Friday, April 30, 2010

Orderly and oppressive

As Americans, we tend to assume that democracy is the best option. Human rights groups are jumping on the Rwandan government for achieving order through oppression.

Rwanda offers ample evidence that democracy requires ripeness in the form of at least a baseline of education, common values, and economic stability.

Perhaps it's too early in Rwanda's reconstruction to call for democracy. This is a nation carved out and then divided by outside forces. It was the Belgian government that arbitrarily determined who was in the majority (Hutu: fewer than ten cows, dark skinned, medium height) and the minority (Tutsi: more than ten cows, lighter skinned, tall). The situation is imperfect, and people are suffering, but now again is not the time for outsiders to press for their way of doing things.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Shades of gray

An update to the civil unrest that appeared to be brewing in Rwanda when I last left off: Last week, the government arrested an opposition politician for alleged genocide ideology. The many arrests of Hutu leadership so far signals a clear distrust of allowing the majority back into power.

Is there a point when the suppression of differing ideologies shifts from actions necessary to maintain the peace to actions necessary to maintain power? I'm not sure the answer really matters when we're talking about ideologies differing in terms of "genocide good" versus "genocide bad." But it certainly is not the case that being Hutu translates automatically to one or the other.

There is such thing too as a slow genocide--where silently and slowly, right before our eyes, an entire group of people is stepped on until they are ground into dust.