Rwanda Genocide: A Closer Look at How the Nordics Participated in Bringing Closure to the Land of a Thousand Hills
Rwanda is a small land-locked country neighboring Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The year was 1995; a tall man, with high cheekbones and a strong long neck, arrived in our neighborhood in the outskirts of Nairobi. He had arrived at his work station as our neighbor’s caretaker.
There were whispers that he had escaped the war and soon everyone referred to him as Mrwanda which in Swahili means “the Rwandese”. Andrea, something I came to find out years later, was his real name. He was soft-spoken, hard-working, and very honest. In the 10 years, he lived with our neighbors, I never heard anyone complain about him.
I did not realize that he was a refugee thanks to the war in his country until years later when I was older and could read books. I do not know what happened to him but I do think about him a lot as I grow older especially when discussing the Rwanda genocide.
Moving to Sweden and interacting with people who have experienced war in their past has made my thoughts about Andrea even more intense. I ask myself, did we do enough as neighbors? Did the nickname make him feel different? If it was not for the war, what would have become of him in his country? This is one of those weeks where I think a lot about Andrea in hope that I will one day get closure!
If you are reading about the Rwandan Genocide for the first time, this conflict was considered the result of a civil war between the Hutus and the Tutsis. It all started when Rwanda’s President, Juvénal Habyarimana, was killed when his plane was shot down. Hutu extremists then gained control of the government and started a genocide that would brutally murder up to 800,000 people between April 7 and July 15, 1994.
While the topic of why no country, including the African countries and the UN, intervened is quite controversial, there have been efforts over recent past years to help to bring justice and closure by punishing all those who were involved and fled by the Scandinavian countries.
Jail and Extradition
In 2013, a Rwandan citizen living in Norway was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment by the Oslo District court for participating in the genocide. The Norwegian government then decided to send the genocide accused Charles Bandora to Rwanda so that he would face trial in his homeland. This is the first time Norway extradited to the country.
Charles Bandora had participated in mass murder, both as an organizer and as a hangman. At that time, he was a high-ranking member of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) party in Bugesera, Rwanda.
Bandora was accused of having facilitated the Interahamwe in the mass killings of Tutsis by training and arming militiamen and personally supervising massacres in the Bugesera region. The militiamen he trained are alleged to have traveled in bands with machetes and small arms, in open trucks, killing 10,000 people per day. He is also accused of killing 400 Tutsis who had sought refuge at a church between 7-13 April 1994. He was arrested on June 8, 2012, as he tried to enter Oslo Airport with a fake identity, posing as Frank Kamwana, a Malawian national.
Bandora's arrest was just one of many arrests made by Nordic countries at a time when some European countries were accused by prosecutors of lacking interest in pursuing fugitives in their soil while others handled fugitives with soft gloves. Interestingly, he had earlier been arrested and later released under unclear circumstances in Malawi.
Sweden is not to be left behind in this fight for justice having sentenced 61-year-old, Claver Berinkindi to life in prison in 2013. Claver, who obtained Swedish citizenship in 2012, had participated in five massacres between April 18 and May 31, 1994. He was involved in the deaths of hundreds of people who had sought refuge in a municipal building in the central Rwandan town of Muyira and an adjacent adult education center.
This was the second case relating to the Rwandan genocide to be prosecuted in Sweden the same year. Stanislas Mbanednande, also a naturalized Swedish citizen was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for taking part in a series of killings in Kibuye, a city in western Rwanda.
Denmark convicted Yvonne Basebya, a Rwandan woman, over her role in the genocide and former Director-General of the Civil Aviation Authority, Sylvaire Ahorugeze, who was arrested and charged in 2006 for killing 25 people. Sylvaire had lived in Demark for 6 years then. Finland also handed a life sentence to Francois Bazaramba, a former cleric over Genocide charges in 2010.
Partnerships
Other than helping Rwanda find justice years later, the Nordics have partnered with Rwanda in other development projects. For instance, Swedish Radio Media Development Office (SR MDO) is supporting Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA) to successfully fulfill its autonomous role and the professional media company, free from political interference, and to hold decision-makers accountable to its citizens through journalism.
Rwanda Broadcasting Agency and Swedish Radio have been working together since 2014 strengthening regional stations journalists and developing a five-year strategy for RBA to become a full-scale public service media provider in Rwanda.
Denmark on the other hand hosts a Nordic Memorial Museum on Genocide against the Tutsi called Dady de Maximo Art Peace Center. The Copenhagen-based memorial is dedicated to the million-plus victims through the study, documentation, interpretation, and awareness-raising of the history of the genocide. This provides a platform for discussing the visual arts, film, and literature related to mass atrocities and genocides. It is also intended to teach universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice, indifference, and division.
View over the Muvumba river valley and the Hills of Northern Rwanda showcasing why is Rwanda considered the land of a thousand hills.
Post-war Growth on Steroids
Efforts to rebuild and move on are surely paying off as Rwanda has also managed to beat the odds and since 2018 caught the headlines by surprise. The most memorable being 2018 when it stood out in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business, a globally agreed-upon and go-to standard for business people and policy-makers. Rwanda had jumped to 41st place globally, particularly thanks to its regulation regarding property registration where it scored 2nd globally, only after New Zealand.
Other significant economic advancements included Volkswagen set up a car plant and a controversial law banning second-hand clothes being implemented in the hope to ignite the underdeveloped domestic textile industry and finally not to mention how Brazilian-Argentinean company, Positivo BGH, assembling laptops in the country was great for their tech industry.
It is no secret that Kigali has outshined major neighboring cities with high-rise buildings mushrooming faster than most developing countries, clean and paved roads jam is controlled, helmet-wearing bike riders. This explains why Rwanda beat other African countries and hosted high-level conferences such as Africa Tech Summit, Apps Africa's flagship gathering, transform Africa Summit 2018 that saw President Kagame giving a speech, World Economic Forum in 2016, and GSMA’s m360 Africa.
Kigali is also the first African city to host Nordic start-ups like Addressya and Norrsken Foundation.
“I had seen documentaries on CNN and BBC painting a very different picture of Africa but Kigali is a vibrant city with many shades of life. No one-time plastic in the entire country. Can you believe that no plastic straw, no such things? It was that clean,” says Ram Mandayam.
Rwanda from a Tourist’s Perspective
Tourists like Sweden-based Ram Mandayam when asked to describe Rwanda in one word called it beautiful.
Ram, whose Rwanda visit was his first to the African Continent, told Ambitious.Africa that he chose Rwanda for the mountain gorillas and the golden monkeys which are endangered.
“Kigali was the cleanest place in the tropical world in some sense. People were kind though they didn’t speak too much English they were not trying to rip me off just because I was a tourist,” said Ram adding that his visit changed his perception of Africa. “I had seen documentaries on CNN and BBC painting a very different picture of Africa but Kigali is a vibrant city with many shades of life. No one-time plastic in the entire country. Can you believe that no plastic straw, no such things? It was that clean.”
One thing that stood out for him though was the number of uniformed men with AK-47 rifles. It left him wondering why they needed heavy weapons. Who was the enemy?
Despite those baffling observations, Ram believes Rwandese people have the best smiles in East Africa.
By: Cate Mukei