Rwandan Genocide

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Last summer I visited Rwanda, and I was fortunate enough to go back in March and April this year. To be frank, I was unsure of what I would see. The country obviously has a terrible past, and it sits in the heart of Africa with no natural resources. The visit was to look at peace and reconciliation, and to see the commemorations of the 20th anniversary and the transformation that has taken place. During my visit I was fortunate enough to meet the President and executive members of the Administration, regional governors, members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, chief executives of state-owned industries, civil society, the archbishop and bishops of all the districts, ordinary people, non-governmental organisations and our own Foreign Office personnel—a wide range of people. It was informative to speak to all those people and get a grasp of the country. That is what brings me to this debate.

It is clear that the United Kingdom and Rwanda have a special relationship. When speaking to all those people, they would say that the role of the BBC in exposing the genocide, when no help was on offer, is something for which they remember Britain. They also point to the very generous budget support from UK aid that has allowed the Rwandan Government and Rwandan people to rebuild their country. I think that that sets the UK apart from other countries in the eyes of Rwanda.

I do not wish to go over the history, but I will reflect on what I saw: the impact of the genocide, the passage from the genocide to the present, the importance of Rwanda politically and economically in Africa, and the dilemma of balancing civil and human rights with development.

The development of Rwanda has been remarkable. On landing, visitors are struck by the sight of clean streets, beautiful lush greenery and manicured gardens. There is not a broken street light in sight. Visitors have to remind themselves that this is Africa. There is impressive infrastructure, with no broken pavements or potholes in sight. Well-dressed Rwandans go about their affairs with apparent purpose. There is European-standard housing in Kigali and modern housing throughout the country. Electricity and roads have been rolled out. The level of development is impressive.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

This is obviously a very serious subject and the matters to which the hon. Gentleman is alluding are very interesting. Rwanda is a mountainous country, but the mobile phone signals there are better than they are in the highlands of Scotland.

[Graham Jones]

I visit Scotland, but I am not an expert on the highlands. There was some trouble with mobile signals in Rwanda—it is hilly—but I was delighted to hear that the Rwandan Government, alongside the Korean Government, are looking to resolve that with huge investment in broadband and mobile infrastructure.

The past seems to have been erased from the physical fabric of the country. We are not left with the impression that such an horrific genocide has taken place. It is remarkable to see this type of development in Africa, but there is a dilemma when one considers some of the question marks hanging over Rwanda with regard to human rights and civil liberties.

One perhaps first realises the scale of the genocide when visiting the museum and learning of the brutal killings and the horrific torture of women and children. The British NGO, the Aegis Trust, has built a fantastic memorial. My colleagues were brought to tears by some of the graphic displays of the genocide. It is a mass grave, with 250,000 people buried there. I am led to believe that it is the largest mass grave in the world. The museum displays thousands of photos of the dead, pinned by pegs to rows and rows of horizontal string. The children’s memorial upstairs lays bare the cruelty exacted on babies and toddlers, who were swung by the legs to crush their skulls, shot, burnt alive and hacked to bits by machetes in front of their parents. It becomes quickly apparent to the visitor that Hutu Power was not just about extermination, but torture and revenge. It targeted children, and that is one aspect of the genocide that is very hard to take in.

Visitors also get that feeling at some of the other sites, and I think it is only the sites that carry the history. Rwanda has changed, but the decision to protect some of the sites was wise. We crossed the Nyabarongo river, where thousands were marched, brutally murdered and thrown into the river. The three churches at Nyamata, Ntarama and Gitarama are shocking: they show the full horror of genocide. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and I were taken aback by what we saw at Ntarama. It was a small church in which 5,000 people lost their lives. We were fortunate to meet a survivor, a young boy who was aged seven at the time. His story was that, while all the people around him were hacked to death in that small church, a rather large lady who was killed fell on him and he was buried alive at the bottom of the pile of people, which enabled him to survive. He was not identified by the militia; he is here today because of that piece of fortune. He saw his family murdered in the church. Worst of all, he, other family members and adults in that particular church had taken the decision that the toddlers and young children should be located in the nearby Sunday school, which they could see through the window. That is what the militia attacked first, murdering all the children in front of their parents’ eyes.

