by Mike Farrell

Ntarma

introduction

1/21

1/22

1/23

1/24

1/25

1/26

1/27

1/28

1/29

1/30

1/31

2/1

coda

what now?

human rights

We assemble for a bite of breakfast before the bus ride to the airport. Everyone seems OK so far. It's still blowing a bit outside, but not as bad as last night. Daryl is sweet, openly enjoying checking everything out. He's not been in Europe before and, rather than putting on a show of sophisticated disinterest, is absorbing everything. A nice man, he seems to be utterly lacking the slick veneer one runs into all too often in this business; that which mistakes innocence or naiveté for weakness.

Once in the terminal our check-in area is, of course, the farthest one from where we're dropped, so we schlep everything over and get in line. (Sabena, in case you haven't guessed, is a Belgian airline [perhaps the Belgian airline] and is the only international airline, as I understand it, flying in and out of Kigali on a regular basis. The fact that Belgium was the colonial power in the country for so many years and has/had ties to the government that was just defeated in a war provides an interesting backdrop for what proves to be an interesting trip. Lots of loaded, slightly sticky connections all over the place, I would think.) Most of the people queuing up for this flight seem to be (surprise, surprise) Africans, with a smattering of Europeans. One wonders what opportunities become available in a country that is having to rebuild everything from the ground up and what kinds of people leap into the opening to take advantage - or, to be fair, meet a need.

The two men in line ahead of me seem to be having some trouble. One of them is a tall, beefy, rather imposing, kind of important-looking man. The other is much smaller, slight, thin and, to judge from his manner, subordinate. It seems he was assisting the bigger man in getting his ticket processed and then taking responsibility for getting both of their bags on the conveyor belt when one of the bags came open. Whatever the case, there is either something complicated about the way in which one closes that particular bag or this man is so nervous about his responsibilities that he's all thumbs. He can't get it done. It's like a trick suitcase. Every time he closes one catch, another pops open. He opens it again, adjusts something inside and pushes on it, but it won't close. Then, when he finally gets it to close - flop! - out comes the tail of a garment or a piece of material or something. When he addresses that, the other catch pops open. It's awful. It's like he's doing a number, but he's sweating so profusely and looking so miserable that it's clearly not an act. I expect him to start jumping up and down on it in a minute. The other man is alternately watching him and looking around at some others with whom they're traveling. He doesn't seem to be upset. I don't know. Maybe he's making nice. Maybe he's doing business. Maybe he's trying to find out why this guy, of all people, was assigned to him. I find myself wanting to help the poor guy, but I'm afraid it will only succeed in making him feel that much more an incompetent. Finally, finally, he gets it together and they move on. Poor fellow. I was beginning to think heart attack.

It's another long sit ahead of us. Ten hours, or something like that, to Kigali. We go through a little shop and pick up a couple of newspapers. It's distressing to see O.J. Simpson's face in the papers over here, too. Then it's down the way and through passport check and on to security, where they stop me and want to go through my bag. With a kind of "Ah ha!" look on his face, the security officer pulls out my flashlight and studies it for a while. (Having a flashlight came in very handy on the Somalia/Bosnia trip) Finally, I offer, "It's a flashlight. Is there a problem with that?" He looks at me, hefting it, and says, "With this one, yes." (It's a magnum-light, I think they call it, like the police carry. It's solid, fairly heavy, and you could give someone a hell of a whack with it, if you chose.) He takes it, and me, to a stand where two women in uniforms are looking at something another man was trying to bring through. My compatriots are all standing off to the side, trying not to be too smug as I'm put through this and they're not. As one woman takes the batteries out of my flashlight and examines it I glance down at the item in the hands of the other woman and see that it's a clip full of bullets for an automatic pistol. Uh huh. Now that, I think, ought to be a source of concern for someone interested in airplane security. As the woman explains to me that they'd like this put in the bag I have checked, and I explain to her that I have checked the bag I have checked, thus making it impossible to put something in it at this point as best I can determine, the other woman is giving the man next to me back his clip of bullets! Sooo... As I'm taking in the breath necessary to tell this fine woman that the worst I can do to the pilot with this flashlight at ten paces is dilate his pupils, while the fellow they seem to be now letting go on his merry way toward the plane could... she hands it back to me and says, "Okay," and waves me along. - Now, I guess what I'm to learn from this experience is either that she read my mind and was so impressed by the logic of my argument that she chose to avoid hearing it aloud and being forced to acquiesce publicly, or that all you have to do in order to take a dangerous weapon aboard a Sabena flight to Kigali is to let them play with it for a minute. In the meantime, I'm about to get on a plane with a guy who's packing a gun. Or at least some bullets in a clip. What fun.

