Massacre in Nanjing and the Rwandan Genocide: the Role and Function of Religion and Religious Actors
Overview of Rwanda
Rwanda’s population by 1994 was found out to have stood at more than seven million people who were divided into three ethnic groups such as the Hutu, the Tutsi, and the Twa. The Hutu made up the majority of the population with an estimated 85% while the Tutsi comprised of 14% and the least percentage with only 1% of the population belonged to the Twa. Looking back at how much the population back in the said year, who would have thought that almost one million from this population would have faced an inhumanly tragic event just within a short period of a hundred days from April 6 to July 4, 1994. The victims of the widespread killings that were found to have been done mostly using a machete were the people belonging from the Tutsi ethnic group and the killers or the ones perpetrated the horrific violence belonging to the Hutu on the other hand. Why would the Hutu do such a thing which was considered as the largest genocide in Africa and did religion as well as any religious actors play a part on this mass murder or manslaughter that shocked the rest of the world?
Where the Violence and Ethnic Conflict Started
Various disagreements and a lot of tensions had always been present and were never developed overnight between the two dominant ethnic groups in Rwanda – the Hutu and the Tutsi. The hatred and hostility between these two groups were said to have heightened immensely since the presence of the colonial power of Germany and Belgium.
How can someone differentiate a Hutu from a Tutsi? These two ethnic groups may have used the same language and followed the same culture, beliefs, and traditions but they appear a little different physically and could be distinguished apart through their height, facial features, complexion, and such. The Tutsi are said to be taller than those of the Hutu. They are also said to be thinner, fairer, and possess slimmer or sharper noses. It was actually the Belgians that created the said division when they colonized the country in 1916. They picked the minority group, which was the Tutsi, and let them run the country. And to make the distinction among the ethnic groups clearer and permanent, they even classified them by stamping their identification cards either they were a Tutsi or a Hutu. Since the Belgians let the Tutsi to be dominant and rule the country, the Tutsi felt superior over the Hutu and they embraced such perception for such a long time and this helped them enjoy a lot of privileges such as better educational opportunities and a higher rate of employment over others. This has built immense hate and resentment which has gradually increased over the years from the Hutu which resulted to different violent incidents and a series of riots in 1959 where hundreds of Tutsi lost their lives and many were forced to leave the country and fled to the neighboring countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Zaire to escape the unstoppable violence going on. In 1962, the Belgians turned over power and proclaimed the independence of Rwanda, thus, the Hutu community claimed back their power and took over.
The Genocide
On 6 April 1994, the deaths of the Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda in a plane crash caused by a rocket attack ignited several weeks of intense and systematic massacres. The killings of as many as 1 million people are estimated to have perished shocked the international community and were clearly acts of genocide.
Cases of rape were also reported with an estimated number of 150,000 to 250,000 women who were victims of such. Radio Television Libres Des Mille Collines (RTLM) did not fail to broadcast about the plane crash and incited the elimination of the Tutsi who they referred as the “Tutsi cockroach” which happened on the 7th of April. Several tragic events followed such as the murder of the Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and as well the ten Belgian peacekeepers that were protecting her committed by the soldiers from the Rwandan government.
If the absence of a resolute commitment to reconciliation by some of the Rwandan parties was one problem, the tragedy was compounded by the faltering response of the international community. The capacity of the United Nations to reduce human suffering in Rwanda was severely constrained by the unwillingness of Member States to respond to the changed circumstances in Rwanda by strengthening UNAMIR’S mandate and contributing troops.
Overview of Nanjing
According to the 1936 census, Nanjing’s population stood at 945,544. By November 1937, the population had dropped to 547,000 with 379,000 within the old city walls. Many of these civilians were to perish in the massacres, a controversial subject still much debated today.
The Chinese insisted all along the deaths stood at 300,000. This figure, lodged in the records of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was often denied by some Japanese, in a campaign of denial and massaging of the facts led by the ultra-conservatives since the ending of the war. The palliation of this shameful affair has been going on for years; the China War is now known commonly as the China Incident. The increasingly vocal call to repudiate the Nanjing Massacre has made this event a thorn in the relationship between China and Japan. Like the two-minute silence on Armistice Day, 13 December is now marked as the Chinese National Day of Remembrance, and for two minutes the air-raid sirens howl throughout Nanjing.
During the course of six terrible weeks in late 1937 and early 1938, Nanjing was transformed from a name into a symbol. Nanjing, or Nanking as it was known in the West at the time, became the victim of the intense and indiscriminate violence of a victorious army bent on revenge. Its helpless people were subjected to rape and murder on a scale that maintains its capacity to shock, even in a world that has since been exposed only too often to man’s ability to inflict pain on fellow human beings, from Nazi-occupied Europe in the early 1940s to Cambodia in the 1970s and Rwanda in the 1990s. Like these places, Nanjing has become instantly recognizable as a chapter in the thick book of 20th-century terror.
