Re: Support for Participatory Government
Understanding Rwanda- Written Wednesday, August 29, 2007
“To understand Rwanda, you have to understand genocide,” Michael Arietti, our Ambassador told me as we left the airport. “I want you to see the Kigali Genocide Memorial first. It will give your entire visit context.”
He was right.
Scenes of genocide are not new to me. I have been to sights of the Holocaust and to the killing chambers of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. These are dark places that left my spirit sober and cold.
Once again, I found myself without words to describe the horror and a clear sense that I am insufficient to feel the magnitude of sorrow brought on by what happened in Rwanda during a hundred days of 1994 when more than 800,000 people died in a manner so grotesque I choose to avoid any attempt at describing. (
www.kigalimemorialcentre.org)
There was a difference for me in this visit. It was the faces of survivors who stood with me as I viewed the images. The Memorial’s director, a quiet man with imperfect but sufficient English lead me from display to display. He had escaped by hiding in western Rwanda. As we viewed a video of a woman describing the unthinkable barbarism her family fell victim to, a young woman who works for CDC in Rwanda pointed to our guide and whispered: “that is his sister.”
We walked into a darkened room where thousand of photos of victims hung in memorial. Everyone intuitively speaks in whispers. I said to our guide, “I’m told your family was directly affected by this; I’m so sorry.” He acknowledged my condolence by pointing to one of the pictures, “Yes, this is my mother.”
The CDC employee, and the same person who had whispered earlier to me about the memorial guide, was herself an example of how millions of Rwandans’ were affected. An attractive woman in her mid 30’s now, she works as a receptionist at our office in Kigali. In 1994 she was in her early twenties and living in a bordering country. When news of the atrocities came to her, she courageously worked her way back to Kigali only to find both her parents and several siblings had been killed, leaving only the four youngest. Like so many other young people, she became the head of household and nurtured her sisters and a cousin who was orphaned into young adulthood, forfeiting the education she aspired to.
It was not just those two. Everyone in Rwanda has a story. It was the Health Minister who was a medical student returning to treat the wounded in northern Rwanda. It was the two drivers who both lost parents and numerous brothers and sisters. It was the woman in a market whose story is told by the ugly machete scar across her forehead. It was the bullet holes and bullet marks on the walls of churches and schools where people were killed by the thousands.
Yes, the Ambassador is right. While I never expect to understand genocide, knowing more about it gave me context for what I saw in Rwanda -- and for that matter a lot of other things too.
President Kagame
In 2003 Rwanda elected President Paul Kagame. Within a couple of weeks of his election, I attended a gathering of corporate and government leaders in Aspen, Colorado where he spoke. Though my recollection of the specifics of the speech is incomplete, I remember his remarks as profound in two ways. The first was his call for reconciliation, healing and forgiveness and the second was how his soft spoken and gentle manner gave his speech power.
In essence on that day, President Kagame said, Rwandans have to live together and rebuild our country and that can’t happen unless a way is found to heal. The President described a process that had been used historically in the Rwandan traditional court system called Gacaca. It is a process of confession, contrition, compensation and forgiveness -- neighbor to neighbor, victim to offender. Since there could potentially be hundreds of thousand of people involved, there is no way the normal court and correctional system could handle it. Besides, something other than an adversarial system was needed. (An article I found on it:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_25_40/ai_n6019514/pg_3)
I remember at the time wondering during President Kagame’s Aspen speech if it could ever work. Visiting Rwanda four years later I saw evidence it is working. I watched a short video of perpetrators, dressed in pink, confessing to the victim’s families and others what they had done. Apparently, the tribunal’s judgment is tempered by the completeness of the confession and contriteness of the offender. Each of the victims is given a penalty which can range from public service to jail time. Driving around Rwanda, I saw groups of people, dressed in pink working on a mountainside, apparently doing their compensation. I’m sure the system is highly imperfect but the country appears to be pursuing a solution and positioning itself to move forward.
The second thing that impressed me about President Kagame’s Aspen remarks was his soft spoken and gentle tone. Being in Rwanda gave me the impression this may be a characteristic of the culture there. I found most Rwandan’s I spoke with to be graciously polite, gentle and soft spoken. I have no way of knowing how universal it is or for how long it has been that way and I must confess, I don’t know how to square that with the profound brutality the genocide period produced.
