February 27, 2007 - Brock Press By: Maria Kotovych

Genocide is not a thing of the past


EDMONTON (CUP) — When Tharcisse Seminega and his family emerged after hiding in a dark underground room for over a month, their skin had been deprived of sunlight for so long they were nearly unrecognizable. But it was because of their hiding spot that Seminega and his family survived the genocide of Tutsis that occurred in Rwanda in 1994.

On Feb. 1, Seminega and Len Rudner of the Canadian Jewish Congress presented a talk entitled, “Lessons from Hatred. Genocide: Beyond Terror, Systematic Mass Destruction,” organized by the University of Alberta chapter of Hillel, a Jewish students group, as part of International Week.

Seminega told his family’s story of survival, and both men discussed reasons why genocides occur and the lessons that people can learn from them. They also drew comparisons between the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust.

The night Seminega’s family escaped from their home to go into hiding, a friend came to warn him that someone was coming to kill him. He was surprised to learn that when the militia arrived at his house, one of Seminega’s colleagues had come with them to identify him as a Tutsi.

“You were wondering why you just became the enemy overnight,” Seminega said, recalling the fear as his family fled to hide in horrid conditions - a situation Rudner paralleled with the Nazi Party’s targeting of the Jews. Seminega explained that before Belgian colonists arrived in the 20th century, the land was occupied by three groups (the Batwa, the Hutus and the Tutsis) who lived in relative peace.

But the newly arrived colonists favoured the minority Tutsis above the other groups, and when Rwanda finally gained independence in 1962, the previously repressed Hutus came into power with an axe to grind against the Tutsis. Tensions escalated until 1994, when the government began killing the Tutsis, Seminega said.

“The conflict was misrepresented and distorted,” Seminega said of the government propaganda circulated prior to the genocide. According to Seminega, the government told Hutus to kill Tutsis, so that the Tutsis would not kill them first.

While Seminega spoke about the Rwandan genocide, Rudner focused on the Holocaust during the Second World War. In 2004, he visited Majdanek, a Holocaust concentration camp in Poland. There he saw the same weeds that grew in his own garden, leading him to believe that the atrocities can be committed anywhere.

“If the same weeds can grow in Majdanek as grow in my own garden, then how can I imagine the evil that grew in this place can grow nowhere else?” Rudner asked. Rudner said that his studies of diaries written by Nazi special police battalions revealed terrifying truths about the genocide.

“What was frightening was the ordinariness of their days. ‘We went to work. It went well,’” Rudner quoted from the diaries.

Additionally, Rudner quoted an SS officer who did not know of any Nazis who were killed for refusing to execute Jews. They did it, Rudner said, “because they saw nothing wrong with killing Jews.”

Rudner argued that people who want to spread hate use language as their weapon. “Jews were referred to as lice, bacteria, vermin; in Rwanda, the Tutsis were referred to as cockroaches,” Rudner said, noting that for this reason, the lessons from the Holocaust and Rwandan genocide must extend beyond “never again.”

“Hate speech must not find protection in this country. A person’s right to speak must be balanced against another person’s right not to be the target of hateful speech.”



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