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#95,
Bloody Borders
By Mackie
Blanton
Stripped naked, the next households
were ordered to the
rim of their grave.
Numbed into duty,
they waited their turn to step down into
the pit brimming with
the dead before them. The father,
placing a hand on his
daughter's head, with his other hand turned
her chin up toward
his breaking face. His mother softly stroked temple hymns from her
throat into his
infant's ear. Armed guards barked at the family after them to peel
away their rags. Two
families
shuffled and squirmed
at their
mound of earth and
naked stumbled and slipped
into the ditch
scarred out for them from the land.
The soldiers' guns
silenced the hymn and stilled the tremors quaking
in their limbs.
Sitting along the edge of the open tomb, they teased ammunition
from
their stroked
weapons, shattering bone, shearing muscle and brain, of the no
longer
living. What has
changed then, since 1941?
On this evening now,
across the gulf,
the jagged light of
the neighboring mountains of Jordan
shifted through
oranges, reds, purples, and lastly into blues,
as the sun crimsoned
the clouds above the blue mountains before disappearing.
Then, in descending
darkness, a full moon grayed mountain summits, as the lights of
Eliat and Aqaba
sparkled the night. The Red Sea reflected back the neon of tourist
scows. On this
Shabbat, it's Eid
Al Adha in Israel.
Darboukas
and the Qur'an rhymed
the night air. Over campfires
along the beach,
Palestinians tended to coffee and
barbecues. Jewish
youths further up crooned American rock lyrics
in English and Hebrew
to a strummed guitar and boombox. Why am I ambivalent?
Mostly empty near the
Egyptian border, amidst the sunset of the southern beach,
an earlier flock of
seagulls swooped
and soared above
gently shimmering waves
lapping above a
mosaic of pebbles and shells. The wildflower
sanctuary and coral
reefs of the Negev had lulled us into
a moment's
forgetfulness among endangered families of gazelles, eagles,
and falcons. In my
sad bones and sore eyes I remembered conversations of the beauty
of the legendary,
sacred land of the Marsh Arabs along the border of Iran and Iraq.
Where is Eden now?
The lush
tributaries of the
Euphrates
are soaked dry in
executions, chemicals, and bombs.
A high court in
Belgium indicts the bloodsoaked chronicles
and sadistic
flowering roses of Saddam and Sharon as our nation
rattles dice in the
dynastic back rooms of dismissive sighs. Blueblood presidents,
like
elite generals,
always gamble their war of choice. The people are never their
mission
--unless they belong
to someone else.
Interest and belief
caress the guns.
Our nation, once a
revolution in its youth, now carves
out revolt and
rebellion in the world's neighborhoods.
Loudmouth demagogues
splatter blindly against our nightly screens.
Politicians shield
their confusing heart in battles of bombast. Fathers once pushed
for
the diplomat's peace.
Now sons sweep the world with an adviser's broom of war.
Our balance of power
is an unbalanced Eden.
Our nation reports
that we have no funds for
health and education
as it negotiates aid with new Europe.
We are made poor and
poorer as the military becomes rich
and wealthier in
protective gear and weaponry. Our paradise needs no
protecting angel at
the gate. All men are now avengers. Peace like war has never come
cheap, though the
costs are not the same. Ambivalent are our blood, heart, and
brain.
All dissent looms
seditious to the youth
who squanders his
action affirmatively,
who rebels amidst his
privileged wealth along the cheerleader's
halls of unearned
learning, while the people struggle for rights
more civil than the
envious rivalries of slothful, covetous, guffawing boys; who
soon becomes
thoughtfully tightlipped, reflecting himself in men as dull as
tonguetied
bells, as the lights
of libraries across our cities extinguish the joys
of books and come on
again in suburban
citadels. As for the
supercilious strutting
before lecture halls,
the humanists dismiss objectivity
as inherently
oppressive, while the scientists disparage
qualitative
interpretation as mere personal opinion. We create on earth
sheer absences as we
reduce and force one another into enmity. Compassion
has died. Once the
very incarnation of liberation and human rights, we now
court suicide.