Outside the Ntarama church I also met a woman survivor. Her family was hacked to death in front her, and her arm and part of her head were hacked off. The Government provided a small pension for her. Without UK general budget support, one wonders whether the pension and subsistence she receives would have been made available to some of the survivors. I am proud of the fact that we as a nation support Rwanda through general budget aid, allowing the Rwandan Government to provide that sort of support to people who have to live with the consequences of what happened 20 years ago.

At Nyamata Parish Catholic church, there were 45,000 victims, with 10,000 of them massacred inside the church building. In the catacombs outside, cracked skulls and bones can be seen. Seeing the small skulls is what really gets to you because these were the skulls of small children. That was very hard to take, and one or two people on the visit could not go in for that reason.

I met a young woman guide there: she is 32 now, but was only 12 when her family were murdered in front of her. She managed to escape with her eight-year-old and four-year-old sisters and lived in the marshes for 45 days. I was told that there are crocodiles in the marshes, so it was not just about surviving the militia who came looking for them every day. She had to survive in the harsh conditions of the marshes, with the crocodiles, while having nothing to eat and trying to care for an eight-year-old and a four-year-old. Heroic people like that provide inspiration, but we need to reflect on the fact that she has been left with just two young siblings in a broken country. Of course, many did not survive in the swamps; they were found by their pursuers.

We went to a third church at Giterama, at which, according to the Gacaca court judges, 64,000 people were murdered. It was an unsavoury affair, with the Catholic Church being involved in, and accused of, collecting individuals from the area to take shelter in the church, only for the militia and Government forces to turn up. Visiting that site is shocking. The bodies are just buried at the bottom of a hill in a great big pile. I understand that many were buried alive. There were only two survivors out of the 64,000; it took two days to kill them all.

These are the sort of stories that bring home the sheer scale of the murder that went on. Many of the Tutsis fled to that region when the massacres began in Kigali, and they lived in crowded conditions with little food or water, suffering from malaria and dysentery, with soldiers and militia passing by each day, picking out some to be killed. By the end of May before the Gitarama mass murder, there were 38,000 refugees living in that area. It was described as a death camp, with refugees helpless against the militia’s rape and killing. At the stadium in Kigali, 54,000 people lost their lives. These numbers are truly shocking. I was told that at the peak of the killing, the Hutu militia and the Government forces were killing more daily than the Nazis ever achieved in the holocaust, with an average of 10,000 Tutsis murdered a day.

As mentioned in the opening speech from the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark), the response from the world was poor. As for the United States, President Clinton subsequently acknowledged his failure to act, calling it his worst failure, admitting “I blew it”. For the colonial powers of Belgium and France, the political consequences flow right through to today. The political recriminations over that inaction shape the political landscape, even as we speak. Belgium and particularly France stand accused of supporting the Hutu militia and ultimately the genocide. In 2010, President Sarkozy of France said that France in particular should accept that its response had been culpably weak. He said:

“What happened here is a defeat for humanity”.

He continued:

“What happened here left an indelible stain. What happened here obliges the international community—including France—to reflect on the errors which prevented us from foreseeing, or stopping, this appalling crime.”

Only last month, however, at the 20th anniversary commemorations, President Kagame accused both France and Belgium of having a “direct role” in the genocide. The Belgian Foreign Minister said that he intended to travel to Kigali to pay homage to the victims and their families, but he said:

“We are not going to pay homage to the current Rwandan Government”.

That tension exists 20 years on and it affects current policy. The role of not only France but Francophile countries still casts a shadow over the politics of the great lakes region and beyond, and that history is a dark shadow.