Pleasant surprise once on board. The seats we've been assigned are in the first-class section. Maybe there is no club class on this flight. Maybe if they know a flight is going to be hijacked ahead of time they're less picky about where you sit. Maybe... Oh, well. No argument here. My seat is in the center section of the nose portion of what appears to be a 747. It's one of those wide seats in a two-across row that leans back and has a foot-rest and teases you mercilessly with the idea that if it would only lean just a liiittle bit farther back you could actually be almost comfortable.

As we're getting situated I recognize some of the people who were in line with us, though not the poor man I thought would have a stroke. Nor the gunman. Many suits and ties, a sense of import about. A man drops some of his stuff in the seat beside me and goes to say hello to some of the other passengers. In his 50s, possibly early 60s, with a pleasant face and a kind of Eastern seaboard manner, he's dressed nicely and at the same time comfortably. Gives me the feeling he could be a college professor. As he comes back he says hello and offers his hand, saying, "David Rawson" and then something that sounds like "with the U.S. Embassy," but I'm not sure. I introduce myself and say I hadn't heard him clearly, so he says it again and gives me a card. Sure enough, he's the U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda. Well, how's that for access?

Ambassador Rawson ("David, please.") seems a nice man. Most of the people in this section of the airplane with us, he says, make up the new government of Rwanda (which, interestingly, he pronounces 'Randa,' with the 'w' so barely passed over that it's almost inaudible). Of the twenty members of the new civilian government, fourteen are Hutu, which is an indication of the seriousness of the RPF's stated intention to have an all-inclusive, non-discriminatory society. They are all, including Rawson, just returning from a UNDP (United Nations Development Program) "pledging conference" in Geneva where the international community has finally shown some support for the new government. The hundreds of millions of dollars in pledges and loan guarantees should go a long way toward helping the society function properly once again.

Ambassador Rawson, who, I'm told, was born in the region (Burundi, I believe) to missionary parents, seems to have a real regard for the people and the area. He talks a bit about the history of the peoples in the region, noting the tensions between Hutu and Tutsi, and observes that the tension within the country prior to the war was regional, between the north and the south, as much as it was ethnic. He talks a bit about the violence of 1959, 1963, 1972, etc., and about the hopeful nature of things as a result of the Arusha Accords of August, 1993.

I ask him to respond to four areas of concern regarding the U.S. response to the tragedy. First, as I understand it, the U.S. opposed the sending in of peace-keepers, who I believe might well have saved lives. Ambassador Rawson says that's not the case, but that the U.S. wanted the duties of such a force to be clearly laid out and understood before a commitment of troops was made. (This, I think, a result of what might be identified as 'The Somalia Syndrome') The arguments/discussions pertinent to these concerns, however, did have the net effect of delaying the troop disposition, it is agreed.

Second, the U.S. military is said to have dragged its feet in making available military equipment to the peace-keepers once they were agreed upon. The ambassador says it is his view that the U.S. Government was very generous in its response, but that the military was very reluctant to get involved. As to a story I had heard about a Pentagon official bragging at having dragged on negotiations over prices to be paid for the rental or leasing of armored vehicles, he says he doesn't know of that particular event, but did express some dismay at the lack of organization and coordination of the over-all effort. Vehicles were to be made available in Entebbe, Uganda, I think he said, and then had to be transported to Rwanda, which caused a delay. The reason, as I understand it, is that the officer in charge of a contingent of Peace-Keepers (Ghanaians, I believe) demanded that the armored vehicles be "tracked," rather than wheeled vehicles (they should have tank-like tracks instead of wheels). The reason for this request, per Rawson, is that the tracked vehicles make more noise and are thus thought to be more impressive to the observer. The problem here is that tracks are not necessary, given the relatively good roads in Rwanda, and that the wheeled vehicles could have been driven down themselves, while the tracked ones had to be transported. All of these negotiations caused unnecessary delay.

