Rwanda, 20 years after genocide

Daily Circuit Friday Roundtable
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This month marks 20 years since the start of the Rwandan genocide. On this week's Friday Roundtable during Minnesota's Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month, we reflect on Rwanda's past, present and future.

LEARN MORE ABOUT RWANDA:

In Rwanda, Reconciliation Is Hard Won
[In 1994,] as villagers returned from the vegetable fields, and children walked back from school, they were stopped. Their identity papers were demanded. If they were found to be Tutsi, or of mixed Tutsi and Hutu heritage, they were almost certainly mutilated and then murdered. First out of view among the trees but, before long, in the road. The killers slashed their heads and bodies with machetes. They cut off arms and legs, hacked away with hand scythes and knives. They smashed skulls with clubs, gouged and impaled torsos and appendages with metal construction picks and sharpened sticks. This went on for hours, days, as the corpses piled up on the roadside. By May, there were no more living Tutsi in Jabiro. The lucky ones had escaped. Most had been murdered. By July, three out of four Rwandan Tutsi no longer existed. (National Geographic)

The Rise of Rwanda's Women
One major improvement has come in the leadership of Rwandan women, who have made history with their newly vital role in politics and civil society. No longer confined to positions of influence in the home, they have become a force from the smallest village council to the highest echelons of national government. Understanding how and why such a transformation occurred offers not just an opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments. It also provides lessons for other countries struggling to overcome histories of patriarchy and oppression. (Foreign Affairs)

Josh Ruxin's A Thousand Hills of Heaven: Building A Restaurant In Rwanda
In his new book, Columbia professor Josh Ruxin tells the tale of picking up and moving to deepest Rwanda, where he helped revitalize a village and fell in love with a little restaurant called Heaven. (Daily Beast)

Paul Rusesabagina, Rwanda's hotel hero
In April 1994, Paul Rusesabagina was brevetted as general manager of the luxury hotel where he worked, and where more than 1,000 people had fled from the killing rampage. For more than two months, he managed to protect them from being slaughtered. (Los Angeles Times)

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