Why?

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Sunday, 1 November 2009, 05:26

What makes a person turn on their neighbour they have lived alongside for twenty, thirty or even forty years? What makes a child take up a weapon and use it on their one-time friends? How can the world seemingly stand by and watch 800,000 people, out of a population of just nine million, get slaughtered in ten-week period? How can I, as a politically aware person, know so little about a genocide that happened in my adult lifetime?

These questions and many more are occupying my thoughts as I pass over Libya, on my way to Rwanda. I am going to this small, hilly country, nestled between Kenya to the east, Uganda to the north, Congo to the west and Burundi to the south, as part of a cricket charity that I’m involved in – Cricket Without Boundaries. We teach cricket to kids, train up local coaches so they can continue to develop the game after we have left and spread an Aids Awareness message. It is a great charity – consciously run on a volunteer basis – which is just as rewarding for those who take part as it is for the young people who get involved.

I first came out here two years ago and found it a deeply moving experience. I made friends with many local people, visited the orphanages and the memorials established to remember the genocide and I marvelled at the apparent capacity of a nation to heal itself in such a short space of time. I made a 12-minute film of the trip – part of which can be seen on the CWB website – something I look back on with a mixture of emotion and pride.

But there remains a lot of unanswered questions and finding answers to these are a major reason why I am here. What really happened? How can hatred consume people? Can a nation truly overcome such horrors and can past tribal loyalties really be broken down and forgotten and in its place a new Rwandan identity emerge?

But nagging at the back of my mind is the question of how we allowed it to happen? Was a small African country so politically and economically insignificant that Britain and other Western countries thought it unnecessary to intervene? Despite it being one of the worst genocides of the 20^th century, John Major, the British Prime Minister at the time, did not even make a reference it in his memoirs. His Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd made a passing comment but that was to simply admit that the issue was not on their radar.

What was worse was that what foreign intervention did occur largely focused on propping up the existing regime.

I don’t exclude myself from self-examination. In 1994 I was volunteering at Searchlight. I was young and probably naive but I was certainly politically aware. Why do I know so little about the worst genocide in my lifetime? Can I really just blame institutions like the UN when I did nothing?

I am not going to find answers to all these questions over the next few days but I hope to leave with a greater understanding of what happened and why. I also want to leave with a sense of optimism – like I did last time – in the capacity of human beings to overcome the ultimate horrors of what we can do to one another.

As we battle against the BNP back in the UK let us not forget where the politics of hate can ultimately lead.