo River in 1890.  A common punishment of Leopold’s for Congolese forced laborers who failed to make their quota of wild rubber collection was to have one of their hands cut off.