31th Commemoration of the Genocide Against the Tutsi - Tufts University

I was invited by Tufts students to speak to members of the Rwandan community, scholars, and friends on the occasion of the 31st Commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi.

"I would like to share my journey from being an anti-racist activist in France to becoming an active defender of our history and memory everywhere, to combat a preconceived notion that I often hear and that would explain the silence or passivity of many young people in the diaspora. This preconceived notion is that you have to be an expert to speak out and defend the truth.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I grew up in the south of France, without a Rwandan family, without a Rwandan community. I lost my mother when I was a child - because she went to Rwanda at the end of the genocide to bury her own parents, who were murdered because they were Tutsi, and she never recovered.

So, as a child and then as a teenager, I had no one to ask questions and I grew up pretty much alone with this deep trauma. In 2013-2014, when - in France - the denial of the genocide and therefore the perpetuation of the ideology of genocide was raging, I was determined to fight back and protect the memory, but the fact is that I knew so little.

I had to read one article, then two, then three, then many more. Then a first book on the history of the genocide, and many more over the years. I consulted the website of Ibuka, and other NGOs run by survivors, then YouTube to listen to the testimonies, and I would like to insist on this point: listening to the words of those who survived is the best way to know the history of the genocide against the Tutsi. It is not only an important educational tool, but also a question of respect for their courage, because the survivors give us their word, they generously offer us their stories to educate us and to enable us to educate others. But for a survivor, to testify is also to be traumatized again.

We must understand that this gift of oral history is a powerful gesture that preserves memory, fights genocide denial, and enables education and prevention.

In other words, as a young person growing up in the diaspora, there was always an excuse for me to do nothing because there were no experts or knowledgeable people around me and miles away. But at some point, I felt that it was my duty and that nobody was going to do it for me, for us. It is possible to start defending our history by educating yourself, at all levels. Then, when you know enough, you must produce; write short texts, make videos or art. And all of this in a community, because our different projects are more relevant, more profound, much more effective if they are carried out as a group: with the struggle in our hearts and egos put aside.

The role of the Diaspora youth, once this preparatory work is done, is here: in organizing commemorative events like this. Year after year, trying to occupy and convince a new space and new people. Every year you must be able to look right and left and find new faces among us, so that they too become defenders of the words and memory of the survivors.

The role of young people in the diaspora is to create networks and ensure that these networks lead to sustainable projects. A new course that traces the origins and current state of genocide ideology in the Great Lakes region of Africa, a documentary that involves a journalism school, or a music project with dedicated artists from the community where you currently live. There are so many things to do, but the first thing is that no one in our generation, in this current political climate of normalizing racist hatred, can shrug their shoulders and think that the next generation will be able to take care of this. They cannot, not without us. We are building on the achievements of earlier diasporas who gave their material privileges and their lives to stop genocide. We must live up to that courage.

From Europe to the Americas to Asia, we know that African history is written without Africans. Sometimes a few journalists go to Rwanda and then return to their Western capitals to write articles that are at best of poor quality, at worst transcribing the narratives of the killers and neo-genocidaires of the Internet.

We are facing a continuation of the colonial ideology, the Hamitic ideology that created the Hutu, the Tutsi as racial groups.

Mainstream platforms and many others on Tik Tok and YouTube would never allow themselves to give false information or disrespect certain European histories. They are well aware of the consequences to their reputation if they risk it.

Just as an Irish or French citizen would be outraged by the contempt of a journalist, professor or politician who constantly spreads false narratives about their country, young Rwandans in Rwanda must do the same, and above all, without ever thinking that the struggle is over. Rwandan youth must resist every day.

Rwandans living in Rwanda know our country better than anyone else. They enjoy our beautiful small country, clean, functional, safe. A country where it is impossible to be denied access to an institution because of one's identity. A country where discrimination is severely punished and where education and access to the next level is not based on race. Rwandans and young Rwandans also know the sacrifice of the survivors. They have taken on the psychological and political burden of forgiveness so that the country can rise again and move forward with the common goal of escaping poverty and dependency.

Young Rwandans know that our leaders, especially our elders, deeply resent colonial and divisive ideologies. So, when foreign politicians, activists, and media - lie about us, distort the truth, or use conspiracy theories because it gets them clicks and therefore monetization, young Rwandans in Rwanda should be the first to stand up with authority and power. They have the strongest legitimacy to do so, to speak out, to restore the truth. It is a matter of defending the gains of liberation, gains that are still in progress and that were achieved through the sweat and sleepless nights of our leaders and so many ordinary women and men of Rwanda.

In the end, all of this is about how to enforce full and complete respect for our humanity, first on ourselves and then on the rest of the world".