Column*
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/092405190101900101 |
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Column"
Bread and Tea
The international human rights regime is based on the assumption that all human beings
are equal in their dignity, which human rights protect. Yet I am beginning to wonder
ifin
recent attempts to devise programs to reconcile earlier enemies, we are forgetting the
rights
of
victims
of
genocides to have feelings: in particular, to have feelings
of
anger,
hurt and bitterness. Should one, as a matter of human dignity, be permitted to experience
the full range
of
human emotions?
Philip Gourevitch quotes Paul Kagame, Vice-President
of
Rwanda, on the pressure
that Westerners put on Rwandans to reconcile. 'Some people', said Kagame, 'even think
We
should not be affected. They think we are like animals, when you've lost some family,
you can be consoled, given some bread and tea - and forget about it'. IGourevitch also
quotes Edmond Mrugamba, who lost many members of his family in earlier massacres of
Tutsis as well as in the genocide
of
1994. 'People come to Rwanda and talk of
reconciliation', he said, continuing
'It's
offensive. Imagine talking to Jews
of
reconciliation in 1946,.2
Indeed, one might ask oneself why the world community puts onto African shoulders
such a moral and psychological burden. Perhaps those of us within the Western human
rights community who are white should ask ourselves
if
we have quite eliminated all
subconscious racist perceptions from our thinking. No decent person would have expected
of Jews that they could have reconciled with Germans in 1946. No decent person fails to
acknowledge the depth
of
pain that prevents many Jews, even now, from visiting
Germany or having much or anything to do with Germans. Yet we now ask black people
in Rwanda to reconcile with their killers, as if they do not need decades to recover from
such terrible events. It seems to Kagame and Mrugamba that we do not wish to
acknowledge the legitimacy of their anger, fear and bitterness; we want them only to have
generous, reconciliatory emotions.
We also seem to deny human connections
of
family, kinship and community among
Africans. In the past few years, I have heard several white Africanist scholars maintain
that Rwanda and Burundi are two distinct countries, as
if
massacres of Hutu in Burundi
would not affect Hutu in Rwanda, and massacres of Tutsi in Rwanda would not affect
Tutsi in Burundi. Yet massacres and counter-massacres are bound to affect individuals
and groups' perceptions and emotions. Westerners would certainly notice - and did
certainly notice in earlier centuries - Protestant persecutions
of
Catholics and Catholic of
Protestants, regardless of the country in which they were or would be. Yet we seem to
expect Africans to put these massacres out of their minds, as
if
real family members or
members of their wider communities are not being killed.
Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann is Professor of Sociology at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. From
July to December 2000 she was a visiting professor working at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights
(SIM).
Views expressed in this column are of a strictly personal nature and are not necessarily shared by the
editors.
Philip Gourevitch. We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, New York:
Parrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999, p. 337.
Gourevitch, p. 240.
Netherlands Quarterly
of
Human Rights.
Vol.
19/1.3-4.2001.
3
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