Red Cross Helps

                This is a picture that shows how thousands and thousands of people walked into Red Cross camps looking for help from the horrific genocide in Rwanda. Some of these camps held approximatively sixty thousand people but never turned anyone away. They just kept taking people in and doing their best to help them. When the people would walk into the camps they would be in rags, dirty, exhausted, and suffering from diseases such as malaria and dysentery. At least one million eight hundred thousand Rwandans had been forced to flee their villages and live in these make shift camps estimated the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many other people were forced not only to flee their villages but also to flee the country. At some of the camps, or out on the roads Hutu people would come up and kill the Red Cross workers and patients. This put the people of the Red Cross in a lot of danger but unlike most countries they decided to continue working and trying hard to safe the victims of the massacre.
 http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/05/opinion/05iht-edcorn.html
                This link is to an article from the New York Times written by Cornelio Sommaruga, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was written while the genocide in Rwanda was happening and explains a lot about what it was like for the people of the Red Cross. The thing that hit me the most about this article though was the fact that they even said, "Attempts to stop the massacre and bring the warring factions to the negotiating table, undertaken by African heads of state and United Nations representatives, have had no tangible results as yet."  To me this is saying that everyone knew about the genocide but no one decided to take action. The Red Cross did a lot for Rwanda and it is good they were there to help because other wise things would have been a lot worse.  

Truth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38ymdFu-70Y

     This is a five minute video that shows a lot about what happened in Rwanda and how other countries like the United States reacted. One thing that really caught my attention in this video was how young some of the killers were and how young some of those who died were. It is really horrible to think about experiencing something like this, whether you are the killer or the victim, especially at such a young age as some of the people were. Looking at all the piles of bodies in this video it does not look real and to me is extremely hard to believe. However, as soon as I get myself around to realizing that they were all human bodies and souls it is extremely devastating to think about. In this video it also says that the public just said that the massacre in Rwanda was an old ethnic war that no one could do anything about. However the video claims that the massacre was really just a politically organized genocide. This is also an awful thing to think about because the countries own government was so racist that they started the genocide. What was even more hurtful to the ones suffering in Rwanda was the fact that the other countries who knew this was going on refused to use the word 'genocide' in public because doing so would bring up certain legal responsibilities because of their government. One of those countries was America which decided not to recognize the genocide until most of the Tutsi population was dead and because of the legal consequences. Luckily in July of 1994 the Rwandan patriotic front rebels overthrew the Hutu regime and ended the genocide. I thought this was a very insightful video which showed a lot of the important basics about the genocide.

What was left...

         This is a picture that does not even begin to describe how many lives were taken during the massacre in Rwanda. About one million Rwandans died in just one hundred days. As you can see in this picture some of the victims skulls were crushed or cracked. There were bodies everywhere in Rwanda. Many all over the streets and pilled up in big heaps or leaded against buildings. People that survived the genocide were lucky to do so but that does not mean that they are able to just forget about it. Most lost their entire families and ended up with horrific wounds to go away from it all with. They are also left traumatized and scarred from living through such a horrible experience and because of that, some suffer from mental disabilities. Not only were peoples lives destroyed but so were there hometowns, houses, schools, churches, business buildings, and hospitals. The massacre really left the Rwandans with nothing. Those who survived were left struggling to find food, shelter, and hiding places so they would not be seen and killed. Now there are still a lot of children in orphan homes and those who are not are of fighting on there own maybe even for their younger siblings too when they themselves are still so young. Imagine being only about ten years old and already having to start stressing about taking care of your family because you are the only one able to. A lot of women were left with sexually transmitted diseases from the genocide because their husbands were killed (most likely when trying to protect them) and then they were raped. It is a horrible thing to have happened and many many families are scarred from the horrific experience.

Red Cross In Rwanda

         After the Cold War, many ethnic conflicts remained throughout the world, especially in Africa. Rwanda was one country that suffered severe deaths from the ethnic conflicts between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Hutus just began slaughtering Tutsis causing a big upset in the world. The International Committee of the Red Cross quickly arrived in Rwanda to begin helping those in need. They worked hard to care for many Tutsis and helped reunite more than forty seven thousand children with their families.

