There are no Hutus or Tutsis here...but there was a genocide

It is against the law here to say those words. Instead they are Hams and Tomatoes or Harry and Tom. But you are alowed to-even encouraged on some level, to talk about the genocide. Paul Kagame and the political machine. He is trying to erase rigid boundaries of the separation between Tom and Harry by pretending it is not there. BUT at the same time, he is acknowledging the past hurts. I have been told of some policies which favor the tomatoes (they are the ones who were targeted in the genocide in 1994 by the hams) around education. It is a subtle institutionalized form of discrimination. Yet, at the same time, the efforts are there to reunite this raw society.

In comparison to Holocaust survivors, one NGO friend of mine was saying, the response to this genocide is very different. Maybe because it was the first of its kind that was known about world wide, but Holocaust survivors, this person was saying, did not at first talk and also developed a strange privacy and ownership around surviving. This is mine, you cannot have it. You cannot know if you were not there and we are different from you. Whereas the Rwandans were seeking connection to other genocide survivors and wanting someone else to normalize it for them. Many Rwandans looked to Holocaust survivors to say, yes, this happened to us to. This is normal in some kind of way.

Another big difference is that here, people went back to their homes. They went back to living alongside the same neighbors (who slaughtered their families) praying in the same churches (which could not offer sanctuary) living in the same villages (where they fled and tried not to die).

Some came to cities for work opportunities, some left because they could not do that...but many continue to live in the place where their hell took place. Tomatoes still are afraid of Hams. And yet, are living and working side by side.

Kagame is brilliant in what he is doing here, yet, it is a police state. You see it, apparently, at 1am and later where there are road blocks everywhere. And while that feels limiting, it also generates a greater sense of security for those who still feel afraid. There is no free press. And while that feels limiting, it also allows Kigame to have greater control over what messages are and are not sent.

How long will people's personal liberies be compromised for the greater good? Is it ok to reduce personal liberty for greater social change? Since Kagame is doing stuff which I think is good, does all of this sit more comfortably with me?

What do you think?