Meeting with Mr Jean de Dieu Mucyo Minister of Justice and Institutional Relations
Minister de Dieu Mucyo began with an anecdote from his school days. The teacher asked the class to stand in two lines face to face. He asked if they looked the same, the children laughed because they had the same life, traveled to the same school, wore the same clothes. The teacher told them they were not the same: he compared their heights and noses. Then the class was divided: long noses on one side, flat noses on the other. The children had not been aware of their ethnic identity. The teacher taught history from an ethnic point of view. After this incident the children no longer played together with banana leaf footballs.
Society was polarised
In schools people were divided according to ethnicity. Division was implemented within the civil service and other areas of life. ‘History’ was used as a means of indoctrination. The Minister said that the killing started before 1994. Political parties were divided according to ethnicity. When the parties demonstrated civilians hid to avoid being killed. All the political parties were organized nationally and at provincial and village level. The parties trained youth militarily. These young people committed crimes. They had been successfully indoctrinated were loyal to the parties.
Newspapers and Radio Millie Collines
The media in Rwanda began to raise awareness of the ‘enemy’. News circulating that the extremists had a list of people they wanted to kill. People thought that it would not be possible to kill so many people because there were some members of the RPF in parliament. The national radio told people to stay in their homes. Radio was a very important method of communicating with the largely illiterate population of pre-1994. Radio played a crucial role in the genocide. It helped create a system to rally for the aims of the orchestraters of genocide.
Roadblocks were everywhere, so although one might have escaped the first one, it was impossible to escape the second or the third. ID cards had to be shown. The ID cards stated Tutsi, Hutu or Twa. Some people managed to change their cards. Others threw their cards away. But people were also judged on their physical appearance.
People take the ethnic group of their father. In some cases of intermarriage, if children resemble their Tutsi mother they would be killed anyway. Statistics say now that more than a million people were murdered in 3 months. A large number of Rwandans were involved. The State encouraged killers: saying there would be immunity in numbers. In some areas the population refused to kill. In those areas the Interahamwe would carry out the genocidal killings.