The secret genocide kept a secret by the media and ignored by other countries, as hundreds of thousands of people were killed by their own government. This year we remember The Rwandan Genocide, which happened 23 years ago and began on April 7th, 1994 and lasted until July later that year.
This event was a mass slaughter against the Tutsi from the Hutu spurred by the Rwandan Civil War. Prior to the war, the Tutsi were highly favored by the colonial Belgians while Hutu were still treated as second-class citizens. Once Rwanda gained its independence, there were violent tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi with ethnically motivated violent acts occurring before the genocide.
Finally, once the Rwandan president died, the Hutu militia groups and Rwandan armed forces set up barricades, killing without mercy.
Yet, while these atrocities were happening no one in the developed world sent help or raised awareness. In the U.S. the Bill Clinton administration knew about the genocide yet tried to keep it from the public, apparently, the death of hundreds of thousands of black lives didn’t matter to him or his government. The United Nations actually removed peacekeepers from Rwanda and did not once again address the issue, until months after the genocide had already ended.
All around the world, there was radio silence when Rwanda needed the world’s help the most, the world abandoned them to die.
I can’t help but wonder what if these were white lives, would the world have taken notice? Undoubtedly, yes. We have seen over again how society devalues black lives, sees them as expendable and less important than white. We see it in the lack of media attention, their deaths receive and how ignorant the people of the West are to the Rwandan genocide.
Black lives are still seen as expendable to this day, with racially-fueled police brutality still not being properly addressed by lawmakers. With the amount of hatred and ridicule directed at the Black Lives Matter movement, who only want to make our society realize the struggles black people go through every day and the lives lost to police brutality.
In our entire history, we have always seen black life as expendable. We have devalued their lives since the beginning of slavery when aside from ruthless torture and punishment plantation owners would make slaves do dangerous work or send slaves to war on their behalf. To more recent history, when from 1932-1972 the United States Public Health Service used black men to test the impact of untreated syphilis resulting in many deaths and infections to themselves and their partners. Our government would have never done such tests on white men, but as these men were black their lives held less value, only valuable to use as research vessels.
To the Rwandan genocide, where a black ethnic minority was nearly eliminated yet we didn’t bat an eye. And back home in the United States, in Flint, Michigan where the majority of the population is black, and dying from the water that is supposed to keep them alive. As a mixed-race but white-passing female, I cannot pretend to fully understand what it feels like for black lives to be devalued in this way but I hope all white and non-black POC can take a step back and see the damage we have done.
