Jacqueline Murekatete lost her parents, six siblings, grandmother, and numerous aunts and uncles to the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. Yet, she is optimistic; she is convinced that genocide is preventable and that we can create a world without it.
On March 6, Murekatete spoke to a packed Lipkin Theatre, filled with mostly young listeners, including a history class from Bloomsbury Middle School in New Jersey. This is the way Murekatete would have it; since the age of sixteen she has spoken at schools and organizations, investing great hope in the young.
Growing up Tutsi in a predominantly Hutu country, Murekatete knew that her ethnic group was reviled. In schools, curricula designated Tutsis as enemies and undesirables—“cockroaches” and “snakes.” Tutsis lacked educational and occupational opportunities. Hutus could kill Tutsis with impunity. Nevertheless, it came as a shock to her when, in April 1994, Hutus, urged on by government radio, embarked on a full-scale massacre of Tutsis.
At the time her family was assaulted, taken to a river and murdered with machetes, the nine-year-old Murekatete was visiting her grandmother in another town. Blockaded from leaving the town, she and her grandmother found refuge with a Hutu family until their hiding place was discovered. Murekatete gained uneasy sanctuary at an orphanage run by Italian priests. Her grandmother, unable to find a haven, was slain a few days later. She was among an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus murdered by Hutu neighbors and militia and elements of the Rwandan military. The planned, systematic killings encompassed 100 days.
In 1995, an uncle living in America arranged for Murekatete to come to New York. At first, Murekatete felt as if she had lived through a nightmare from which she would awaken. Gradually, she acknowledged the truth. From then on, the girl who once dreamed of becoming a doctor decided to dedicate her life to preventing genocide.
Genocide, Murekatete firmly believes, can be eliminated.
“People do not wake up and decide to kill their teachers and neighbors,” she said. “There are precedents: racism, discrimination, dehumanization, and marginalization. In Rwanda, people were taught, preached at and made to believe that being a Tutsi was a crime deserving of death.”
People can resist genocide, nonetheless, Murekatete said. “People always have the option to do the right thing,” she pointed out, citing the Hutu family who hid her and her grandmother for as long as they could.
Most important, the world can oppose genocide by rejecting indifference and silence. During the Rwandan genocide, she said, the world’s belated and ineffectual response allowed the slaughter to continue.
Now, fourteen years after the massacres, Rwandans are struggling toward reconciliation. The mandatory identity cards that facilitated genocide have been discontinued. Curricula demeaning ethnic minorities have been revised.
On her part, Murekatete is now a cum laude graduate of New York University and the founder of Jacqueline’s Human Rights Corner, a genocide education and prevention organization. The organization is currently building a community center in Rwanda to help survivors of the genocide. In 2009, Murekatete will enter law school to study international human rights law.
“To be killed for who you are is the worst form of injustice and should not exist in the 21st century,” she said.
Murekatete’s talk was a part of the Cohen Lecture Series in the Humanities, established in 1986 through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Cohen. It was also a part of the College’s observation of Women’s History Month. An overview of genocide and Rwandan geography and history by Assistant Professor Vasiliki Anastasakos preceded the talk.
