Where Are my People? A Question for Genocide Deniers Read online

2. b. Ethnic group changing

  Since the country’s independence and the first massacres of Tutsis, many families tried to acquire a Hutu identification. The practice begun under the rule of President Kayibanda and continued until later after Habyalimana seized the power. Both regimes restricted Tutsis to access education and public jobs. Death threats and other forms of discrimination were constant, especially under the rule of President Kayibanda. Due to all of these facts many families tried every possible ways to get registered as Hutus.

  Many families got helped by some of their Hutu friends who were local governance positions and others who have acquired wealth paid for the new identification. In both cases, their newly acquired identifications remained an open secret for a very one. They were still known by their neighbours and relatives as Tutsis, and being registered as Hutus did save their lives when came the genocide. But for administration services it helped them a lot as they could pass through the mesh of the quotas system for their children to access education and later good job.

  The fact that many Tutsis have changed their ethnic groups remained underreported as many studies claimed to find no convincing evidences to prove it. People who lived in Rwanda before the genocide know it very well as they have encountered at least once in their lives with a Tutsi registered as a Hutu. It was most obvious in primary schools where it was a habit every year to monitor the number of Hutus, Tutsis and Twas attending classes. For the occasions, pupils belonging to each of every ethnic group were asked to stand up in order to be counted. Many times people would see children from families known to be Tutsis standing up among Hutus. And it was never a mistake as even their teachers knew what was going on and marked their names where they belonged with no questions.

  As long as the total number of Tutsis who were holding a Hutu identification before 1994 will not be determined, it will always be hard to know the exact death toll of the genocide. It is a hard task to conduct a survey in that area, as most of people who have once changed their ethnic groups got killed and the few survivors would find no interest to reveal that one time they were Hutus.

  I have one example which might highlight how much the rate of ethnic changing got high at a certain period of time. When my mother reached her final class in primary school in late sixties, she kept failing the national examination to get admitted in high school, despite her being always the first of her classes in normal controls and exams. She repeated the grade twice with no positive results and on her third time, her teachers took pity on her and changed her identification form and marked that she was a Hutu. Her teachers have understood why she failing while some Hutus pupil who were coming after her in their school’s results were being admitted in high schools. Changing of ethnic group was in practice since many years and my mother’s teachers decided to do it for her. They might have let her parents take care of that, but in order to resume her studies after the massacres of 1963, my mother was staying far away from her family deported in Bugesera. By the time her ethnic group was changed, the practice would have been at its height as the country’s high authority got alerted. My mother’s life in a Hutu skin didn’t last long. Before the exams took place, the ministry of education by that time ordered a general inspection in all over the country only to control if the ethnic groups reported on the forms matched the kids.

  According to my mother, the inspector called each pupil in her class, one by one to come and pick up his or her form. As the child walked from his/her desk to the front of the class, the inspector had enough time to check him or her and judge at the sight if she/he was a Hutu or Tutsi. When my mother was called, the inspector tore her form –and her chances to access high school – into pieces; telling her that her nose was not matching the ethnic group marked on her form. She never forgot that scene until she died in 1994.

  For the Ministry of Education to conduct that kind of inspection in the country, it might have been enough indicators –and over a long period – to back the decision. And up to now in Rwanda, all the information mentioned on the identification form in the terminal primary class remains unchanged. Even people who want to change to add a middle name or correct the spelling of the existing ones can do it while filling their identification forms for the national exam; with no need for a court decision. This means that many people who have shifted to the Hutu ethnic group in order to access the education remained Hutus until 1994.