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| San Jose Mercury News: Rwandans tell their stories of 1994 genocideChrissie Coxon, Director of Roosevelt's Center on International Development, Democracy, and Health at Stanford helped organize a conference entitled "Rwanda: Eleven Years after Genocide" from April 15-17, co-sponsored by The Roosevelt Institution. Dan Stober of the San Jose Mercury News covered the conference: Rwandan schools helped enflame the hatred that led to tribal genocide in the Central African country in 1994, but may now show a way out for the next generation, according to Rwandans who spoke at Stanford University on Saturday. Rwandan Minister of Education Romain Murenzi said he is counting on science, the Internet and conflict resolution classes to pull his small country out of poverty and away from the tribal hatred that still persists. But the personal stories of five Rwandan students, all of whom now study engineering at the City College of New York, made it clear that schools played an important role in the country's ethnic tensions because teachers emphasized tribal identity in unhealthy ways. Each spoke in somber tones at a student-organized commemoration of the 11th anniversary of the killings, 100 days of slaughter that saw 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus murdered under the direction of the Hutu forces who ruled the country. The genocide is known to many Americans through last year's Oscar-nominated movie, "Hotel Rwanda." Before the genocide, when Martin Musabyimana was in elementary school, his teacher asked all the Hutus in the class to stand up and identify themselves. Those who weren't sure -- because it was not always obvious -- were told to go home and ask their parents. The exercise was repeated with the Tutsi children. "Then the kids start realizing they are not the same. That's the kind of education that was there," Musabyimana told a classroom audience of several dozen people. Anti-Tutsi propaganda, blaming the out-of-power tribe for the nation's problems, spread through schools, several speakers said. When the genocide began in response to the killing of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, schoolteachers were among both the killers and the victims. "They started killing people. Nobody knew what to do. It was total confusion," said Yves Ngabonziza, who was then in high school. He woke up every morning wondering if he would be dead by nightfall. His eventual return to school was difficult, he said, ``remembering that some of your friends are not there." Click here to read the article on the San Jose Mercury News's website
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