2010-01-11 18:26:51

THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: One Burundian Tells His Story Of War, Survival And Reconciliation

Filed under: Africa, Featured, Pascal Akimana, The Purple Interview
Posted by: John

Today, an independent Rwandan commission released its report on the 1994 assassination of Rwandan dictator Juvenal Habyarimana, charging that Hutu extremists brought down Habyarimana’s plane with surface-to-air missiles, killing him as well as Burundi president Cyprien Ntyarimira. That political murder, long blamed on current Rwandan president Paul Kagame, set off a genocide in which almost a million Rwandan Tutsis were killed.

The assassination has long been a subject of controversy. Critics of the Mutsinzi Report, named for its main author Jean Mutsinzi, are calling it a self-serving document that exonerates the very man who commissioned it, President Kagame,  but it is considered by many to be the most thorough investigation ever conducted into the assassination. Over at The New Yorker, writer and reporter Philip Gourevitch has posted a copy of the report and seems to think it’s conclusive in its judgments, though not yet definitive.

From the standpoint of international law, the document is important for a number of reasons and may figure in future trials before the tribunal at the Hague. For the people who survived the aftermath of the events it chronicles, the report may have prosecutorial and perhaps even moral value, but it can’t change the past. No report can.

In 1994, Pascal Akimana was a 13-year-old Burundian Hutu who had just barely survived a civil war in his own country, which borders on Rwanda and shares its ethnic make-up. When the plane went down in Kigali, killing the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, violence erupted in both countries. Akimana was forced to leave his country a second time and resume a life in Congolese refugee camps where he spent many of his teenage years.

Now, at the age of 28, he lives in Springfield, Massachusetts, and I spoke to him about both past and future on a bright, cold morning in the downtown offices of Mens Resources International. He took time away from his work with local Burundians, addressing cases of violence against women, to speak with me. A lot of his countrymen his age have brought the violence of home with them into exile, he told me, and he tries to help them get past it.

In general, Burundi gets far less press than Rwanda, its neighbor to the north, though it has been rocked by wars and massacres since at least 1962, when the country gained independence. In 1972, a Tutsi massacre of Hutus launched a mass Hutu migration out of that country into Rwanda, and that little-remembered migration is seen by historians as a major contributing factor to the Hutu genocide against the Tutsi in 1994.

By the time Akimana was born, a relative peace had come to Burundi, but in 1993, things fell apart again. The first democratically elected president, a Hutu by the name of Melchior Ndadaye, was assassinated by Tutsi soldiers, and a new round of fighting broke out. All this would be ancient history, except that Burundi has elections later this year for the presidency, and observers fear a renewed outbreak of violence.

The following is one man’s account of a childhood spent in a killing field, nothing more, and yet in an era of sectarian violence and partisan strife extending across the globe, from Africa to Afghanistan, from Nepal to the United States, Pascal’s story also possesses a universal significance. It is by turns terrifying and overwhelming. It’s also inspiring, and it’s long, so I’ve decided to break it into two parts, a Purple State first.

The second half of his story will be posted a week from today. Part one is below. Before or after you read, take a minute to check out the website at Mens Resources International, which is accepting donations on Pascal’s behalf. If you want to understand why this man could use a little help, read on.

Q: You were twelve in 1993 when war broke out in Burundi. You are the child of a Hutu father and a partly Tutsi mother. What was your childhood like before the violence began?

A: Children didn’t know anything about ethnic groups. I didn’t know about being a Hutu. I started learning about it in 1993. I would go home and ask my dad if I was a Hutu, and he would tell me to shut up. Our parents knew the truth, but they never talked about it. They were worried about spies. People were afraid that if they talked too much about ethnicity, they might get into trouble, so they didn’t talk too much about it. But in the meantime, I grew up with Tutsi children. I slept in their homes. I ate with them. It was strange to me, when I found out that I was a Hutu, and found out that someone else was a Tutsi. Before, we weren’t told anything about it.

Q:So there  was no difference between Hutu and Tutsi kids in your village, as far as you could tell?

