April 19, 2008

I did not arrange my flights plans to Rwanda. However, the irony that both layovers were in countries that significantly influenced the genocide did not escape me. While walking between flights, I found myself pre-occupied with what I've been learning about Rwanda's history with Germany and Belgium.

In between thoughts, I began noticing how many people around me were carrying passports, as it's been a while since I've needed anything more than a driver's license to travel.

I started eagerly looking around at different passport covers, curiously wondering from and to where everyone was traveling. Traveling with a passport is exciting! It means going somewhere well beyond one's own backyard. I tried to connect the languages people were speaking, their overall appearance, and any other clues I could detect to the color and markings of their travel documents. Where were they from? Where were they going? And then something clicked for me: Identity cards have very different meanings depending on the context of their use and motive for their issuance.

Here's a little history to put this in a Rwandan context....

In 1884, Germany signed treaties with chiefs of the region, claiming the land of Tanganyika, Rwanda, and Burundi as their own. While the Germans did not make radical changes to the social structure, they did bring a fixed perspective to the local ethnic groups. Prior to colonization, it appears that the Hutus and Tutsi had no animosity between each other, considered themselves equals, shared space, language, and customs, intermarried, worked alongside and socialized with each other, and served in the same army in the service of the same king (who was a Tutsi). Colonization reduced social mobility and laid some rather destructive seeds in terms of how these ethnic groups began to interrelate.

After Germany was defeated in WWI, Belgium gained governing rights to Ruanda-Urundi and the Congo. Many believe that the ethnic tensions that grew over the next several decades were purposefully fueled in a "divide and conquer" approach to governing and social control. During this time, ethnic groups were taught how to feel about each other.

Tutsis were positioned as the elite and hailed as biblical descendants. The Hutus were described as inferior and subservient. In the early 1930s, ethnic identity cards were required that classified residents as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. Some suspect that this was designed to help people identify who they were supposed to dislike, as it really is quite difficult to otherwise tell them apart. Additionally, as with most patrilineal African countries, ethnic identify is passed from the father. So, a child born to a mother with a long Tutsi heritage would be considered Hutu if this is how the father identified.

With imposed discrimination, tensions began mounting. The Tutsi-led monarchy began actively seeking independence in the 1950s. Nervous and seeking a delay, the Belgians suddenly replaced the minority Tutsi ruling class with the Hutus. As you can imagine, the majority group, who had been told for decades that they were inferior and treated accordingly, were angry when they suddenly gained power.

The ethnic messaging shifted. Tutsis were now the historical oppressive enemies to be ridiculed and shunned. While many other variables factored into the events that precipitated the genocide forty short years later, the point I'm trying to make here is much more simple. The hatred that emerged between these two ethnic groups was imposed and perhaps even manipulated by outsiders to unthinkably horrific results. And it all happened within two generations.

Passports as identity cards. For some, they are keys that allow access to the world and open doors to exciting cross-cultural exchange. In other contexts and with other motives, the classification of people can be tools that foster discrimination, oppression, and hatred.

Please feel free to share your thoughts, experiences, and perspectives....