Monday, April 16, 2007
Understanding Evil in Rwanda
Even before 1994, Rwanda was experiencing rising levels of violence and theft, perpetrated by hungry landless young people with out off-farm income, Jared Diamond said in Collapse. Andre and Platteau note, “The 1994 events provided a unique opportunity to settle scores, or to reshuffle land properties, even among Hutu villagers…. It is not rare, even today, to hear Rwandans argue that a war is necessary to wipe out an excess of population and to bring numbers into line with available land resources.”
Such a fatalistic explanation provokes negative reactions for various reasons. First, any explanation of why a genocide happened can be misconstrued as excusing it. But no explanation can alter the personal responsibility of the perps for their evil deeds. In most discussions of the origins of evil: some people recoil at any explanation, because they confuse explanation with excuses. Yet explanations are important in the Rwandan horror, as in all such horrors, NOT to exonerate the perps, but to gain knowledge to decrease the risk of such things happening again in Rwanda or elsewhere.
It may make some sense to reject an over simplified explanation in the Rwandan genocide. Other factors did contribute: the racial distinctions, Tutsi invasions from Burundi, competition between rival political factions, world bank austerity measures, hundreds of thousands of desperate young men displaced and in refugee camps. It is safe to say population pressure does not automatically lead to genocide. But clearly, in Rwanda, population pressure was one of the important factors.
Severe problems of overpopulation, environmental impact, and climate change cannot persist indefinitely: sooner or later they are likely to resolve themselves. In Rwanda’s collapse, we can put faces and motives on the unpleasant resolution. Similar motives probably operated, in the collapses of Easter Island and the Maya. And, similar motives may operate again in the future, in countries that fail to solve their underlying problems.
They may operate again in Rwanda, where population in still increasing at 3%, women have their first child at 15 and the average family size 5-8. A Tutsi who survived only because he happened to be away when his neighbors arrived to hack his wife and 4 children to death said, “The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs.”
Such a fatalistic explanation provokes negative reactions for various reasons. First, any explanation of why a genocide happened can be misconstrued as excusing it. But no explanation can alter the personal responsibility of the perps for their evil deeds. In most discussions of the origins of evil: some people recoil at any explanation, because they confuse explanation with excuses. Yet explanations are important in the Rwandan horror, as in all such horrors, NOT to exonerate the perps, but to gain knowledge to decrease the risk of such things happening again in Rwanda or elsewhere.
It may make some sense to reject an over simplified explanation in the Rwandan genocide. Other factors did contribute: the racial distinctions, Tutsi invasions from Burundi, competition between rival political factions, world bank austerity measures, hundreds of thousands of desperate young men displaced and in refugee camps. It is safe to say population pressure does not automatically lead to genocide. But clearly, in Rwanda, population pressure was one of the important factors.
Severe problems of overpopulation, environmental impact, and climate change cannot persist indefinitely: sooner or later they are likely to resolve themselves. In Rwanda’s collapse, we can put faces and motives on the unpleasant resolution. Similar motives probably operated, in the collapses of Easter Island and the Maya. And, similar motives may operate again in the future, in countries that fail to solve their underlying problems.
They may operate again in Rwanda, where population in still increasing at 3%, women have their first child at 15 and the average family size 5-8. A Tutsi who survived only because he happened to be away when his neighbors arrived to hack his wife and 4 children to death said, “The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs.”
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There are quite a number of accuracies in your assertions, but the fundamental thing to understand is that a genocide is not effected haphazardly by the populace, it is carefully architectured by a a small elite group that uses the conditions you mention to fire up the population.
Pan
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Pan
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