Rwanda is a small country in central Africa. There are two ethnic groups in Rwanda. The Hutus, which is the majority, and the Tutsis, which is the minority. In 1916 Belgium made it a colony and thinking they were superior, put the Tutsis in charge. In 1962 Rwanda gained its independence and the Hutus took over. When the Hutus took power they began to exile the Tutsis. In 1990 the country fell into a civil war when the exiled Tutsis formed an army and invaded Rwanda. Gradually the violence against the Tutsis increased. In 1993 president Habyarimana signed a power-sharing agreement with the Tutsis. The UN was then sent with the mission of monitoring the peace agreement. The main trigger of the genocide was when the Rwandan, Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana was killed. His plane was shot down above the Kigali airport on April 6, 1994. Immediately Hutu extremists began the massacre of Tutsis, blaming them for the presidents death. Within one hundred days after that approximately eight hundred thousand people were killed.
The whole time the genocide was happening, none of the other countries bothered to help. The U.N stepped in 1995 and began charging and sentencing all the people responsible for the horrible deaths. However as soon as most of the foreign citizens were evacuated, the U.N peacekeepers withdrew from the situations, leaving people there to be murdered. They did this even though General Romeo Dalliare sent a fax to the UN asking for more troops, positive that he would be able to stop the genocide. The Red Cross didn’t do that. They found out what was going on and immediately went to start setting up camps and rescues. They could be considered some of the only outside help that cared.
Right after the genocide Hutu militias fled to Zaire with over a million refugees. There a Red Cross camp was set up where they began helping the refugees. Louise Besner, a Canadian Red Cross delegate said that there were seven thousand children that were taken away from their families and parents. About six months later she said that, while the red cross was still attempting to help the children, there were then thirty five thousand unaccompanied minors taken away from their families.  Even though so many bad things were happening in their lives, Louise said that the children were still able to smile and hope which is really an amazing thing. Louise had moved over to Goma to help more refugees and she said that by the time she had left in February 1995 she and her local staff had identified over five hundred family members of the children’s and was able to reunite about one hundred of them.
When the International Committee of the Red Cross showed up in Rwanda they not only helped cure the wounded, but they also worked extremely hard to reunify families. According to the Red Cross website, they forwarded 4 million, six hundred thirty thousand, one hundred forty five messages, reunited fifteen thousand, one hundred seventy five families, and traced twenty thousand, nine hundred fifty five people from January 1995 to June 1996. Red Cross also helped set up schools, water facilities, and food stations.
Red Cross didn’t stop there however. In 1997 many Red Cross delegates were sent to Rwanda where they set up so many different rescue and reuniting facilities. One example of a delegate is Sue Pfisterer. Sue was there to reunite children and their families but also said, “I was there to ensure political prisoners were treated humanely.” 
 "All of my Red Cross experiences have been very rewarding," said Pfisterer. "You see so much sadness and misery. But when you can make a positive impact on these people, it gives you so much satisfaction."  This shows that all the Red Cross delegates that showed up to Rwanda to help were not there just to do some volunteer job. They were there because they wanted to help.
All of the Red Cross delegates came back with miraculous experiences and stories. One delegate that had some stories that really helped show me how series everything happened to be was Bernard Barrett. One story he had was about a ten or eleven year old boy who had been separated from his family for four years. Red Cross helped find his sister and mother and took him to their home. When they got there all the child had said while standing outside on the porch was, “Mom, I’m home.”  It’s almost impossible to think about how hard that must have been for the family to be away from each other for so long and that without Red Cross they could have never scene each other again.
This horrible genocide of 1994 killed about one million people in only one hundred days. That’s ten thousand deaths everyday for one hundred days straight. Think about how far you would have to go to cover a radius of about ten thousand people. Then imagine them all massacred in just one day. Then multiply that by a hundred. That’s your whole family, your life, your hometown, your friends, and your mentors. The saddest part is that the U.N didn’t even bother to help. They got their own people out and then left. Its good that the Red Cross was there to help Rwanda because no one else cared or tried. With out the Red Cross thousands more would be dead.