“There are no devils left in hell, they’re all in Rwanda,” said a missionary stationed in Rwanda who viewed the genocide firsthand. The short, popular statement left by the missionary paints a picture of what exactly what was going on because our minds could only vividly construct the outrageous violence that occurred for several months. Years after the genocide, the world has not seen anything comparable to this magnitude of murder, or has it? What fueled Rwanda, especially the cases outlined in Phillip Gourevitch’s book was ignorance. The Hutus killed because that is what the government told them to do. Sound familiar? The government, media, and our friends and family tell us to do things all the time and we do them because we trust them or are accustomed to them. Buying the right clothes to look a certain way, shopping for the right foods, deciding what causes cancer, whether or not to keep The Ten Commandments in a courtroom, and many other examples are all ways in which we listen and obey and sometimes the results are disturbing.
We are all victims or promoters of genocide in the respect we hardly ever question authority. Part of being adults is to construct our own opinions and actions about the world and those around us. An open mind is probably the most powerful tool we can have as critical thinking adults. Rwanda could have been easily prevented and it is extremely unfortunate we needed to experience so much bloodshed in order to open our eyes.
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