I do not wish to offer my thoughts on that history or any deep analysis of the genocide, other than four of my own observations. First, as with Nazi Germany, many educated people were the instigators of genocide. Secondly, identity politics led directly to a rationale that inhumanity was a justified response. Thirdly, the media played a crucial role, whereby politics of identity were openly played out in an ever-increasing measure. People pick that up when they go to the museum in Kigali and see the cut-outs and the blow-ups of the newspaper clippings, fliers and posters that circulated at that time; they see just how that politics of identity were inflated so rapidly. That serves as a warning to us all that the language of hate may be moderated at first, but it is unadulterated in its finale. The language goes from, “These people cause problems” to what we got in Rwanda, which was “Those people are cockroaches and animals.” So, fourthly, we have to be careful about what we say in the United Kingdom, because when we visit Rwanda it is easy to see some of what happened there in the current discourse among British citizens now. The first steps that the German and Rwandan people accepted as legitimate concerns—on the path to genocide—are put to British people in debate right now by certain political parties, and we ought to be mindful of that.

Rwanda today is a peaceful country that has exceptionally low levels of crime, which makes it a stand-out for Africa and the third world. It is a proud country and totally unrecognisable from its recent past. It is interesting to compare it with Burundi, which I was fortunate enough to visit, as Burundi reminds us of Rwanda two decades ago—indeed, it even used to be one country. When someone crosses the border from Burundi to Rwanda they can see the difference, as there has been GDP growth in Rwanda of 7.4% on average in the past 10 years. Small things capture the eye: the police and armed forces are personally attentive, in smart uniforms, quiet and not oppressive; everything is organised; there is a lack of people hanging about hawking or just loitering; the pavements are perfect; the people are not in rags and instead are looking healthy and well-dressed; there are cats eyes in the roads and the street lighting works; and the roads are smooth and well made, with well constructed drainage channels at either side.

During my travels around Rwanda we met many people and travelled to many districts. No restrictions were placed on whom we met or spoke to. We were free to travel, but what was abundantly clear was an omnipresence of a philosophy from the central Government of national unity. It was clear that Executive power was concentrated in Kigali and in Kigali’s RPF Administration, but the opposition are allowed to speak with certain freedoms, within that concept of nationality. There was nothing oppressive about how we were treated on our visit and we were not followed around. I found MPs in the Rwandan Parliament to be informative and prepared to discuss difficult issues; there was nothing they were not prepared to consider. I did not consider it anything other than a free society, to a large extent. When we spoke to ordinary people, however, it was clear that they were cautious about offering a dissenting voice. They feared that that would be unpatriotic, that it would risk a return to the past, and that it would not represent the Government’s view of the future.

We also had an opportunity to discuss the presidential election, which will take place in 2017 and which is focusing many eyes on the future of Rwanda. I spoke privately to many MPs who believed that President Kagame wished to end his tenure in 2017—that he had no desire to carry on. However, the conundrum was that the general public wanted him to carry on, because they did not want instability. They had experienced so many good years of progress that change represented a risk, and they were not prepared to take that risk. It was clear to me—although I may have been wrong—that Kagame was under pressure to stay not for political reasons, but for reasons of stability. In the light of my visit and the people to whom I spoke, I do not necessarily accept the view that he is an autocratic dictator, or that there is an authoritarian regime and he wants to hang on to it. Indeed, I think that the opposite may be true.

Another thing that we noticed was how different local government was from national government. It is important to bear that in mind when we talk about freedom. There seems to be much more freedom at local level. People come together—the police, civic society, the Church, the military, religious organisations and others—to discuss openly the future of their areas. We sat in on some of their discussions, and it was interesting to hear some of what was said. I did not have the impression that any freedoms were impinged on, or that there was anything oppressive about the meetings. People were frank about wanting the best for their areas, expressing their collective view.

