Words matter…to Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. As also Tutsis in Rwanda
Thirty years ago, a genocide was perpetrated in Rwanda. Extremist activists belonging to the country’s Hutu majority community set up a radio station and newspapers that circulated hate propaganda, including the grim exhortation for people to “weed out the cockroaches”. It was code for kill the Tutsis, the minority community that had long dominated the country as part of a cynical divide-and-rule scheme set up by Rwanda’s Belgian colonial masters.
The terminology and the methodology of that mass murder in Rwanda in 1994 is worth recalling today as I read, with rising dismay, about the recent bomb threat in Springfield, Ohio. That city is in focus because it has a roughly 15,000-strong community of Haitians and Donald Trump has stoked a rightwing conspiracy theory against them. Most of Springfield’s Haitians are lawfully resident in the United States.
The bomb threat, which forced the evacuation of the city hall, two schools and other buildings, has been described as explicitly anti-immigrant and hostile to the city’s Haitian community.
How and why did this happen?
On September 10, Mr Trump used the immense platform offered by the September 10 presidential debate to spread the debunked claim that Springfield’s immigrants are hunting down and eating pet cats and dogs, as well as geese and ducks in public parks.
That allegation does more than spread unfounded rumours against the Haitians; it dangerously casts them as someone other than the rest of us – they are portrayed as barbarous, complete strangers to all civilising forces. In this telling, Springfield’s Haitian community is scarcely human.
The danger of such a narrative is there in the history books…and sadly, in news reports from the recent past.
Remember, in a mere 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, were slaughtered in Rwanda by Hutus extremists. As one news analysis later noted, “Even priests and nuns have been convicted of killing people, including some who sought shelter in churches”.
It points to an uncontrollable bloodlust sweeping the land.
But it didn’t just happen. Someone or something lit the fuse. It was words (like “cockroach” to describe the Tutsis) and those who wielded them like daggers that started it all…and kept it going.
