APRIL MEANS BLOOD IN THE SPRINGTIME
by NP Editor Heidi Kingstone
National Post
comment/archive/2009/04/02/heidi-kingstone-blood-i n-april.aspx
April 2 2009
Canada
At the Kigali Memorial Centre on the outskirts of the Rwandan capital,
258,000 people are buried, their bodies having been exhumed and
re-interred on the site. Overlooking the city you see that Rwanda
really is the land of a 1,000 hills, mille collines, undulating,
green, lush, verdant, a country recovering from madness. You can’t
go to Kigali without visiting at least one genocide memorial; what
happened 15 years ago this April was too monstrous.
Rwanda’s holocaust started on the evening of April 6th, 1994. The
frenzy continued all night and into the next day, April 7th, as it
happens my birthday. Adolf Hitler’s birthday is less than two weeks
later, though several decades and a previous century earlier than
mine – April 20th, 1889 – a terrifying thought.
At approximately 8:20 pm on April 6, 1994, the plane carrying Rwandan
President Juvénal Habyarimana, Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) Chief of
Staff Deogratias Nsabimana, and other prominent figures was shot down
as it approached Kigali International Airport.
During that night and through to the morning of April 7, General
Roméo Dallaire, then commander of UNAMIR, frantically engaged in
dialogue with the Forces Armées Rwandaises. UNAMIR served as the
military and legal force behind the Prime Minister of Rwanda. Ten blue
helmets guarded Premier Agathe Uwiringiyimana. Their murder in Kigali
on April 7, 1994, precipitated the withdrawal of Belgian troops and
later of other foreign troops.
That unleashed 100 days where Hutu hordes massacred Tutsis and moderate
Hutus. Between 800,000 and one million people died. Using clubs and
machetes up to 10,000 Rwandans were killed each day. People would pay
for their murderers to despatch them swiftly rather then have them
hack off an arm, only to return later in order to hack off another
limb, until death finally came, slowly, and more, as we know.
I mention April because that month kept coming up as I toured room
after room in the genocide museum. One by one, 20th century genocides,
like the stacks of the bodies of their victims, piled up. The killing
fields of Cambodia began when the Khmer Rouge took power on April
17, 1975.
The third Anfal campaign, which took place between April 7-20, 1988,
continued the genocide of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein’s government. It
was in northern Iraq where "Chemical" Ali Hassan al-Majid used mustard
gas and chemical weapons.
April 24th is the day commemorated worldwide by Armenians as Genocide
Memorial Day. In 1915 hundreds of Armenian leaders were murdered in
Istanbul after being summoned and gathered.
The Siege of Sarajevo began on April 5th 1992, continuing until
February 29, 1996. Muslim forces responded to three nights of heavy
shelling by launching a counter-offensive to break the nine-week
Serbian siege.
In Israel, and in Jewish communities around the world, Holocaust
Memorial Day, Yom Ha’Shoah, follows the Jewish calendar but usually
falls in April, marking the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The heroic uprising
began on April 19th 1943 but the destruction of the ghetto signalled
the end of hope and the end stage of the final solution of the Jews
of Europe.
The UK celebrates HMD, commemorating the Holocaust and other genocides,
on January 27, the day Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets, but
when former Prime Minister Tony Blair was trying to determine the
appropriate date, the Aegis Trust, a British NGO that campaigns against
genocide, suggested April. "Aside from being close to Yom Hashoah,
April 15th 1945 was the date Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British
troops and so there was resonance with that period of history with
many families of veterans as well as survivors. We noted it would
have brought HMD it into a month when other genocides were marked
and we were curious why so many dates associated with genocide fell
in April" says chief executive James Smith, "However other countries
in Europe already marked January 27th and as Holocaust Memorial Day
is more of an educational event, January was favoured as there are
no holidays and pupils would not be so close to writing exams."
The Rwandan genocide began when school was out for Easter, and
children were back in their villages with their families. This would
have made it easier for the perpetrators to kill entire families
of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, who were identified and betrayed by
neighbours. Logistically it was not so convenient as April is also the
wettest month. That also made it a bad time of year for the victims
who were running or hiding. The plan to shoot down the President’s
plane, if there was one, would not have been planned strategically,
but linked to the timing of the Arusha Peace Process talks taking
place in neighbouring Tanzania.
What is it about April that makes it, as T.S. Eliot wrote in The Waste
Land, the cruellest month? Had all these people actually read Eliot
and taken him at his word? Why is there a genocidal spring clean in
April? Is it when testosterone levels soar?
In China the symbolic ploughing of the earth by the emperor and
princes of the blood takes place in their third month, which frequently
corresponds to our April. The "days of April" (journées d’avril) is
a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at
Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe
in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous
trial known as the procès d’avril.
There may be no explanation other than man’s continued barbarity or
the positioning of the planets. More likely it is the randomness and
coincidence of history.