This past month found me in two very interesting and personally formative places: a TIG camp on the outskirts of Kigali and Gulu Town in Northern Uganda.
After the Rwandan Genocide ended 100 days after it began in 1994, Rwanda needed to find a way to establish a transitional justice system. The Gacaca Courts, established in 2002, was the government's answer to trying over 2 million people for crimes committed during Genocide. For those who confessed to their crimes, they were given the opportunity to serve out part of their sentence doing community service outside of the prison in what are called TIG camps.
I had the opportunity to visit one of the five TIG camps that was located just outside the city limits of Kigali. At this camp, I spoke with TIG members who had committed acts of Genocide. To be honest with you, what I found at this camp was not at all what I had expected.
Throughout my time in Rwanda, I have struggled with how people could commit such atrocious acts and then be forgiven by their community. Visiting the genocide memorial sites and seeing the worst of humanity, I decided then and there that the perpetrators of this genocide had to be certainly less than human. But at the TIG camp, I learned this certainly wasn’t the case.
The men and women who committed acts of genocide, who sat in front of me and explained their stories, were most certainly like me. They had families, they had friends, they loved and they lost, and they had a strong sense of religion, but they had most certainly sinned. What separated me from them is that they were subjected to bad leadership, terrible propaganda, and an impossible situation which led them to make horrible decisions. For me visiting this TIG camp, made the perpetrators of this genocide human once more.
These TIG members truly believed that they were working to rebuild the country they had torn apart. They understood the sins they committed and were working extremely hard to reconcile with themselves and the greater community.
At the end of our trip to the TIG camp, the members began to sing and dance. They sung a song about their trust in the government, and Rwanda. It most definitely sounded like propaganda, but to these people the song was real. They could have so easily been killed for the crimes they committed, but the government of Rwanda, the government of unity and reconciliation as it is commonly referred to, abolished the death penalty and discouraged revenge killings in an attempt to move their country forward.
In America, we believe in a very punitive justice system. We still have a death penalty because, at least in my opinion, Americans can’t so readily forgive the people who have committed the ultimate crimes against humanity. But Rwanda had to do this in order to move forward as a nation, and if you look at where Rwanda currently stands in terms of economic progress, it has done just that. It’s an incredible feat that the perpetrators of Genocide and the victims can reconcile between themselves for the sake of progress and survival as a nation.
Ok, so remember a little PR campaign that swept the nation back in 2012 by Invisible Children called “Kony 2012?” I remember being a Freshman in high school at the time the video was released that depicted a filmmaker’s travels to Northern Uganda. In Northern Uganda, this filmmaker found a conflict that had been raging on in the region for nearly two decades.
The conflict was between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, and the government. The people of Northern Uganda, and most especially the children, were caught in the middle. The LRA was abducting thousands of children to be child soldiers and sex slaves in his war.
This is the same place I found myself this past week. Never in my life did I think that five years later I would have the opportunity to see what happened in Gulu Town and Northern Uganda with my own eyes.
In Gulu, a town in Northern Uganda, I was able to meet a few of these former child soldiers and sex slaves. Their stories, as you can probably imagine, are extremely moving. I was privileged to hear the story of one of Joseph Kony's wives, Evelyn Amony. She was only 12 years old when she was abducted and wed to Kony. She mothered three of his children and is now residing in Gulu advocating for women's rights and their economic well-being after the war.
One of the most shocking things I learned about the Northern Ugandan conflict was the lack of international support after the war had ended. During the Northern Ugandan Conflict, there were over 300 NGOs in the region to help the people who were displaced and starving. When the guns fell silent, however, only 10 NGOs remained.
Today in Gulu Town, the effects of the war are still seen in the faces and hearts of the people who lost family members, were tortured by the LRA, and those who were abducted and forced to kill. There is very little support from the government and international NGOs to help them rebuild their lives and get the physco-social help that is still needed.
Even Invisible Children has stopped most of its funding since 2012. The current leader of Indivisible Children Uganda is turning the organization into WEND Africa, a non-profit that "employs, educates and empowers war-affected women in Northern Uganda." The current leader was a child soldier back the late 80s, and understands the need for grass roots NGOs to fully serve the needs of her fellow community members. It seems as though most of the efforts being made in Northern Uganda are on the grass roots level -- but more still needs to be done for these people, especially by the Ugandan government.
With my structured classes coming to end in Rwanda, I will officially be moving into my period of independent research soon. I have secured an internship at The New Times (an english daily newspaper in Rwanda) as a journalist in order to help me fully understand the post-genocidal restrictions on journalists and free speech in the country. Keep a look out for the next blog post to see how my research on the state of media in Rwanda is progressing!