It was interesting to observe Umuganda, the mandatory community work days designed by the community itself. The Rwandan people both have to and want to contribute to the rebuilding of their community: they seem to be hugely committed both to the community and to the country as a whole. There was a suggestion that the authorities took a very dim view of those who did not participate in that mandatory community work, or participated reluctantly.

I was also interested by the social contracts whereby every household, street and neighbourhood must set its own targets for achievement each year and present them to local government, or, in the case of district councils and regions, present them to the national Government. The achievement might be acquiring an extra cow, adding an extension to a property, cleaning the roads, or rebuilding the gulleys in the roads. The Government are clearly slightly authoritarian—there are Government notices on buildings asking people to make the best of their ability, and to ensure that they finish the jobs that they have started—but I think that those are reasonable things to expect, and I would not suggest for a minute that Rwanda is a particularly authoritarian country at local level. Nevertheless, the social contracts return us to that big question about Rwanda, that big dilemma: do they represent the heavy hand of the state, or social progress? I think that those who visit the country are perpetually faced with that conundrum.

One democratic element of life in Rwanda is the fact that the appointment of regional governors is rotated to prevent corruption, and there are billboards throughout the country advertising corruption hotlines. It is pleasant to live in a place where one not only feels safe, but feels that the institutions of government are representing the people in a very honest way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pauline Latham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I also note that the Prime Minister endorsed it when in opposition, and Lord Ashcroft has been incredibly supportive of various initiatives out there, so many people have been involved. However, our debate is not about what the Conservative party has done, even though it has been fantastic for many people; it is about what has happened.

I have now been to Rwanda six times: four with Project Umubano, one with the International Development Committee and, most recently, in April, with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. I have seen how the country has progressed over that period. It has changed from being quite a good African country to being an amazing African country, and the example it has set could provide many lessons for other African countries. There have been criticisms by the international press about the President of Rwanda, but we should consider where he has moved the country from and to in just 20 years. We might think that we have done quite well in moving on from the second world war, and that was 70 years ago. People have not forgotten what happened, but I believe that they are prepared to put it behind them and to move on. I have been astonished at the consensus that that has generated among people there.

[Mr MacNeil]

To support what the hon. Lady is saying, when I was in Rwanda and taken to a reconciliation village, it was striking to see a former genocidier from the nominal Hutus join a Tutsi woman. He was involved in the genocide, but he now looks after her children when she goes to work and deals with her other commitments. She had lost more than three quarters of her family in the genocide. That experience is testament to the hon. Lady’s words.

[Pauline Latham]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) will remember that during our most recent visit we met people who had married across the Hutu-Tutsi divide and were making a go of it, difficult though it has been. They were not isolated examples; there were others. That shows the tremendous distance that the country and particularly individuals have moved.

[Pauline Latham]

Again, that shows the tremendous journey that people have taken. We can all look back to the past. My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire talked about going to Murambi and seeing the bodies. We have talked about seeing the memorials at the genocide memorial centre, and I defy anyone to come out of there without having been moved, but that is the past and it is fantastic that the country has moved on. We have heard stories about good roads and street lights that work, but there are many other examples of how the country has moved on. It still has a long way to go to be perfect, but it has moved on enormously.

One of the criticisms has been about the fact that there has not been press freedom. However, last time I went to Rwanda I was most impressed because it has decided to have freedom of the press—it is in legislation. The problem is that it does not know how to use that freedom and it needs to be trained. Even broadcasters from Parliament are allowed to choose what they broadcast, whereas when I visited three years ago they could not do that and had to produce the stuff that was being spoken about in Parliament, which is often deadly dull for most people. They are now going to do all sorts of other things. That is a huge freedom for the people of Rwanda.

It is understandable that there was no press freedom at the beginning. That is where much of the agitation came from during the genocide. The radio broadcasters incited violence and said, “Prepare to kill the cockroaches.” They encouraged people to do that, so it is understandable why any President taking over a country that has gone through 100 days of slaughter did not want press freedom. It will take a while to mature, but it is there and journalists are grateful for it.