What has changed
then, since 1941
as we stroke the
smartest gun?* * *
* * History of the
Genocide in Rwanda
As the smallest country in Africa
with the largest population, 7 million, Rwanda has had to overcome
famine, overpopulation, and, most recently, a massive genocide which
reduced their population by a huge amount. The country of Rwanda has had
an interesting history due to their two supposed ethnic groups, the
Hutus, the majority, and the Tutsis, who consist of about 15-18% of the
population. The Tutsis were more prominent in the royalty and hierarchy
of the country but most of them were still peasants. The Hutus were the
farmers and the Tutsis ran the cattle. During the time of European
Colonization, the Belgians came to Rwanda and decided to further the gap
between the peaceful Hutus and Tutsis. The Belgians saw the Tutsis as
more like themselves; therefore, they took them under their wing and
educated them and brought them up to be the upper echelon of society.
The Europeans created tribal cards to differentiate between the two
groups. Believing that they were just furthering what the Tutsis had
created, the Belgians created a class system. Due to their presence, the
Belgians made the discrimination between the two groups greater and yet
the Hutus and Tutsis were still living together peacefully. The Hutus,
having no power, accepted the role of the oppressed.
In 1962,
Rwanda gained their independence from Belgium. The Europeans, however,
left the country in a state of discord due to the majority of Hutus who
were able to gain back their power from the Tutsis, who were viewed as
feudal overlords. Soon the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement (PARMEHUTU)
came into power. The once oppressed Hutus decided to take revenge and
many Tutsis were killed. 200,000 Tutsi refugees fled to neighboring
country to escape the violence that was taking place in their country. .
. .—Trincol
* * *
* * A Brief History
1400 - 1994
Once, Hutus and Tutsis lived in
harmony in Central Africa. About 600 years ago, Tutsis, a tall, warrior
people, moved south from Ethiopia and invaded the homeland of the Hutus.
Though much smaller in number, they conquered the Hutus, who agreed to
raise crops for them in return for protection.
Even in the colonial era—when
Belgium ruled the area, after taking it from Germany in 1916—the two
groups lived as one, speaking the same language, intermarrying, and
obeying a nearly godlike Tutsi king.
Independence changed everything.
The monarchy was dissolved and Belgian troops withdrawn—a power vacuum
both Tutsis and Hutus fought to fill. Two new countries emerged in
1962—Rwanda, dominated by the Hutus, and Burundi by the Tutsis—and the
ethnic fighting flared on and off in the following decades.
It exploded in 1994 with the civil
war in Rwanda in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate
Hutus were killed. Tutsi rebels won control, which sent a million Hutus,
fearful of revenge, into Zaire and Tanzania.
In Burundi, the Tutsis yielded
power after a Hutu won the country's first democratic election in 1993.
He was killed in an attempted coup four months later, and his successor
in a suspicious plane crash in 1994, in which the Hutu leader of Rwanda
was also killed.—CNN
* * *
* * Why is there
conflict between Tutsis and Hutus?
The bloody history of
Hutu and
Tutsi conflict stained the 20th century, from the slaughter of
80,000 to 200,000 Hutus by the Tutsi army in Burundi in 1972 to the 1994
Rwanda genocide in which Hutu militias targeted Tutsis, resulting in a
100-day death toll between 800,000 and 1 million.
But many observers would be
surprised to learn that the longstanding conflict between the Hutu and
Tutsi has nothing to do with language or religion—they speak the same
Bantu tongues as well as French, and generally practice Christianity—and
many geneticists have been hard-pressed to find marked ethnic
differences between the two, though the Tutsi have generally been noted
to be taller. Many believe that German and Belgian colonizers tried to
find differences between the Hutu and Tutsi in order to better
categorize native peoples in their censuses.
