What is the meaning of history? There are discipline answers, philosophical answers and political answers. Henry Ford tends to say: “History is bunk”. I don’t agree! History is anything that is past recorded, and in my opinion, it is an instrument to help the mankind not to make the same mistakes over and over again. In other words of the German statesman Konrad Adenauer: “History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided”.

Every year has its own photograph; the World Press Photo foundation awards yearly a single photograph that is not only the photojournalistic encapsulation of the year, but represents an issue, situation or event of great journalistic importance.  The World Press Photo of the Year 1994 caught my eyes! It was made by James Nachtwey and shows a Hutu man mutilated by the Hutu “Interahamwe” militia, who suspected him for sympathizing with the Tutsi rebels.

Nachtway feels that people need photography to help them understand what’s going on in the world, and believes that pictures can have a great influence on shaping public opinion and mobilization protest. When I watched the photograph, I questioned myself how much can the heart take? Why we are making the same mistakes over and over again? How can we move forward that people will not die due to genocide? Will we ever learn?

I remembered the book Night from Elie Wiesel, which reflects his state of mind during the Holocaust.  In this book, Wiesel writes of a Jewish person who was crammed onto a cattle train and taken to Poland. Somehow he managed to escape and told what he called “The story of my own death”. He reported that the cattle train was taken over by the Gestapo, where they where forced to dig graves and then stand before the holes, as they where shot by the gunfire.  When the Gestapo gunners had finished, they threw the Jewish babies into the air and used them for target practice.

I remembered the photograph showing Phan Thi Phuc who flees from the scene where South Vietnamese planes have mistakenly dropped napalm.

I remembered the Bosnia war, who gave us sick figures looking out from behind of a barbed wire Serb-run concentration camp.

I remembered the Genocide that happened in Rwanda and is still going on in Darfur. I fail to see why we don’t learn! After Europe was liberated-when the concentration camps where uncovered and the mankind said “Never again”. It happened and it is still happening! Why we can’t stop it? There is such a potential for good; there is such a potential for evil. I started to become very pensive, because I realized that I don’t have the necessary historical background of these countries and even worse I realized the ignorance of the people, which is in my opinion absolutely no excuse. It doesn’t matter who was voting, who was not and whose fault it is. Those people died and no one helped them, we should learn to help everyone; wherever they live. In this blog you will find all resources of my journey into one of the darkest chapters of our world. It is a red thread through the history of these countries. I will give you the opportunity to learn, to understand, to reflect and to help you to clarify your own opinion.

Rwanda

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
- Matthew 5:9

When Lt. General Roméo Dallaire was called on to serve as force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, he had no idea that it will end in dramatic Genocide. He had to enforce a peace agreement between Rwandan government in Kigali and the rebel army, which was located behind the cease-fire line. Later on Dallaire will write in his book Shakes Hands with the Devil “I know there is a God, because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him; I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists and therefore I know there is a God”. The people who helped during the 100 days between April and July of 1994 are still-hunted by the ghosts of Rwanda. I think the mankind was personally affected about what happened. It’s not that the people didn’t care; it is that the situation never was translated into any focus or attention. We have the responsibility to talk, to speak out clearly what happened in Rwanda. If we ignore Rwanda and forget what happened we are participating to the Genocide.

“In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.”
- Kofie Annan.

In the first two weeks of the Genocide approximately 100.000 Rwandans has been killed.  At the end 800.000 people has been slaughtered by their own government.  Roméo Dallaire reported on January in a urgent cable to Kofie Annan that he was in contact to an informant, who was a top-level trainer in the cadre of interhamwe-armed militia. The informant told him that he trained persons with a focus on discipline, weapons, explosives, close combat and tactics and has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali for their extermination. Furthermore, the informant indicated a plot to subvert the peace agreement and slaughter Tutsi at the rate of 1.000 Tutsis every 20 minutes.

In the early days of the Rwandan Genocide human-rights activist Monique Mujawamariya was smuggled out of Kigali.  She asked the United Nations for help and talked about the machete-wielding horror in her nation? A congressional official responsible for Africa said to her: “Listen, Monique, the United States has no friends. The United States has interests. And in the United States, there is no interest in Rwanda.”

Instead of help, the United States pressed forward with a compromise to withdraw 90 percent of the peacekeepers from, Rwanda.

The dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust.  It was the most efficient mass killing since the since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Resources:

Darfur

This situation is a complex conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Thousands of Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and other civilians are tortured, raped and killed in attacks. By 2007 the UN estimates 400.000 dead and 2.5 million displaced humans. The Sudan government disputes these estimates and denies any connection with the Janaweed, but is still giving weapon to them. The Janaweed were created by the government as a self-defense militia in order to defend itself.

Through me the way into the suffering city,
Through me the way to the eternal pain,
Through me the way that runs among the lost.
- Epigraph from Dante’s “Inferno”

The UN has passed more than 17 resolutions concerning Darfur, but unless these resolutions are implemented and sanctions against Sudanese officials are enforced, the violence and destruction will continue.

Resource:

Peux ce que veux. Allons-y!

Whatever the exact number was, the scale and persistence is daunting and inapprehensible. In my opinion, we have to ensure that not only the refugees survive; we have to do our best that they may enjoy their life, too. Our governments need a strong company and have to work closer together to speed up the decision process of the United Nations.  We should avoid seeing ourselves as nation; we should start to think as one world.

AND we have to learn from our history, as there is not better teacher!