A: None. We had the same language. We had one culture. The traditional dance was the same. We all worked on farms, we all looked after the cattle. My mother used to send me to a Tutsi neighbor to ask her for an onion, and when I got home, my mom would say, go back and get some salt. Those kinds of social exchanges were very common and very beautiful. A child of a neighbor was a child of everyone, both Tutsi and Hutu.

Q: What happened in 1993?

A: The president was killed, and everyone became alarmed. People divided themselves along ethnic lines.  There were areas where only Tutsi could go, where Hutus couldn’t enter, and if they entered, they would be burned or tortured or killed automatically.  There were Hutu areas as well, where Tutsi couldn’t enter. There was heavy fighting, and people were killed. My neighbors were killed. There were well-educated people, like teachers, who were killed. I saw their bodies.

Q: You fled with your family to the Democratic Republic of Congo and became a refugee. How long were you there?

A: I stayed there a good year then came back to Burundi.

Q: What was life like in the camp?

A: Very horrible. Terrible. I’d lost touch with my father, and I was alone with my two sisters. I lived in a small shack. No water. We depended on the United Nations to bring food rations.

Q: Your parents went somewhere else?

A: Yes. They ended up in a different place.  When people ran, they got cut off from each other. A crowd of us left the town, but we couldn’t cross the border because we were afraid of the military, which was Tutsi. So we hid in the bush, and children got cut off from their parents, and somehow people passed word that one direction was better than another. Kids were crying. We followed the crowd, and when we looked back, we realized that our parents were gone.

Q: What was it like when you realized you’d lost your parents?

A: The feeling was horrible. We passed a lot of dead bodies. Our only hope was to get somewhere safe. I was running away from things that I really didn’t understand.  I didn’t know why I was supposed to be a Hutu, how I was a Hutu. I asked myself questions in my confusion. Why am I running away? What did I do to deserve this? I had a mixture of feelings that I couldn’t resolve, but I heard the heavy guns, and I just wanted to run away.

Q: So you ended up in the refugee camp in Congo.

A: Life there was tough. I told my sister we should go back home. If we’re going to be killed anyway, it might as well happen in Burundi. In the camp, we didn’t understand why we were being treated so badly.

Q: You had to take care of your younger sisters in the camp?

A:I had to play the father there.

Q: Did you ever think about becoming a soldier?

A: Sure. I went for military training. I went to many meetings, but I didn’t actually fight. Many of my friends did, and some of them were killed, and others had their hands chopped off. I thought about fighting, but my only motivation was revenge. I really wanted to do something for my country, but I didn’t fight in the end.

Q: But you did go back home?

A: Yes, I went back, and I found my father there, enjoying his life, and I was very angry. I told him that he should have been looking for us instead of hanging around the village. Burundi wasn’t safe, and before long the fighting started again, so in 1994, I left again, and I went to another refugee camp in Congo, where I became a youth leader, and I started to learn history. I wanted to understand how I could make a contribution to my country. I didn’t want to be violent. By nature, I’m not violent. If I had been, I would have taken up arms like many young people. I kept on asking myself what should I do? What should I study? To help the people of my country make peace.

Q: Why was that so important to you?

A:Because I had good friends who were Tutsi. There were  Tutsis who had protected us. When we were going to be killed, Tutsis warned us and told us to leave. Not all Tutsi are bad, not all Hutu are bad. Either side, you find good and bad people.

Q: You left that second camp after two years and went back to Burundi again. You attended a boarding school in a rough neighborhood dominated by Hutu rebels. What happened there?

A: It was a Seventh Day Adventist School, and a majority of students were Hutu.  There was a lot of trouble. Our headmaster was kidnapped by the rebels, and the rebels wanted us to fight for them. At the very least, they wanted to indoctrinate us against the government, so the government decided that we were rebels. Young people were suspect on both sides. You can imagine how difficult it was to please both sides, and I was very young. I have to believe that I was very smart, because I was loved by both the Hutu and the Tutsi.

Q: Did you ever tell Tutsis that your mother was a Tutsi or tell Hutus that your father was a Hutu?

A: No. I never did that. Both sides would have been suspicious if I said that.

Q: Was there heavy fighting around the school?