Generally, the Hutu-Tutsi strife
stems from class warfare, with the Tutsis perceived to have greater
wealth and social status (as well as favoring cattle ranching over what
is seen as the lower-class farming of the Hutus). The Tutsis are thought
to have originally come from Ethiopia, and arrived after the Hutu came
from Chad. The Tutsis had a monarchy dating back to the 15th century;
this was overthrown at the urging of Belgian colonizers in the early
1960s and the Hutu took power by force in Rwanda. In Burundi, however, a
Hutu uprising failed and the Tutsis controlled the country.—WorldNews
* * *
* *
Hutu vs Tutsi
With the arrival of catholic
missions in the African great lake Region, there was a resistance from
Tutsi community against conversion. The missionaries were successful
with the Hutu. Properties of Tutsis were taken away from them and given
to Hutus. This was the beginning of the conflict between the two ethnic
groups.
Culturally, Rwanda has a monarchy
system of Tutsi monarch, the Mwami. The other area that is the
northwestern part is ruled by Hutu society. The rule of the king was
demolished after it received independence. Currently there seem to be no
cultural difference between the Tutsi and Hutu and they speak the same
Bantu language. There were marriages between a Tutsi and a Hutu. The
child was reared up as per the father’s culture. The impression is that
Tutsi is a class and not an
ethnic identity. But there are several dissimilarities in the two
groups of societies.
German rulers gave special status
to Tutsis as the rulers found them to be superior to Hutus. Tutsis are
well turned-out people in relation to Hutus, who are shy and timid. This
earned Tutsis the chance to get educated and find a place in the
government. The Hutus were in majority and this special status sparked
off conflicts between the two groups. This policy was followed by the
Belgians who took over control of the region after World War I. Finally
in the year 1959, Belgians changed their stand and allowed Hutus to form
the government through proper mandate.—DifferenceBetween
* * *
* * Tutsi, Hutu and
Hima—Cultural Background in Rwanda
Burundi and Rwanda had already
become separate Tutsi kingdoms before European occupation as the Tutsi-Hima
empire broke up. The Tutsis were a minority in both territories, and
currently make up about 15% of the Burundi population and about 9% in
Rwanda. But do not overlook the fact that the Tutsis and Hutus had
intermarried considerably, even with the tribal class distinctions.
Some Tutsis have more Bantu
features than the "pure" Tutsis. But the Tutsis have commonly been
referred to as "the tall ones" and the Hutus "the short ones." Many
observers of the region comment that there has been no real difference
other than superficial differences in features, and that the "tribal"
division referred to in recent history was a class distinction exploited
by the Germans and treated only by the colonialists as a difference in
ethnicity.
The Colonial Era
Animosity between the "indigenous" people and the Tutsis increased due
to the German, then the Belgian,
colonial pattern of indirect rule. The colonials chose the Tutsi
minority as their ruling class under the suzerainty of the Belgian
Empire.
Under German colonial domination
from 1890, Germany first occupied what is now Burundi until the end of
World War 1, when Burundi and Rwanda were joined by the League of
Nations under Belgian administration as Rwanda-Urundi.
Initially Belgian indirect rule
supported Tutsi power, but tension built between the two tribes.
