AASU ON THE DAY OF REMEMBRANCE OFTHE VICTIMS OF RWANDA GENOCIDE
Twenty (20) years ago a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu took place approximately from April 7, 1994 to mid-July in Rwanda. It was estimated that 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were killed constituting as much as 20% of Rwanda total population. These dastardly acts took place in an environment of a conflict that started in 1990 between the Hutu led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) composed mainly of Tutsi refugees who fled to Uganda due to earlier waves of Hutu violence against them.
The world was shocked about the intensity of the violence and said never again this disgraceful and inhuman act. The United Nations (UN) declared April 7 as a Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Rwanda Genocide to enable the International Community to remember the victims and conduct deep reflections on how to prevent such ignoble act to take place again in any part of the world.
Today as Rwanda is rapidly recovering from the vestiges of the 1994 genocide with credible national reconciliation and economic policies, other African countries are engulfed in different violent conflicts with their cohorts of dead, displaced people and massive infrastructural destructions. While Mali is gradually gaining its sovereignty, peace and stability; a near genocide in Central African Republic is underway but thanks to the timely intervention of the International Community to thwart it; South Sudan, the newly independent country, is plunged in a civil war.
The question is- when are African people going to live in peace, dignity and prosperity? After going through centuries of slavery and colonialism; Africans, since the attainment of the independences of their countries, have been caught up in socio-economic environments characterized by poverty, diseases, corruptions, civil strife/wars, bad governance etc.
The current conditions that characterize events in Africa have rendered hopeless the youth who are despaired and disillusioned and their only ambition is to leave the shores of the continent at the peril of their life. The African leaders must stop giving lip service to the issues pertaining to find lasting solutions to the problems confronting their people and the continent as a whole. The socio-economic, political and cultural integration of the continent is the known and widely accepted way of overcoming the problems confronting the continent. But the lack of political will on the part of African leaders has been the main stumbling block to the advancement of the continent.
The time is now for African leaders to surrender part or all their sovereignty to a better organized and more resourceful African Union (AU) for the continent to speak with one voice, galvanize and organize all the human resources, defend its integrity etc.
The All Africa Students Union (AASU) would like to use this opportunity to empathize with the victims, their families, the people and government of Rwanda. We call on all and sundry to endeavour at individual and collective levels to prevent, stop, discourage any such ugly thing now and in the future.
We call, once again, on African leaders to fast truck the socio-economic, cultural and political integration of Africa as the sole way of overturning the current sad situation.
Never again any genocide on the African continent!
All for African unity!
Awaah Fred
(Secretary General) [email protected]/+233 (0)243101626