That's when the killing started.
In no more than one hour after the plane crash, the Hutu extremists (those who want Tutsis killed) establish a force against the RPF and within 100 days kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus (those unwilling to kill Tutsis)
Rape used as a weapon
During the conflict, Hutu extremists recruited patients suffering from HIV in hospitals. Those suffering from HIV were put into “rape squads” and made to rape Tutsi women. The intent behind this was to infect the surviving Tutsi women with HIV and give them a “slow, inevitable death”.
its absence was the exception.
- UN Special Rapporteur Rene Degni-Segui
Zura Karuhimbi: Scares away Hutu men as a witch
Zura Karuhimbi was a widow who hid Tutsis in her home. In total, she saved over 100 people, including babies she took from the arms of their dead mothers. To rid her home of soldiers, Karuhimbi built up a reputation for being possessed by evil spirits. Her family were traditional healers from the village of Musamo, and Karuhimbi became a “healer”; she also was viewed by people as having “magical” powers. To further her witch looks, she painted herself with natural herbs that acted as an irritant. When Hutus came to her home, she claimed her house was filled with ghosts and those who tried to enter would “experience the wrath of god themselves”. Karuhimbi furthered this effect by jiggling the bracelets on her arms and stated that if any refugees were killed inside her house they would be “digging their own graves”.
History.com Editors. “Rwandan Genocide.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, October 14, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/africa/rwandan-genocide.
Ngabonziza, Dan. “Meet Karuhimbi, Whose Prank Saved 100 Tutsi.” KT PRESS, January 26, 2018. https://www.ktpress.rw/2015/04/meet-mukaruhimbi-whose-prank-saved-100-tutsi/.
“Rwanda Profile - Timeline.” BBC News. BBC, September 17, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14093322.
“Rwandan Genocide.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, January 26, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide.
Website made and written by Jonathan Li. 2020 Jan.
Saving people from those armed with machetes and guns was no easy task. Especially when you’re a widow from a small town with little strength. That didn’t stop Zura Karuhimbi, though. She saved over 100 people from vicious Hutu soldiers, not relying on her strength but her mind. Karuhimbi built up a reputation for being possessed by evil spirits, and when the soldiers came to her home she claimed her house was filled with ghosts, and other threats. Zura, a hutu’s, story shows us hope even in times of trouble.
Including when… During the rwandan genocide, the Hutu people were cruel enough to release people from hostpitals who where known to have HIV, and form them in to “rape squads”. These people were then told to rape Tutsi women, giving them a “slow, inevitable death”.
Why be more cruel to the Tutsi woman you don’t know, that have family? Why not just end their suffering much faster with a machete, instead of relying on biological agents? As a human, how can we treat one another like this?
The answer to these questions lies in dehumanization. Not only shown in the rwandan genocide, but also in the holocaust and in slave owners, dehumanization is treating, and more importantly, thinking, of someone as subhuman. When this happens, as shown historically, bad things happen. As jews in the holocaust were reffered to as rats, tutsis during the rwandan genocide were referred to as cockroaches. Being humans, we tend to notice subhuman things less in our psychological hierarchy of value.
We should not treat humans subhuman, as hitler and hutu extremists did. We should not turn away when something troubling comes. We should not forget the many who are currently dying as a result of hiv. We should, as Zura has done, treat others equally, not as cockroaches. We should put others’ shoes on, but that first requires treating them as a human.