For the victims of the Rwandan Genocide, the Red Cross resembled peace and hope for all that were affected. They had the courage to enter in a place where dirty machetes were increasingly being chosen as the weapon of choice and rotten bodies piled up in the street corners. The Red Cross didn’t have a stake in the conflict unlike peace keeping organizations like the United Nations that only heated the conflict further. They entered on terms of neutrality but later casted guilt on the shoulders of the perpetrators, badly embarrassing the murderers and their cause by openly conversing with the killers. It first began as an assignment to help the victims, but as the doctors and nurses and aids helped more and more brutally injured people, it escalated into a moral dilemma that will haunt those volunteers forever. The leader of the International Red Cross Mission in Rwanda was named Philippe Gaillard; a young man at the time who made the single decision that later affected thousands of people. He decided not to leave Kigali, the city in the middle of the war zone and to set up safe camps for victims of the genocide both in the areas where the Hutu and Tutsi were occupying. He had arrived under a stressful time for the Rwandan government. They had just signed a peace agreement mainly because of the mass amount of world pressure. He claims to have never read the document but he remembers vividly a conversation he had with the President of the government party that was in power, where the president compared the peace agreement to a roll of toilet paper.(1)He was well aware of the insanity of the situation he was becoming very much entangled in. As the Red Cross set up camps around the demilitarizing zone the genocide was becoming more apparent. The streets became very empty and citizens were scarcely scene. At first the killings happened in the night and the Red Cross would find there mutilated bodies less than a day later. Most of the victims knew where the safe camps were set up and traveled to them if they were able. The camps were easily recognized by the traditional red outlined cross that stood out on the background of white sheets. The place itself was hectic with doctors and nurses performing surgery in the open; saving hundreds of lives were day. The victims acted sullen and relaxed; they were not affected by the pain that surrounded them. During the early morning, the safest time of day, Red Cross would drive in the specialized ambulance vehicles picking up the wounded. The Human Rights Ambassador of the United Nations was in daily contact with Gaillard during the months of the genocide. Every time he would call, he would ask Gaillard for another estimate of the dead or wounded. The first week he said 250,000. Three weeks later when they called, he told them it had doubled; a whopping 500,000 had been murdered. Several weeks later he was asked again, and replied that after a million he had stopped counting. The immense evil of the Hutu extremists was easily seen in the day to day encounters of the Red Cross staff. The staff was made up of 6 non-Africans and a greater body of skilled locals. The unique thing about the Red Cross’s position during the genocide was that they extended the limits of the mission. Their job was to save lives and help the innocent victims of genocide. Under the leadership of Gaillard; they did much more than that. They conversed with the killers trying to persuade them to stop the killing. They believe that the only way to end the genocide and help the survivors was to face the murderers themselves and talk to them directly. They pleaded to stop the killing of all people; men, women, children, babies, and the elderly. To the Hutu extremists there was no difference. A main difference between the Red Cross and other peace keeping organizations like the UN, was its immense amount of support that they received from their global organization. Within days, a group of expert surgeons and nurses could be in Rwanda if they called for more. The effect the International Red Cross had on the genocide was profound. They had saved more than 60,000, lessening the total death toll by almost a whopping 11 percent. The Red Cross never left Rwanda, not even after the majority of the killings had seized. They remain there today helping the country and the decrepit infrastructure advance. Currently the Red Cross is trying to improve the conditions of the citizens in prison. After the genocide, a vast percentage of the population were jailed and held in horrible disease infected cells where they starved to death or became deathly ill. In 2009, a Red Cross delegation opened in Rwanda; one of its main goals being to improve the conditions of the prisons. The International Committee of the Red Cross is an organization that dedicates its mission to protect the victims of humanitarian crimes all over the world. They achieved this and much more through their work in Rwanda; a place that no one else dared to go.
[1] “Interview Philippe Gaillard,” FRONTLINE, Accessed April 1, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/gaillard.html
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