I am left to wonder if the universal hardship and sorrow experienced by the people of this nation has produced a special kind of humility that allows forgiveness and moving forward. Genocide and hardship has nearly eliminated an entire generation. Forty two percent of the population is under 14 years old. Less than 3% of the population is over 65 years old. Is it possible that the new generation and those who survived will have different values and behaviors than before?
Changing government in a nation can be done by a majority vote or revolution. Changing the collective hearts of a nation is harder than both.
Changing Hearts
Actually, the question of how hearts are changed has been on my mind through out this African trip. The entire continent of Africa is being ravaged by another kind of brutality: disease. In all four countries I visited, the HIV-AIDS virus is waging war, systematically and venomously destroying families, communities and ultimately nations.
I’ve been to the front lines and seen the evidence of caring people from all over the world, rallying to help. I’ve seen researchers who left the comfort of their university lab to live at the epicenter of the epidemic pursuing every lead on how to defeat the heartless killer. I’ve seen health workers organize clinics to administer medicine. I’ve seen caring people struggle to meet the needs millions of orphans left in the wake of this disease.
I see our nation and others with us, sending tens of billions of dollars to fuel this effort. There has never been a more noble humanitarian effort made to stand between mankind and disease -- and yet, we are losing. While we succeed in treating the sick and providing life and hope for millions, new cases are growing faster than our ability to treat them.
Whether it is in the outback of Africa or the streets of American cities, we cannot treat our way out of this epidemic. Prevention is the only way to succeed. Prevention requires change of behavior. Changes in behavior happen only when there is change of heart.
Visit with Students
In Kigali, I visited what in the United States would be considered a public high school. Ironically, I learned later, great brutality took place at this school during the Genocide. I watched a student body assembly where students performed a dramatization teaching abstinence and the importance of being tested to know your status.
The program portrayed in the frankest of terms a situation between a male and female student regarding sex. They had been dating for some length of time and the male student was pleading with the female to have a sexual relationship with him. The interaction featured an empowered female refusing to subject herself to the risks of AIDS or unwanted pregnancy. It included candid conversation between teens about the need to be tested.
Outside, after the program, tents had been set up where students could engage in smaller group conversations. In addition there were medical workers able to test the students and provide counseling for those who needed it. The program officials told me they will ultimately test over 80% of the students. Only ½ of 1% will test positive. The Minister of Health told me he aspires to have it expanded to all schools.
I went to the Kigali Institute a medical school. The Minister of Education in introducing me, said, “Mr. Secretary, our goal at this Institute is to be AIDS free.” The students applauded. No one has illusions about how hard this is but AIDS is a vicious indiscriminate killer and it will only be interrupted and defeated by changing the hearts of the people, especially the coming generation.
The condom use part of our ABC policy (
Abstinence before marriage;
Be faithful in marriage and consistent
Condom use in high risk behavior) is important because it recognizes the realities of human behavior but here’s another reality: In a world saturated with AIDS, any society that counts on the C (Condoms) part of ABC to facilitate a continued practice of males routinely having multiple and concurrent sexual partners will be overrun by AIDS and its harsh economic, social and health consequences.
President Kagame was out of town so I met with Rwanda’s Prime Minister Bernard Makuza. He made an important observation in our meeting. He feels while many people think of health as a compassion issue, to him it is also an economic issue. (
http://allafrica.com/stories/200708280261.html)
He’s got it right in my judgment. Failure on AIDS will bring about the type of social and economic instability that inspires further human tragedies.
President Bush has proposed Congress double funding through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) over the next five years to $30 billion. Throughout Africa, I asked those working with HHS and our partners to provide suggestions how the reauthorization of PEPFAR should be structured to drive prevention. If five years out, all we have accomplished is the perpetuation of treatment of millions more people but infection rates are outstripping our capacity to provide treatment; we will have done a compassionate thing, but Africa will still be on a pathway to failure. We need to organize our efforts so they result in a change in behavior.
Posted on August 31, 2007 in
HIV/AIDS |
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