A: Yes. The Burundi government deployed soldiers to protect us, but the Hutu killed a lot of them, so the Tutsi began to think we were passing information to the rebels.  The soldiers became our enemies. One night, the rebels attacked, and some students went to join them, and others stayed in the school, and those who didn’t join, like me, had to duck. Bullets were flying everywhere. I saw students gunned down in the cafeteria. One night, the fighting started while I was sleeping, and a bullet whistled through the window, and cut my arm with glass. I thought I was shot. So I hid under the bed. The whole time, I kept on asking myself why we couldn’t keep the peace. What was the matter with Rwanda and Burundi that we had to fight all the time? Aren’t we human beings? Don’t we breathe like other people? I have seen Hutu men who were killed by being tied to stones and thrown into the river. I’ve seen Hutu women who were sliced open with a  knife so the Tutsi could see what a Hutu baby looks like in the womb.

To make peace, we have to talk about everything. We have to admit everything. Everyone must confess their own guilt. Including the Belgians [[colonizers of Burundi who drew the boundary lines of the country and enshrined ethnic differences that eventually led to strife]]

Q:You have a very strong feeling about the injustice done to Hutu. What about the injustices done to the Tutsi?

A: I know one elderly woman who died recently. She was a Tutsi, and she used to cry a lot. Tutsis were victims as well. This woman lost their land. She lost her family.

Q: So when the Tutsis killed the Hutu president of Burundi in 1993, it ruined her life?

A: Definitely. She said that. She lost her children. She couldn’t live in her home, because it was no longer safe. She blamed the Tutsi, her own people. There are many Tutsi who feel the same way. But the main thing is that we should talk and not pretend. We’re not children. We should write an honest history, without bias.

Q:Do you plan to go back to Burundi eventually?

A: Yeah, that’s my country. That’s my lovely land.  I’m in touch with my people there. I talk to people in the government. I can’t run away. I know there are people who are still traumatized. I can understand them. There are people who say, Pascal, thank you, I don’t want to be called a Burundian. I can understand how a man who lost his wife and five children would say that. I understand why he doesn’t want to go back.

Q: How do you create a reconciliation movement that will be respected by Hutu and Tutsi both?

A: It’s a tough one. We need courage as people. We need people who are willing to speak up and get past the terrible things they have experienced.  We need people like Nelson Mandela, and these are very few on earth. We need people who are not selfish, who can say regardless of what’s happened, I lost, too, but the problem is not this person or that person. I can blame actions, but I don’t have to blame you as an individual. You are still a special person, and you can change. We need those kind of people, and I feel like I’m such a person, because I could have chosen to kill, but I chose to do good things and to speak about the truth and not to be ashamed because I’m a Hutu, and I don’t feel disgraced by my Hutu heritage.

We have to train people how to admit what they’ve done, and we have to find space for them to be forgiven, which is a hard thing to do. Suspicions of people are still fresh, and the wounds are still really open. I know there’s a lot of support in the international community for reconciliation, and there’s money to integrate the non-combatants, but those things are not working.  It’s necessary to go to the grassroots level and ask the people at the village level what they need, because those are the people who know what’s needed. People have to go to those villages and say to the people you are the ones who were most affected by the war. What do you need?

Q:Elections this year, and there’s some fear of violence.

A: Oh yeah. There hasn’t been disarmament. How can you create peace without taking arms away from the people. Why give money for programs and then forget that there are so many people who fought and still have their guns? There are so many people who fought. There are children who never had childhoods. They just fought. They grew up in the streets, they didn’t go to school, and they still have guns. Others left their guns in the bush. We can only hope that people are tired of war and won’t fight.

People are not sure yet that the past won’t repeat itself.

Comments (2)

2 Comments »

1. Thanks John for sharing my story with other people. The world needs people who are committed like yourselve to serve the communities.

   Pascal Akimana

   Comment by Pascal Akimana — January 11, 2010 @ 10:14 pm

2. [...] first half of his story can be found here. The second is below. Before or after you read, take a minute to check out the website a Mens [...]

   Pingback by Purple State of John — January 18, 2010 @ 4:26 pm

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