The Massacre and Rape in Nanjing (14 December 1937 to late January 1938)
The Massacre and Rape in Nanjing are said to have been one of the most unhumanly true historic events which took place within six weeks from 14 December 1937 until late January 1938. The Japanese Imperial Army marched to the former capital city of China which was none other than Nanjing to proceed with the mass murder of Chinese civilians and soldiers with an accumulated number of 300,000 victims. This atrocity perpetrated by the Japanese to the Chinese during the Second Sino-Japanese War was considered as one of the most tragic terrors and worst atrocities during the World War II era.
Just like today, in the 1930s China’s size and economic promise had attracted people from all over the world. As a result, the full-scale war that broke out in 1937 was not just a bilateral affair, but immediately implicated a range of nations. The main combatants were of course Chinese and Japanese, but a small number of Germans, Russians, and even Americans were also sucked into the center of events as active participants. Just like the Spanish Civil War, raging at the same time on the other side of the world, the conflict became something of a dress rehearsal for many of the belligerents of the future.
The Japanese Emperor who was considered by the Japanese as their country’s God since he was declared as the heaven’s son according to the religious belief that they are following or practicing which is none other than Shintoism. Since China is a huge country compare to Japan, the Japanese emperor would have wanted to invade China to extend his power so it will not just be limited within Japan. Since the duty of every Japanese citizen is to obey the emperor, to fight and sacrifice their lives for the Emperor, they all followed his command of invading and terrorizing China. They first started invading the city of Shanghai in 13 August 1937. Killing Chinese civilians by bombing prompted the Chinese troops amounting to 700,000 members to defend Shanghai but unfortunately, they lost their battle. The Japanese captured and killed all the soldiers and Japan celebrated their invasion over Shanghai and enjoyed the privileges such as the increase of their stock market. When the Japanese moved to Nanjing, they killed, raped, and tortured not just women but as well children and old people.
The mass murder accumulated with a total number of 300,000 victims where villages were burnt down and killed everyone by setting them on fire, shooting them by bullets or arrows, and lot of different ways of brutalities unknown to man that only the Japanese could ever come up of.
Since then, Japan has never made an apology and kept on denying about the said mass murder and rape in Nanjing but it was only in August 15, 1995, that Japanese prime minister, Tomiichi Murayama, issued the first-ever direct and official apology for all their inflictions of sufferings and aggressions from different places during the World War II and Nanjing was one of them.
Roles of Religion and Religious Actors in These Two Different Genocides in Rwanda
The Society of Missionaries of Africa founded by Cardinal Lavigerie of Algiers in 1868 – popularly known as the White Fathers – sent their first mission party to the royal court of Rwanda in 1900. The progress conversion was initially slow, at least in comparison with the neighboring kingdom of Buganda, but from the 1920s, as it became clear that Belgian rule was here to stay, the Catholic community grew exponentially: the number of catechumens grew from 5,000 in 1922 to 20,000 in 1927 and 100,000 in 1931. By 1939 there were 300,000 baptized Catholics; by 1950 there were almost 400,000. The bulk of the early converts were Tutsi, many of them chiefs and other members of the ruling elites, and in 1943 the king,
Mwami Mutara was baptized. Protestant churches also saw growth, particularly after the outbreak of revival phenomena at the Evangelical Anglican Rwanda Mission’s station of Gahini in December 1933, giving birth to an increasingly indigenous movement of spiritual renewal that eventually spread throughout East Africa.
Despite the fact that Rwanda is one of Africa’s most Christian countries, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 has been executed by a huge number of Christians who were involved in much violence. The churches in Rwanda were found to have been active in supporting the state and did not fail to involve themselves too in politics among the ethnics.
In providing a detailed analysis of the role of Christian churches in supporting the genocide, I hope that this text helps further understanding of the importance of religion as a factor in the success or failure of ethnic violence. In contrast to some conflicts, like the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, or more recent violence in Lebanon, India, Southern Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, and Northern Ireland, in Rwanda, religion did not serve as an inscriptive identifier to single out a minority for exclusion and eventual slaughter. Yet Christian churches were intimately involved in Rwanda’s genocide, nevertheless. The genocide was a program organized by powerful individuals, primarily in the military and government, but its success required extensive popular participation, and I maintain that churches were a key factor in encouraging public involvement. My research in Rwanda in 1995-96 revealed a variety of reasons why Rwandans chose to participate in the genocide.
