There are dates that stand as sentinels in human history—unmoving, unyielding, echoing with cries of suffering and silence alike.
7 April is one such date.
A global strike calls attention to the anguish in Gaza, even as the calendar flips to a darker shadow: The 31st anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, that 80-day orgy of extermination where over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered while the world watched with studied indifference.
The juxtaposition is not mere coincidence; it is poetry laced with poison.
Rwandan genocide was a grotesque theatre of machetes and radio hate, a symphony of orchestrated slaughter conducted with bureaucratic precision.
Its echoes still reverberate, not only through the haunted hills of Kigali but across courtrooms and conflict zones.
The ICTR, a rare shard of justice to emerge from the carnage, birthed the modern notion of international accountability, later inherited by the ICC.
And yet, that same institution—once a torchbearer for the bloodied and buried—now finds its verdicts shredded by the very architects of its existence.
France, the United States, and the UN, then custodians of apathy, played fiddles while Kigali burned.
Now, they sing a similar refrain, albeit more polished, as Gaza bleeds.
Their selective outrage has become a feature, not a flaw—a testament to power’s ability to sanctify some lives while footnoting others.
Paul Kagame, the rebel-turned-redeemer, once stood as a monument to post-genocide resurrection.
Under his watch, Rwanda has metamorphosed into a fortress of order and efficiency.
Yet, power, like plutonium, glows bright and corrodes silently. Kagame has since muzzled dissent, exiled the valiant, and made Rwanda a case study in developmental despotism.
Irony has a sharp sense of theatre—this iron-fisted leader is now Israel’s closest African ally, even as Israeli bombs flatten hospitals and homes in Gaza.
The Kigali Genocide Memorial, an affecting crucible of grief and remembrance, is curated by The Aegis Trust—a British NGO committed, ostensibly, to “never again.”
Yet, its founder has openly championed the siege on Gaza and scoffed at the International Court of Justice for daring to call out what many see as systematic ethnic cleansing.
When even genocide-watchers become genocide-whisperers, one must ask: Is memory merely a mausoleum, or a moral compass?
The ICC, which once chased génocidaires across continents, has now indicted Benjamin Netanyahu.
But the world's response is a shameless charade in doublethink.
France, Germany, Belgium—stalwart patrons of international law—suddenly develop diplomatic amnesia when the suspect is not African or Balkan, but Israeli.
We now inhabit a moral funhouse, where mirrors distort outrage and justice is dispensed by geography and skin tone.
The very institutions erected to honour victims of mass atrocity now betray them by omission, evasion, or worse, endorsement.
If Rwanda taught us anything, it is that dehumanisation is not born overnight.
It begins with language, policy and silence.
And if Gaza is teaching us anything now, it is that history, though cyclical, is often blindfolded—led not by justice but by power masquerading as principle.
The question, then, is stark in its simplicity: Who gets to be mourned, and who merely counted?
Let today be more than a grim nod to history. Let it be a reckoning.
Because memory without action is not remembrance—it is complicity in rehearsal.
