Mukesh Kapila
The sombre speeches of foreign dignitaries including the UN Secretary General and heads of state were interrupted by sobs and screams from the thousands packed into Kigali’s Amahora stadium. It was 2014 and we were marking Kwibuka20, the Rwanda genocide’s 20th anniversary. Red Cross volunteers clambered along the stands to stretcher away the dozens fainting around us. I was back in the stadium I had first visited in 1994 to meet the failed UN peacekeeping mission headquartered there. What could I hope to learn by returning? The purpose of learning is to imbibe knowledge that creates understanding, generates insight, and triggers empathy. Ultimately, that aims to improve individual and societal attitudes and behaviours. That was the motivation, in this context, for listening to genocide survivors. The same objective has spurred the growth of Holocaust education in the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s progrom against Jews during the Second World War. But at a time that antisemitism and other hatreds and divisions are at record level, is it working?
Of course, it is inherent in the human condition to fail again and again. And so, the Holocaust was preceded by the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian genocide and German Southwest Africa’s Herero and Nama genocide. And succeeding it were the Rwanda, Srebrenica, Cambodia, Yazidi, and Darfur genocides. Not to mention genocide-like atrocities against the Uyghur in China and Rohingya in Myanmar, or in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and Gaza.
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