Some people were motivated primarily by greed, wanting to pillage from their Tutsi neighbors. Many participated primarily because they feared the consequences of failing to do so. Some acted out of obedience to authorities, which told them to participate. Others had a long-standing hatred of Tutsi and were in fact motivated by ethnic hatred. Some, like the youth whom Nyilingabo employed in Kirinda, were malcontents with little respect for life that relished the opportunity to terrorize innocent people. The most powerful motivation, however, was fear.
According to the writer of the above statement who is none other than Timothy Longman, the killing was made and taught as an acceptable act regardless of the purpose, reason or motivation of the one committing it, by the churches, thus, they completely performed a vital role in this Rwandan genocide.
In broad historical terms, the churches bear responsibility for the ethnic violence because of their role in helping to intensify ethnic divisions in Rwanda, encouraging obedience to political authority, and legitimating both state power and ethnic discrimination. But the churches bear more immediate responsibility as well. Political accommodation and ethnic discrimination continued into the post-independence era, with churches continuing to ally themselves closely with political authorities and continuing to actively play ethnic politics. Church leaders clearly demonstrated their support for the regime that eventually carried out the genocide. They not only failed forcefully and effectively to condemn ongoing ethnic scapegoating and violence, but they actively practiced ethnic discrimination themselves.
The Japanese Imperial Army perpetrated a six-week episode of mass murder and rape in the former capital of China, which was Nanjing, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The motivation was due to the desire of the Japanese Emperor to gain more power by extending his ruling to a bigger and massive country compare to theirs, which is none other than China. Christian General Jiang Jieshi (or Chiang Kaishek) defeated Chinese warlords and unified China in 1928. By mixing neo-Confucianism and Christianity in the modernity program, he ushered in the Golden Ten Years of rapid economic growth and social transformation under the guidance of an authoritarian Chinese state, which was legitimized by Chinese nationalism. Unfortunately, Japan’s invasion in China from 1937 to 1945 cut short Jiang’s modernity program.
The religion followed by the Chinese before the massacre and rape in Nanjing occurred as stated above was none other than the mixed Confucianism and Christianity while the Japanese practiced the religion of Shinto wherein it was introduced to them by their Emperor. The Japanese Imperial Army members were all raised to be warriors and to sacrifice their lives to serve their Emperor by obeying the latter’s command at all costs.
Conclusion
The main difference between these two genocides, which happened in 1937, and 1994 is that religion and religious actors played significantly in one of them and the other did not. Rwanda, although being a Christian country, did not fail to walk their talk of faith and practice the teachings of the churches since the churches were even the ones who initiated and triggered such genocide. It wouldn’t have happened if the churches were not that too greedy and thirsty of power, thus, they highly involved themselves in politics and state activities to ensure their stable status in the community. They were supposedly the good examples of Christ’s teachings and yet they were the ones who instigated and infuriated ethnic divisions towards two major ethnic groups such as the Hutu and the Tutsi. They had continuously favored one ethnic group over the other and clearly played a huge role in dividing them by allowing discrimination in all areas. The churches or church buildings became even the slaughter grounds and church leaders were found to have greatly supported the genocide so they would be able to maintain and secure their power. As horrific as it sounds, but the churches did this and they could never be any guiltier of failing to stop all this violence but instead fuelled the motivation in doing so. On the other hand, the mass murder and rape in Nanjing were purely inspired by the Japanese Emperor who was like the churches in Rwanda, was greedy of power, thus decided to impose world domination and started invading a much more massive country than where they lived – China. They started in Shanghai and continued to the former capital, which was none other than Nanjing. The difference as well to be noted is that the Rwandan Genocide shocked the whole world and almost everyone was aware of it unlike in the massacre and rape in Nanjing, the Japanese kept on denying the total number of victims and even claimed that such massacre and rape never existed to the horror of all the Chinese. They have something in common though; these genocides’ women’s victims were raped and became sex slaves before they were killed brutally. I have watched a movie called Hotel Rwanda (2004) which is based on a true story and I couldn’t get any more emotional of how people of the same race, though divided in ethnic groups would kill one another or wanted to eliminate one another just for the main purpose of ruling and possessing power which was inspired by none other than the churches.
References:
- Boyce, L. (2017). Rwanda Political History, and Crises. United States of America: Dany Beck Paper Shop
- Lai, B. (2017). Shanghai and Nanjing 1937. Great Britain: Osprey Publishing
- Harmsen, P. (2015). Nanjing 1937 Battle for a Doomed City. New York: Casemate
- Stanley, B. (2018). Christianity in the Twentieth Century A World History. New Jersey: Princeton University Press
- Longman, T. (2010). Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press
- Kuo, C. (2017). Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press