Clashes have broken out periodically in both countries. The Tutsis
have remained dominant in military and politics in Burundi, though
recently Hutus have been brought into the government.—OrvilleJenkins
* * *
* * Hutu and Tutsi
It has been theorized that the
distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi were not emphasized until the area
was colonized by European settlers. When conducting census counts, the
Belgians separated Africans into Tutsi and Hutu groups based solely
on appearance or wealth. The colonists believed that the Tutsi were
superior because they were taller and had longer noses and therefore
more similar to Europeans. On this basis, only Tutsi were allowed to
participate in government or seek education. Naturally, this caused
dissatisfaction among the Hutu majority. In
1959, the Belgian government reversed this practice and implemented
a Hutu government. Civil wars and genocides instigated by both sides
have occurred periodically ever since.—Mahalo
* * *
* * Hutus vs. Tutsis
The ethno-racial clashes between African tribes
have been particularly murderous in Rwanda and Burundi because these two
small areas are the densest in Africa. Rwanda, for example, has about
seven million people in an area the size of Vermont – not a lot by
Western European standards, but very dense for Africa. In this
relatively small area there have lived for centuries, side by side and
at each other's throats, two very different racial tribes: the Hutu and
Tutsi. The Tutsi are familiar to all those who saw the grand epic movie,
King Solomon's Mines (the 1950 version with Stewart Granger and
Deborah Kerr); they are a tall, slender, graceful, noble-looking tribe,
there called the Watusi. The Tutsi are an Ethiopid, Nilotic people. The
Hutu, on the other hand, are short, squat Bantu, a closer approximation
to what used to be called "Negro" in America. "Negroes" are now called
"black," but the problem here is that the skin color of both the Tutsi
and the Hutu are much the same. The real issue, as in most other cases,
is not skin color but various character traits of different population
groups.
The crucial point is that, in both Rwanda and
Burundi, Hutus and Tutsis have coexisted for centuries; the Tutsi are
about 15 percent of the total population, the Hutu about 85 percent. And
yet consistently, over the centuries, the Tutsi have totally dominated,
and even enserfed, the Hutu.—LewRockwell
* * *
* *
|
Hutu and Tutsi
By
Aimable Twagilimana
Gr 5-9—A Rwandan
linguist explains the people of Rwanda and Burundi. He deals
primarily with Rwanda, and a large portion of the book (17
pages of 60) concerns Hutu/Tutsi politics and violence since
1959. This emphasis tends to obscure the roots of the
problem in the colonial period. Twagilimana accurately
stresses that the Hutu, Tutsi (and Twa) share language,
religion, and space, with their identities having been
somewhat flexible and based on unequal status.
He discusses the European colonials' racial stereotypes but
does not specify the profound impact of European
"scientific" racism, which assumed that Tutsi and Hutu were
different "races," with the Hutu born to be forever
inferior. |
 |
Western-educated Africans absorbed this view.
Moreover, the Belgians therefore recruited Tutsi to dominate the Church,
army, and civil service; most secondary school places went to the Tutsi
minority; Hutu kingdoms were "Tutsified"; and changes in land rights
benefited the Tutsi. Though the Belgians reversed this policy in the
last months of colonial rule, the Hutu majority looked for greater
equality in independence, while the Tutsi hoped to cement their
privilege. Deadly struggles for political, economic, and physical
survival ensued. Though key generalizations are here, the story doesn't
come through too clearly. As throughout this series, there are chapters
on the arts and religion; the appropriately chosen photographs have
useful captions. Given the lack of material on the subject, many
libraries will want this book in their collections.—School
Library Journal * * *
* *
 |
As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda
By Catherine Claire
Larson
Rwanda—bloodied,
scarred and nearly destroyed by the 1994 brutality of the
Hutu genocide of Tutsis—is now called an uncharted case
study in forgiveness by author Larson, who was inspired by
the award-winning film As We Forgive. Individual stories
form prototypes: there is Rosaria, left for dead in a pile
of bodies, who forgives her sisters killer. And Chantal,
whose family is brutally murdered yet who forgives her
neighbor for the crimes. Devota, mutilated and left for
dead, survives, forgives and eventually adopts several
orphans. Each story is horrible and deeply personal as
Larson mines the truths of forgiveness deep in each ones
tale. Helpful interludes offer readers hands-on ways to
facilitate forgiveness and take the next step to
reconciliation in their own lives. |
This isn't an easy book to read or digest, yet its
message is mandatory: Forgiveness can push out the borders of what we
believe is possible. Reconciliation can offer us a glimpse of the
transfigured world to come.—Publishers Weekly * * *
* *
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
Film
Review by Kam Williams
* *
* * *
|
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed,
Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
By Adam Hochschild
King
Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam
Hochschild in this grim history, did not
much care for his native land or his
subjects, all of which he dismissed as
"small country, small people." Even so, he
searched the globe to find a colony for
Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other
European powers for overseas dominions in
Africa and Asia would leave nothing for
himself or his people. When he eventually
found a suitable location in what would
become the Belgian Congo, later known as
Zaire and now simply as Congo, Leopold set
about establishing a rule of terror that
would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8
million indigenous people, "a death toll,"
Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust
dimensions." |
 |
Those who survived
went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber, yielding a
fortune for the Belgian king, who salted away billions
of dollars in hidden bank accounts throughout the world.
Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which
draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the
colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied
episode in European and African history into new light.—Gregory
McNamee
* * *
* *
Rape Crisis in Congo Tied to Mining Activity—Washington
Eve Ensler, author of
The Vagina Monologues, helped launch an
international awareness raising campaign called V-Day in
2007 to end sexual violence in eastern Congo. UNICEF
estimates that hundreds of thousands of girls have been
raped in the last decade in the two eastern provinces of
North Kivu and South Kivu. "Corporate greed, fueled by
capitalist consumption, and the rape of women have
merged into a single nightmare," Eve Ensler said at U.S.
Senate hearings on May 13. "Women's bodies are the
battleground of an economic war." Ensler said that
international mining companies with significant
investments in eastern Congo value economic interest
over the bodies of women by trading with rebels who use
rape as a tactic of war in areas rich in coltan, gold
and tin.
 |
"Military solutions are no longer an
option," she said. "All they do is bring
about the rape of more women." The United
States has invested more than $700 million
in humanitarian aid and peacekeeping to
Congo, according to the U.S. Department of
State.
Prendergast said this money will do nothing
to root out the economic causes of eastern
Congo's conflict and sexual violence.
He said
a comprehensive long-term strategy to combat
rape needs to change the economic calculus
of armed groups. Prendergast asked senators
to support the Congo Conflict Minerals Act,
which was introduced by Kansas Sen. Sam
Brownback, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold in April of
this year. |
The bill aims to
break the link between resource exploitation and armed
conflict in eastern Congo by requiring companies trading
minerals with Congo or neighboring states to disclose
mine locations and monitor the financing of armed groups
in eastern Congo's mineral-rich areas.
"The sooner the
illicit conflict minerals trade is eliminated, the
sooner the people of Congo will benefit from their own
resources," said Prendergrast. U.S. consumers,
Prendergrast said, can also help by pressuring major
electronic companies - from Apple to Sony - to certify
that cell phones, computers and other products contain
"conflict-free minerals," a campaign tactic popularized
by the Sierra Leone-based film
Blood Diamonds. Such a process would use a
tracking system for components, similar to that
developed in 2007 under the Kimberly Process. This
international certification scheme ensures that trade in
rough diamonds doesn't fuel war, as it did in Angola,
Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
Sierra Leone during the 1990s.
Germany has already
developed a pilot fingerprinting system for tin that
could be expanded to other minerals and help establish
certified trading chains, linking legitimate mining
sites to the international market.
Truthout
*
* * * *
Congo has attracted
attention in the media [as a place that is suffering]
systematic rape in war. One statistic quoted is 200,000
rapes since the beginning of the war 14 years ago, and
it is certainly an underestimate.
When in Congo, I met government representatives and
particularly women who had been raped and violated. It
was interesting but also disappointing - nothing is
getting better and more and more civilians are
committing rapes.
But I should be fair and say that there has been
progress, the government has introduced laws against
rape, it has a national plan and there is political
will. There is a lot to do to implement the legislation,
but now there is an ambitious legal ground to stand on
to be implemented by the police, judiciary and health
care.
Margot Wallstrom - "There Is Almost Total
Impunity for Rape in Congo"
*
* * * *
Congo: White King
Red
Rubber, Black Death
A Belgium King’s Sins Revealed in Film
Heart of Darkness
By
Joseph Conrad
* * *
* *
* * * * *
 |
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
* *
* * *
|
The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 17 November 2008 /
update 30 January 2012
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