(Without attempting to put words in his mouth, I got the impression that the ambassador was saying that while the State Department and the Administration were generally more inclined to get involved, the Pentagon was a continuing drag on such efforts. That is not, however, the view of Holly Burkhalter from Human Rights Watch, who had the sense after talking to some Pentagon types that they were ready to go and stalled by Administration delays. [??])

"What about the delay in calling it genocide?" I had read a New York Times report claiming that the Administration had asked its people not to use the word genocide with regard to the slaughter in Rwanda because they were afraid the American people would become caught up emotionally and insist upon our involvement. Rawson, it turns out, was interviewed for that article or a related one, and says he was mis-quoted - or, as he re-states it, "selectively quoted." The point he says he was making to the reporter was that the official declaration of genocide by a government carries with it certain automatic legal requirements, or steps that must be taken, and that it is therefore the job of a specific investigative body or organization to look at the evidence and make a factual, legal determination of genocide which then binds the government or body in question to these follow-up acts. He says it was clear to him that a genocidal campaign was being waged by the Hutu government, but that it was not his place to make that legal determination. He then offered that perhaps, in hindsight, he might have been less circumspect in the hopes that more would have been done.

He says what was happening was clearly visible to anyone who was there - and he was there - at least for a while. He talked of the courage of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) who stayed through the worst of it. He said it was chaotic and very frightening in the days following Habyarimana's killing and that he and his staff hung in as long and they could and finally got out of there - and he's glad they did.

Finally, I ask him one last thing. In view of the fact that much of the hysteria was promoted, much of the killing was encouraged and in fact generated through the use of radio broadcasts, why didn't we jam the radio waves? We certainly have the technology and the capacity to do so with planes flying over with jammers, and if we had, lives could have been saved, would they not? Here, he says with a bit of a grimace, I think you're right. We could have done so. He goes on to say that it is, of course, not a simple thing from a legal point of view. There are those who would argue that it is an unacceptable breach of sovereignty to go into someone's airspace and do such a thing, but, yes, it would have saved lives and "we blew it." We should have done it.

Later, he tells me a story of the difficulties people face in getting to the facts of some of the situations that arise. A group of RPF soldiers had been at a refugee or displaced person's camp on or near the border with Burundi. (Technically, one who has left home because of some force beyond his/her power to control it, and is maintained in a camp but is still within his/her country's borders, is a "displaced person". If the same person steps across a national boundary and into another country, he/she is a "refugee.") Through circumstances that are unclear, either because of provocation or simply in reprisal for the massacres, they killed 14 Hutu in an altercation. UN Peace-Keepers, who were nearby, came to the scene immediately, disarmed the soldiers and turned them over to government authorities by whom they were jailed, tried and punished. Very shortly after this happened, Rawson was in the area and met his counterpart, the American Ambassador to Burundi, who told him about the incident, saying that 1,000 people had been killed over a number of days, their bodies stuffed in latrines, that the UN Peace-Keepers stood by and let it happen and that the RPF had gotten away with it. Rawson discovered that the man had been told all this by people who claimed to have been on the scene. He explained the truth of the situation to his colleague, but says it is an example of the hyperbole with which the people in this region often tell their stories. He says exaggeration of numbers and stretching of time-frames are used to convey the drastic nature of the experience they had and their feelings about it, but they are not necessarily factual by our standards. It's an example, he says, of how important it is to get independent corroboration of "facts" as related here before you repeat them.

Between the long conversations and some sleep the flight goes fairly quickly and before I know it we're losing altitude, beginning our descent into Kigali. The land is green and mountainous in the twilight below. Rwanda.

After a smooth landing we taxi to the side of the strip and file out and down a gangway. At the bottom are all kinds of reporters and official cars, there to meet the returning government officials. Ambassador Rawson seeks us out on the way to passport control and introduces his wife, Sandra, who has come to meet him. Then he points the way for us to go, saying he hopes we get a chance to talk after we've had a chance to look around a bit. Nice fellow.

Passport control is a disaster. Two booths, with lines forming in front of each, present themselves. I make a choice and it turns out to be the wrong one. But by the time that becomes clear, with everybody who has pull or special credentials or whatever else they can show to jump the line coming to the booth on our side, the other one is too long to consider switching. What a drag! Stand and wait. Maybe move an inch, then somebody's relative or some official type or, I begin to think, people who have been rousted out of bed and brought in just to make our wait longer show up and have be attended to. And it usually seems to involve a certain amount of laughing and scratching and general jollying with the men in the booth. During this interminable wait I look over at a glass door on my left and see a woman looking at me. As she waves, I realize it's Cathy O'Neill, who told me she was going to be here the week before I was, traveling with, I believe, the International Refugee Committee. She, it appears, is in the transit lounge waiting to leave - probably on the plane that brought us. Talk about your small worlds.