There has been huge criticism of the President, but we must look at where he came from. He took over a broken country with massive problems. It is understandable that he has been authoritarian, but he is beginning to relax what is happening now and he is also very popular. The hon. Member for Hyndburn painted a graphic picture in everything he said about our visit, but we heard how popular the President is with the people, who will try to persuade him to stay for a third term. Whether he chooses to do so will be up to him, but I am certain that the pressure will be there. One of his problems is that there is no recognisable candidate to succeed him. People need to plan for the future so that there is a credible candidate to follow him. So far that has not happened.

Something that the Rwandan Parliament has got right, even though it is done by quotas, is its huge proportion of women—far better than ours and better than many other countries in the world. The Parliament has some very effective women and I am sure that that has changed the nature of debate, as indeed it does when more women are here in the Chamber.

The after-effects are beginning to go. After the genocide, there were very many orphan-headed households. Of course, by now those orphans must be more than 20 years old, so there are grown-up heads of households. They probably have multiple problems, including mental health issues, that need help, but at least there are no longer orphan-headed households where children are trying to bring up and look after their siblings. Many people adopted neighbours’ children because the parents had been slaughtered. Many people did an awful lot of things to help those who were in a very difficult situation.

People have mentioned a film called “Shooting Dogs”. Many people have seen “Hotel Rwanda”, which is very much a sanitised version—the Hollywood version—of what happened, and I understand that it is not terribly accurate. The two films that have affected me most are “Sometimes in April” and “Shooting Dogs”. I wish more people would watch them, because they would have a greater understanding of what happened.

Let me go back to progress in the country. During our last visit, we met the President, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield. The President talked about the fact that, for the first time, the country is now self-sufficient in food. That means that people should be able to go on to export even more; they already export tea, coffee, bananas, and so on. I have even bought Rwandan coffee in Sainsbury’s, so these things are out there. This country should be encouraging them to become even more self-sufficient and to do even more towards exporting, because that will help their economy.

That process has been helped by the villagisation project. Rwanda is the most beautiful country one could possibly imagine. It is one of the most beautiful countries in Africa. It is green and hilly. It is not very big—no bigger than Wales. Previously, there was no planning law, so people built all over the place, and there were no cohesive villages. People are now being moved into villages away from their homes. One could say that that is not a good idea, but in fact they are being given proper homes with electricity and sanitation, which leads to better health. It is in people’s interests to move into those homes, thus freeing up land for more agriculture. That is why people are now being successful. One can drive around to see the villagisation projects and how they are working. They are very well-structured places. Many of them even have fibre-optic cables so as to be able to access the internet.

The president has a long-term vision, and he is delivering on it. He is not at the end yet, but he is getting there. It is important for this country to recognise that. It would be jolly nice if we all had fibre-optic cables; in fact, it would be good if we all had the chance of broadband.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Lady makes another good point about the advancement of Rwanda. I was struck not just by the infrastructure but by the human capital that was deciding to return to the country. People who are highly trained in medicine and could be earning very high salaries in the United States of America have decided to forgo that opportunity, and with a sense of purpose and humanitarianism have gone back to their own country of Rwanda to help build a better society. That shows notable self-sacrifice.

[Pauline Latham]

I agree. It is important that people who have learnt skills in other countries can go back and help out.

We should look at the example that Rwanda is setting. When we went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo border, we saw fantastic roads, wonderful policing, and a place for people to go and get their visas. Across the barrier in the DRC, people are in rags with no proper transport and no proper roads; it is completely dysfunctional. Rwanda should be a shining example to other countries in Africa. Many countries could follow its example. I believe that one of the reasons why it is in such a situation is the lack of corruption. That is incredibly important and should be valued by other countries. “Never again” is the slogan, and, indeed, we must not let it happen again.