Rwanda Still Haunts

BBC News

"Rwandan genocide suspect 'held'"
"Still Divided"
"Return to Nyarubuye"

I am reading about Rwanda again. One of the latest headlines today is that some 4000 killers of the Rwandan genocide 14 years ago are allowed entry back into the country. This moment of history, this Rwandan genocide of 1994, lasted for a brief but long 100 days. During this time 800,000 people were reported dead -- murdered. This is not counting all the mutilated people, raped, and brutalized in other ways. Rwanda, a luscious, beautiful African country ... so violent, ugly a past. (But I suppose we all have our skeletons ...)

I still remember hearing about the genocide as a child ... 11 years old in Hong Kong. I knew something evil was going on. The way those killers moved when filmed on TV ... something wasn't quite right. Evil was there.

When I was in the second year of college, I revisited the Rwanda genocide, but this time, more than just an impression -- I read and researched. I remember being entranced by what I read. The feelings of anger, sadness, pity, self-righteousness, fear, the yearning for justice, and, mostly, the confusion of wondering what justice is were like hard alcohol -- both intoxicating and hard to digest. Stories like Marie's peaked my interest, but repulsed me because it riddled me with The Question: Marie was caught and used as a sex slave and was raped over 100 times before she realized she was infected with AIDS and was pregnant. The infant boy eventually died of AIDS, and she is now in the last stages of the disease. Marie wonders why this happened to her -- she considers herself a good person. I don't doubt it. I wonder, too, why it happened to her and her fellow countrymen. And I wonder What's Next? O, Afrika ....

Is this the Universe's plan to use the victims as instruments to teach all the rest of us a lesson? But what an expensive, costly and cruel way to teach! No, there must be some other explanation, ... right? It makes life more than just a bit gloomy to accept that, as a vessel of the Universe, we can all end up just like Marie ... with no realistic hope that there will be positive widespread impact on the rest of the world. Meanwhile, Marie's world, after so many violent blows, is rotting to an end .... My mind and heart screams out, "No! If this is to teach me something, then this is just too excessive! I am sure there are other ways for me to learn without the blood of these people washing away the entire country. (bodies of these Rwandans floated down the river to its neighboring countries.)"

I will always mourn for these people, and all people that died -- wasted away -- in similar fashion. Their spirits will forever haunt me.