As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, genocide is “the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group.”
But to Pastor Emmanuel Sitaki, genocide is not words on a page, but a memory. He lost 35 members of his family to genocide in Rwanda.
University Housing and the Hamilton Think Tank brought six panelists to the Living Learning Center Auditorium on Tuesday night to discuss historical and contemporary genocide and ethnocide and share their personal experiences.
Hamilton Complex Director Kaila La Marche addressed the importance of hearing these speakers’ stories by paraphrasing Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana
“The one who does not remember history,” she said, “is bound to live through it again.”
The presentation began with a slideshow portraying genocide and ethnocide through artwork, displaying a compilation of paintings such as Picasso’s “Guernica,” which depicts the destruction of a small Spanish town by fascist aerial bombardment, black and white photos of Holocaust victims and WWII Japanese-American internment camp prisoners. In one of the photographs, a grocery store billboard reads “Japs Keep Moving. This is a White Man’s Neighborhood.”
Smiling and laughing beneath the sign is a young white girl wearing a white dress.
The internment camps
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Portland native Kennie Namba was ordered to a Japanese-American internment camp in California. He opened the discussion. Namba said the perception of Japanese-Americans “changed considerably” after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was forced into an internment camp where, from behind barbed wire, he watched sentries with machine guns pacing atop a platform ready to shoot prisoners who attempted to escape.
Despite being classified by the U.S. government as an “enemy alien,” Namba succeeded in volunteering for the U.S. Army and subsequently serving in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which remains today the most decorated unit in American history. During the war, Namba earned six medals, including a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
Despite his service and the conclusion of the war, Namba remained subject to discrimination in his home country. Peering solemnly over his bifocals, Namba remembered going grocery shopping with his wife, reaching the register only to be told by the owner that the store did not serve Japanese. “That really got me,” Namba said. “What in the hell did we fight the war for?”
Namba said he remains perplexed by the discrimination he encounters even today. He finds great importance in sharing his life story with others in Oregon and around the nation, especially with other Japanese-Americans.
“We are as good as anyone else in our community,” Namba said, “and I want Japanese-Americans to think that way and feel that way.”
When finished with his narrative, Namba’s wife of 60 years asked to say something to the audience. Aware of the panel discussion’s time constraint, Namba reminded her, “Make it short, Ruth,” he chuckled, “You talk too long.”
Ruth smiled, sharing her disgust that her husband was discriminated against after fighting for his country. “He won the war,” she said.
Namba shook his head and laughed. “I didn’t win the war, honey,” he said.
Ruth turned to her husband and shook her finger.
“Yes, you did,” she said.
Genocide in Africa
In the small East African nation of Rwanda, one million lives were lost in one hundred days in 1994 when the death of the president sparked latent animosity between the country’s two main tribal groups. In a frenzy of violence, the Hutu tribe attempted to exterminate the entire generation of people of the Tutsi tribe.
Pastor Emmanuel Sitaki, a Tutsi, lost 35 close relatives in the genocide.
Sitaki lived in fear with his family because “people was killed like animals because they belonged to a tribe.”
Sitaki gravely stated that when the genocide began, “the world was silent.”
He rebuked the United Nations and said they stood idly by as “spectators,” despite a 1948 U.N. resolution that named genocide “a crime under international law” that member nations promised to “undertake to prevent and to punish.”
He said the U.N. refused to act because Rwanda was a poverty-stricken nation that boasted few natural resources.
“It is not a problem of authority, it is a problem of willing,” he said.
When asked if the Rwandan government had offered genocide survivors any form of reconciliation, economic or otherwise, Sitaki replied that reconciliation could not come from politicians.
That’s God’s domain, he said. “People without God cannot be reconciled.”
No amount of money can repair the damage done to the nation, he said.
Reconciliation is especially difficult for Sitaki because, he said, “I know the names of the people who killed my family.”
But his faith has led him to forgiveness.
“I survived not because I’m a special man, but because God has a special purpose for my life,” Sitaki said. “By His one purpose I survived to tell the nation the truth,”
That purpose, he said, is to share his story of the genocide in Rwanda so that others can “learn from these horrific events and then act like human beings” in the future.
Genocide in Oregon
Bob Garcia, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, said that the effects of genocide can be felt for generations.
He spoke of the U.S. government’s “physical extermination” of his ancestors “by neglect, disease and starvation.”
In reference to the absence of the Native Oregonian in history books and textbooks, Garcia said he sees a “cultural extermination” that began when Native Americans were forced to abdicate their land and were pushed into English boarding schools to be what Garcia called “culturally sanitized.” This process resulted in the disappearance of many aboriginal languages and customs. Today, he says, this cultural extermination is continued, perhaps unintentionally, by younger generations.
Jews in Germany
Alice Resseguie was a young Jewish girl living with her family in Germany when Hitler came to power.
Resseguie said she remembers that when Hitler “usurped power” in Germany, her mother turned to her and said “This is the end. He is going to cut our throats.”
“My mother,” Resseguie said, “was unfortunately right.”
In her German grade school, “good morning” was replaced with “heil Hitler!”
Resseguie, however, refused to make the substitute and said she asked her teacher, “Why should I praise the man who is going to discriminate against all of us?”
Resseguie said, “You became less of a person” day by day until “you (were) like a deer that (was) free for anyone to shoot.”
Shortly after Hitler’s rise to power, Resseguie’s parents sent her to live with her uncle in Brooklyn. She escaped Germany, but not discrimination; her American classmates referred to her as “that little refugee girl.”
To this day, Resseguie said, “I can still feel the pain.”
She said she tells her story because it is important for younger generations to understand the ugly periods of history in order that they may not happen again.
“You all must speak up,” Resseguie said, “That is your obligation as human beings.”
Genocide, discrimination survivors share their stories
Daily Emerald
February 28, 2007
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