Where Are my People? A Question for Genocide Deniers
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Chapter 4: The Way Forward
As shown before, and like in any other unconventional warfare, the war to liberate the country claimed the life of many victims. And for the Rwandan case, in 1994 the country happened to be inhabitant almost only by Hutus as Tutsis were already slain, hiding or passed into liberated zones. This is a fact and everyone who wants to be objective would recognize it. But to call these killings a genocide against Hutus would be to mislead people’s opinion, especially when claimed by well known and highly respected researchers and scholars. It is the Rwandan government’s duty to initiate and facilitate an impartial and free research on the cases of Hutus fallen during the war to liberate the country. The study must be conducted on the number of the victims, places where they fell and the circumstances under which they died. This way the families who lost their loved ones will feel involved in the process of reconciliation and healing the society. Once the research would be completed, its details will help to cut short on speculations of people who claim that Hutus were executed in cold blood, as they keep nurturing theories of a double genocide.
The inaccuracy of the number of genocide survivors will continue to feed polemics about the genocide’s death toll if nothing is done to conduct appropriate researches in that area as well. The Rwandan government, through anti genocide organizations such as the CNLG or IBUKA genocide survivor’s organisations umbrella should make this task a priority. The research should be extended to study the really situation of Tutsis under the two first Republics, what was the nature of their relationships with their Hutu neighbours and friends and the nature of the tensions which opposed them until they reached the extent of extermination. Only this way, the cause, the process and the execution of genocide will be understood and the results will help set guidelines to prevent any other similar calamity for the future.
When calculated from both the given number of around 500.000 of Tutsis reported to be living in Rwanda before April 1994 and the figure of almost 300.000 people who survived, we find that more than 60% of Tutsis survived the genocide. But this assumption doesn’t concord at all with the reality in the country. Tutsis were few but in big families of at least 7 people, each. And when you check on survivors, many families were left with only one or two members who survived, so many others were decimated with no single survivor, and you could count in few hundreds these who did not lose anyone. So where are these who are missing?