Reconciling Exclusion

"There is a huge hope and belief that schools contribute to peace, but in Rwanda, there are ways in which they contribute to underlying conflict."
"It's a really dangerous and negative direction to be excluding the views, the losses, the mourning of a really important and majority segment of the population."
"Hutu who feel excluded find it hard to relate to and to embrace the suffering of Tutsi Rwandans and that's really problematic for peace building."
Elisabeth King, author of From Classrooms to Conflict in Rwanda

In this photo taken Monday, March 24, 2014, Rwandan students standing next to a mural talk amongst themselves after finishing an examination and waiting to eat lunch at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village near Rwamagana, in Rwanda. Most of the kids in a school set amid the lush green, rolling hills of eastern Rwanda don't identify themselves as Hutu or Tutsi. That's a positive sign for Rwanda, which is now observing the 20th anniversary of its genocide (The school is the brainchild of New Yorker Anne Heyman who decided to open a school on the model used in Israel for orphans of the Holocaust. With help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and corporate donor Liquidnet Holdings, she purchased land in 2006 to build a school and dorm-like homes. The school's annual budget is $2 million a year, or about $4,500 per child. An oasis of calm in a sea of distrust.
 
In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide little was left of the country's 1,836 schools to enable them to be functionally useful. Many of the sites had been scenes of bloody massacres. Looters trashed the Ministry of Education, broke windows, doors and furniture. But that was nothing whatever, compared to the fact that over a million children had been left orphans after the blood-letting was done with, and the country had a good, hard look at itself.

In the twenty years since the genocide that shocked the world out of its complacent trust that United Nations peacekeeping forces were capable of keeping tribal hatred from demolishing a nation, over $1-billion has been invested through foreign aid into the country's education system, according to the UN's Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization. Rwanda today can boast it enjoys the highest primary school enrolment in Africa.

But just as the politics that saw the dominant, majority Hutu conspire against the once-dominant, minority Tutsi population of the country resulted in one hundred days of atrocities leaving an estimated 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, but Hutu as well dead, the education system of the country in this new era of peace and reconciliation looks as though it is inspiring ethnic tensions all over again. And where there is tension, resentment and mistrust there will be hatred and the potential for violence.

The teaching of contemporary history is itself at the root of the problem, since it is canted, biased toward the "official" version as per the present government's view of the genocide. That official version places emphasis on the fact that most of the victims were Tutsis, which is undeniably true, but the while diminishing the fact of tens of thousands of Hutu deaths during the terror, it overlooks their anguish and the terror they too were confronted with.

If it is estimated that at least a half-million Tutsis were slaughtered by the hordes of rabidly hateful Hutu extremists, it is glossing over the fact that moderate Hutus who wanted nothing to do with the hate and slaughter campaign themselves became victims because of their unwillingness to embark on a killing spree of their neighbours.

After 1994 groups associated with the Tutsi ruling party set upon thousands of Hutu refugees had had attempted to remove themselves from harm's way by seeking shelter in countries bordering Rwanda, killing them by the thousands. This too is part of the history of Rwanda's dreadful dissolution into barbarism, but it is never mentioned in the history curriculum. Pointedly iterating and reiterating the role of the Hutu as genocide perpetrators while true, picks at the nation's scab so it can never heal.

And the impression left is that all Hutu are genocidaires by their very nature. While historians from outside the country hold the impression that most people who took part in the killing spree did so from fear and confusion, according to Timothy Longman, director of the African Studies Centre at Boston University. It is unlawful to discuss ethnicity in public, yet the new generation knows instinctively who is Hutu and who is Tutsi.

"They are being told that Hutu and Tutsi no longer exist, but people feel that identity is still important and power depends on it", said Ms. King who teaches at the Trudeau Centre for Peace Conflict & Justice at University of Toronto. Teachers may not speak frankly about the genocide; some have been arrested by government authorities for speaking of the killings in a manner that differs from the official line.

"It's impossible to promote reconciliation if people can't talk about their experiences", said Mr. Longman.

"And, for a lot of people, their experience is that of having suffered human rights abuses at the hands of the current government. Because that is off the table, there's no way that schools can actually promote real reconciliation", he further explained. Ethnic discrimination in access to schools and the history curriculum, points out a 2011UNESCO report, was partially responsible in laying the groundwork for the 1994 genocide.

The Rwandan education minister stresses the need for sensitivity in addressing the needs of all groups. "Peace education" and annual genocide commemoration activities are presented at every school in the hopes of promoting unity and reconciliation. "The genocide was committed by Rwandans against other Rwandans. It is a very sensitive subject. We are approaching it with caution", said Vincent Viruta, the education minister.

In the meantime, about 40% of the population is under the age of 15, and almost every child attends primary school while secondary school admission is merit-based now where once it was linked to ethnic quotas. From 3,000 in 1995, university enrolment has risen to over 80,000 at the present time. Even yet, however, poor, mostly Hutu youth are not in school, and struggle to exist.

"If you're teaching people a distorted history and one that serves the political interests of the regime, it lays the groundwork for politicizing the population", warned Mr. Longman.