Finally, after an unbelievable wait, I get to the counter, with the other four right behind me. At one or another of these borders we've been told there could be problems with medical certificates (our immunization records). Most countries in this region have the same requirements, but one or two of them officially require a cholera immunization, while others only suggest it. U.S. doctors don't recommend getting the cholera shot because it is at best 50% effective, so I didn't. At the clinic to which I went for my immunizations, the doctor said he'd stamp the cholera vaccine as if I'd gotten it, in order to eliminate the possibility we'd been warned about wherein a border guard would check for the stamp, not find it and force one to go to a local clinic and get a shot. Given the conditions in some of the local clinics I've seen on these trips, that's an eventuality I'd just as soon avoid.

Anyway, the smiling fellow inside the booth takes my entry card and passport and shot record and immediately becomes the very officious and patronizing bureaucrat. Do I speak French? No, I don't. Why not? Well, I actually speak a little French, a very little, but it would be presumptuous to say I "speak it," so I don't. Why not? Sorry, I just don't. Well, then, after a nasty little shake of the head, I hadn't properly filled out the landing card, he says, because I hadn't explained my business in Kigali. Sorry, I offer, but I don't exactly know my business in Kigali, since we're here with the UNHCR, and that's being determined by them. Well, then, I should have put that down. Sorry, I offer again, where would you like me to put it? Never mind, he clucks, as he notes something on a sheet, shaking his head. It's one of those times when you want to reach through the window and grab somebody, you know? Shake him a bit and say, Look, it's been a long flight and it's been almost as long standing here in this damned line while you gleefully served a lot of people who didn't even have the courtesy to do that. So give me a break, will you, and stamp the bloody passport? But, of course, I didn't. And after a little more clucking and a bit more shaking of the head he stamped the bloody passport and waved me on.

Barbara Francis, who I had half expected to see miraculously appear and whisk us through the stupid line, evidently had to wait downstairs outside the baggage selection area, so I hang around and continue to act the role of shepherd she had asked me to assume in her absence. Daryl, David, Bobby and Caroline come through without much apparent hassle and downstairs we go to collect our bags, which by this time I expected to find covered with mold. Once we find our bags we have to get into yet another line, this time to have them searched for any contraband we might be trying to bring into the country. I again manage to get into the wrong line and end up being the last one out.

Through the door and into a large crowd of folks welcoming friends and family members, I find Barbara and Chris Bowers, her UNHCR counterpart in Kigali, waiting patiently. They have already gotten the others and their bags out and into one or another of the two vehicles that are waiting outside, so out we go into night. Barbara, still the gamine, with short reddish brown hair and a ready and up-beat air about her, welcomes me back to Africa. Chris, a bright, good looking, bespectacled young Englishman with curly brown hair, is driving the wagon I pile into and we're soon racing down the dark roadway into the city. Off to the left Chris points out the lights on a hillside directly across what looks to be a dark valley and announces, "downtown Kigali."

He drives a bit like the Belgian cabby, it seems to me, but safely takes us through the dark streets and up, down and around the winding roads until we pull into the driveway of the Hotel des Milles Collines (The Hotel of the Thousand Mountains), where we're to stay.

This hotel was the site of a number of dramatic events during the killing. UNAMIR Peace-Keepers are said to have been quite heroic in standing off Interahamwe mobs who wanted to get their hands on some of those who had taken refuge here. Chris, who was a journalist before coming to the UNHCR, tells us that the manager of the hotel also saved the lives of great numbers of people by refusing entry to the same mobs at great personal risk. I believe it is this island of relative safety that Monique Mujawamariya (the Human Rights Watch honoree who barely escaped Kigali with her life) finally reached after hiding first in the bush, then for a week in the rafters of her home after a killing squad came for her during the first days of the slaughter. As we dismount and check in, Chris gives us photocopies of some pages of a report by African Rights, a human rights organization run by Rakiya Omaar, formerly head of Human Rights Watch/Africa.

