Arusha: A Light in the Genocidal Darkness?

Arusha Tanzania is uniquely positioned to take the lead in forging an end to genocide. In 1994, neighboring Rwanda experienced the second worst genocide since the Holocaust, after Cambodia. For the last decade, Arusha has been host to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

After the Holocaust, the world said “never again.” But ‘never again’ became the hollowest phrase in the English language, especially where Africa is concerned. (Europe had another mini-Holocaust when Yugoslavia broke up after the Cold War ended, but it pales in comparison to Rwanda in ’94 and the Congo today.)

There is a terrible irony with the Tutsis in Rwanda that parallels the irony with the Jews in Israel. Understandably but utterly incorrectly, peoples that have been victims of genocide sometimes turn into aggressors against their neighbors.

One of the worst side effects of the Holocaust has been to use the attempted elimination of the Jews by the Nazis as the definition of genocide. The Nazi campaign was aimed primarily at the Jews, certainly, but the Nazi killing machine extinguished at least twice the number of other undesirables —homosexuals, gypsies, Russian prisoners and civilians, people with disabilities, etc.

Rwanda, which is now a member of the East African community, has been hip-deep in the blood of the Congo, where the most protracted, intractable, and nearly invisible slaughter has been going on for nearly a dozen years, killing nearly seven million people. As the New York Times reported, there is a “longstanding brotherhood between the Congolese rebels, who are mostly ethnic Tutsi, and the Tutsi-led government of Rwanda.”

That, in part, has led to Tutsi soldiers tearing off their Rwandan flag patches at the end of their service, and crossing the border to join the interminable civil war in the Congo. Of course Rwanda has other interests besides tribal affiliation, such as the fear of Hutus rising up to slaughter them again.

The Congo is also rich in minerals, and in the late ‘90’s Rwanda seized the mineral-rich eastern Congo, pumping millions of dollars of smuggled coltan, cassiterite, and diamonds back to Rwanda.

The question is, can Arusha, which is not only the site of the Rwandan genocide tribunals, but the headquarters of the East African Community (comprised of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and recently Rwanda and Burundi) take a real leadership role, through a new body, to end the bloodbath in the Congo?

The so-called international community has been standing by and letting preventable ethnic cleansing and genocide occur ever since Bill Clinton turned a blind eye for years to Bosnia, and blocked Security Council action in Rwanda. Therefore ordinary world citizens are charged with gaining a deeper understanding of genocide, and pressing their governments to prevent it.

What is genocide? What are its roots, and can it become part of man’s history, like slavery and human sacrifice?

Genocide is man’s collective evil erupting in the world. Genocide is not a particular phenomenon, arising just from specific peoples or places. Rather, it draws its sources from the common well of darkness in human consciousness.

All forms of mass slaughter have very complicated political roots. But to accept the complexity, and remain at the political level when it comes to genocide, is to be complicit in its continuity.

To begin to come to grips with genocide one has to begin to come to grips with the evil that human consciousness generates as a byproduct of division and hatred.

After Hutu militiamen in the Congo killed Generose Namburho’s husband, she was about to become another in the seemingly infinite line of systematic rape victims. But she cried out. So they hacked her leg off above the knee, cut up the flesh and cooked it, and then forced Generose’s children to eat their mother’s flesh. When her 12-year son refused, they shot him dead.

I don’t recount this story for shock effect, as some columnists do. Such evil must be placed in context, or the writer is unwittingly helping evil achieve its aim, which is to induce a sense of complete hopelessness for humanity in the face of such unspeakable crimes.

It’s essential to understand that genocide, as well as systematic rape, and horrendous crimes like those committed against the Namburho family, are not, as political tools, just perpetrated against a particular people; they are assaults on the human spirit.

The ultimate aim of the evil in human consciousness is a death wish: since it is dead, it wants to kill the human spirit. When darkness and deadness are faced down within one, evil shrinks.

Many people believe another genocide is heating up in Uganda, Tanzania’s northern neighbor. Is life pointing toward Arusha for a prominent role in ending this scourge of humanity?

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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