What This Rwandan Genocide Survivor Can Teach Americans About Healing Our Country’s Divisions

After years of division, many Americans are looking to move forward and heal our country. One way to do so is to look toward other countries that have experienced, and healed from, deep divisions and learn from them.

Rwandan-American attorney and human rights activist Jacqueline Murekatete is just one person who has witnessed such a transformation in a divided country. She was 9 years-old in 1994, when the nation’s genocide — one of the most brutal atrocities of the last century in which around 800,000 people were murdered in just 100 days — occurred. The genocide was the result of many years of conflict between two ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsi; the government at the time was run by Hutus who carried out an extermination campaign against the Tutsi.

Murekatete’s immediate family, as well as most of her extended family members and friends, were murdered by the Hutu extremists. She survived because she lived separately with her maternal grandmother, though the two narrowly escaped death several times while in hiding. Jacqueline survived the genocide by taking refuge in an orphanage run by Italian priests, although her grandmother was not allowed inside because the priests considered it too risky for the orphanage to try and protect Tutsi adults; she was killed soon after.

“The pre-genocide Hutu extremist government believed that Tutsis did not deserve to live,” Murekatete told the FBomb in a phone interview. “The genocide arose from state-sanctioned discriminination, dehumanization, and the teaching of hatred against Tutsis.”

About a year later, Murekatete came to the United States; she was adopted by her maternal uncle in Queens, New York. Years later, when she was in the tenth grade, a Holocaust survivor came to her school and spoke, and that inspired her not only to tell her own story, but to become a human rights attorney and activist.

Murekatete has given speeches all over the world to share her experience to prevent others from suffering as she, and so many Rwandans, had. She even addressed the United Nations General Assembly. In 2015, she started the Genocide Survivors Foundation, which aims to prevent genocide and to support survivors of it worldwide. A key part of her message is to teach people that ultimately, we all “want the same thing, you know, respect for our basic human rights, job security, education for our children. [We] want to build a country we can all be proud of.”

Murekatete says there are two things Americans can do to keep the division in our country in check and avoid escalation similar to the events in Rwanda: The first is to be aware of how unchecked division can lead to violence, and the second is a willingness to talk and understand one another, no matter how different our views are.

That, Murekatete says, means crossing political parties, and having dialogues at every level of society — including schools, workplaces, and places of worship — to help all Americans realize and focus on our commonalities.

“I think there’s a lot of blaming and a lot of pointing of fingers,” Murekatete says. “But I think if we can have more forums and more conversations and more dialogue about the things that we’ve been fighting about, then we can find some common ground.”

Murekatete also says it is important that the government implement laws and policies that protect all people from discrimination and all forms of bigotry, create equal access to opportunities, and ensure justice for all.

Murekatete especially has hope in younger Americans’ ability to have these conversations. Through Facing History and Ourselves, an organization that uses history to teach students to stand up against bigotry, she has told her story to countless high school and college students across the country. She says a lot of these students are “aware [of] and so concerned” about how divided the United States is, and “that most of them really want to figure out their role in trying to end the different injustices they see.”

Given that Murekatete knows firsthand about the effects of hate and division, she wants Americans to be aware that there is always a need to be vigilant. She also wants Americans to begin doing their part in easing tensions right now.

“Americans are all human beings who have more in common than differences,” she says. “We all have a stake in this country. If we remain divided, and we are now, the consequences are going to be felt by all of us.”