After checking in and finding my way to the room, which is simple, neat and apparently clean, with two narrow beds, a phone and the usual amenities, I look over the pages. What Chris has given us are a few pages selected out of an exhaustive report that is itself over 700 pages long. Selected because they refer to massacres in an area we'll be visiting tomorrow, these include harrowing transcripts of testimony by survivors which give a first-person sense of immediacy to all the horror stories I've heard thus far.

Aside from the almost unbelievably brutal behavior described, one of the testimonies, that of an 18 year old shepherd from the town of Kanzenze in the Parish of Nyamata, stirs something deeply personal within me. On pages 217, 218 and 219 of the report, it is his relating of his observations and his personal experience. Having heard tales of horror from people in prisons and other meeting places in Latin America, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia and having been struck by the flat, almost impersonal way in which people sometimes distance themselves from their own recitation of the incredible indignities that have been heaped upon them, I read that tone into this testimony. This young man relates that "on Thursday, the radio said the president had died and we should stay at home. So that's what we did." He then says that local officials urged the Interahamwe to act, "asked the Interahamwe what they were waiting for," and the killing began. He tells of days of killings and terror, detailing some event or events that occurred on each day, during some of which the group he was with were able to repulse the attacks of the killers and band together for safety. Then, he says, the soldiers came and shot people because the Interahamwe weren't having enough success with their machetes (known here as 'pangas'), and at that point "the rest of us rushed to the church in Nyamata in the belief that they would not touch us in a church, especially in the presence of a white priest." So many people crammed into the church "that you could not find anywhere to put your feet." On the next day, he says, "there was of course no food" and tells how they organized to survive. He talks of the rumors that the priest was going to help them, but nothing coming of it. Then "On our fourth day in the church... the white priest came in and apologized for the fact that he did not have much to give us, saying, 'But I want to share what I have.' He then added: 'You will be killed anyway.'..." On the next day, as he tells it, some refugees brought some food and soldiers came and killed more people. "On the sixth day, the Interahamwe and soldiers came" and killed more people. "On the seventh day, the white priest drove away in broad daylight." "Then disaster came on the eighth day" as most of the people in the church were slaughtered.

I'm not sure what it is, but I think the combination of the Biblical turn of phrase, "on the seventh day" and the idea of this white priest, whoever he is, leaving them to die, forges an image in my brain that I can't shake loose. This is not to say I think he should have stayed and died, necessarily, if that was the choice he was facing. I don't know that and can't say what I would have done under the circumstances. Perhaps he took children away with him in the trunk of his car. Perhaps his leaving was a signal for the killing to begin. Perhaps he went to find someone with the power to stop the slaughter he saw coming. I, of course, have no way to know, but find myself wanting to know who he is and whether or not anyone has talked to him and asked him what happened. His perspective, at the very least, could be an invaluable one for anyone wanting to understand what happened here, it seems to me.

As it is, the young shepherd was left for dead after being hacked with a machete and is now recovering. He lost his entire family except for a younger sister.

Putting aside the pages after a while, I leave my stuff in the room and head to the hotel restaurant to meet the group for dinner. A lizard makes its way up the wall as I walk by. When I mention it to Daryl a bit later he thinks I'm joking, but I tell him to get used to it. And to be grateful for them - they eat the mosquitoes.

Barbara has been here for a few days and is getting the lay of the land. At dinner, she and Chris tell us a few stories about what is going on - as well as what has gone on.

The political situation here is still unstable, it is felt, to the point that the High Commissioner, Mrs. Ogata, is not yet willing to have the UNHCR on record as openly encouraging repatriation of the refugees. She is fearful that the stories of reprisal killings represent more than spontaneous acts by outraged individuals and may reflect either official policy or at least a willingness to look the other way. Though that view doesn't square with what Ambassador Rawson told me on the plane, it's clear that Mrs. Ogata remains unconvinced and feels their responsibility for the safety of the refugees supersedes the need for repatriation. Some of the non-governmental organizations working here are not in agreement with this position, believing that the government is doing its best, has been judicious about punishing transgressors among its own troops, and assert that the return of the refugees is necessary to re-establish the proper functioning of the society.

After a surprisingly good dinner of vegetables and rice, we head for the pad. The screens in the room seem to be in order and I don't see any mosquitoes, so I hit the sack.