On 24 April, nearly 31 years after the start of the Rwandan genocide on 6 April 1994, a book was published containing the testimony of a survivor. Just another one, you might say… We all know the story of this monstrous event… And already distant, which means little to the latest generations of humanitarians… Yet Tharcisse Sinzi’s Combattre, written with the help of journalist Thomas Zribi, beyond its emotional power, may have something to say to all humanitarians, because this story is also a lesson in resilience, efficiency, endurance… and humanity.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, I would like to explain, just this once, why this book spoke to me: it was in Rwanda, in 1994, just after the genocide, that I carried out my first humanitarian mission with the NGO SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL. We were working in the displaced persons camps in the Gikongoro area, close to where Tharcisse Sinzi himself lived and resisted the killers. And this resistance, he explains, came from his practice of martial arts, specifically karate (he was a black belt at the time, now a 7th dan), which gave him the physical endurance and mental strength he needed… I happen to be a black belt in judo and karate myself, as well as a boxer, and I have long had the intuition that the principles of martial arts can be applied to humanitarian action. But let’s go back to 1994…
On 6 April 1994, Rwandan President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down by a missile as it approached Kigali, the Rwandan capital. President Habyarimana, Burundian President Ntaryamira, and officials from both countries were killed. Immediately, RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines) launched a hunt for the ‘Inyenzi’ (cockroaches), the Tutsis, who were blamed for the attack. The genocide began. In just over three months, it claimed between 800,000 and one million victims. Tharcisse Sinzi describes the turning point: he had returned to the country after living in neighbouring Burundi, was living in a region between Butare and Gikongoro, had married and had just had a baby girl. He saw neighbours, former classmates and childhood friends (not all of them, as we shall see) who were Hutus become strangers within a few hours, then enemies. He initially tried to organise community resistance, bringing together Hutus and Tutsis from his village against the Interahamwe, the Hutu extermination militias led by the authorities. This works for a while, but then the Hutus join forces with the Hutus, and the number of attackers grows… The only option left is to flee to Burundi. But the roads and paths are blocked by roadblocks and searches carried out by the Interahamwe, aided by the gendarmerie and the Rwandan army. On the way, Tharcisse Sinzi, who had been separated from his wife and daughter during the flight, chose, surrounded by a few hundred Tutsis who would become nearly 3,400 as their courage spread, to fight the killers on a hill, Songa, in the Butare region in the south of the country. This, along with the other battle fought by 60,000 Tutsis on the hills of Bisesero in the west over a period of three months (of whom only 800 were saved by French soldiers), was one of the remarkable acts of resistance to the genocide.
Remarkable, beyond courage, is Tharcisse Sinzi’s illustration of some essential concepts:
Resilience… during and after
Resilience is a concept favoured by humanitarian workers, who have made it the goal of many programmes designed to ‘build/support the resilience of populations affected by crises’. So much so that they sometimes forget that resilience most often arises and develops without them… There were no humanitarian organisations to build the resilience of the Tutsis during the genocide. Those who survived and resisted created it from scratch, on their own. Through body and mind… Tharcisse Sinzi explains how, first in himself and then in others around him whom he has been able to mentor, train and motivate, resilience comes through mobilising the body and its survival instinct, which must be listened to and followed, and through awakening the warrior spirit that everyone carries within them. Trained by years of karate practice, he teaches his comrades, who recognise him as their leader, to shut out fear, the terrible pain of losing loved ones (the time for grief will come later, after the fight), and distracting thoughts. He instils in them both the clarity and fierce determination necessary for a fight for survival, practically bare-handed against cohorts of assassins. He teaches them some basic hand-to-hand combat techniques. This physical and mental commitment enables resilience during the struggle, i.e. the ability to withstand the daily cruelty of the carnage and remain capable of acting in order not to disappear. Humanitarians, who rightly put their commitment first, may wonder about their own physical and mental limits; we can always go further than we think…
After the struggle, after the genocide, this resilience, as Tharcisse Sinzi makes us understand, requires both personal and collective decisions. Tharcisse will never find his wife and daughter, from whom he was separated during the escape, alive. After much searching, he finally discovers the pit where his wife was thrown by the killers; he is able to give her body a dignified funeral. However, he is unable to do the same for his little girl, and he sometimes wonders if she did not survive by some miracle, if she is not living somewhere unknown to him… For years, he is consumed by anger and thoughts of revenge. Until he realises that this hatred is poisoning him and preventing him from rebuilding his life, moving forward and loving again. Like many survivors, he decided not to forget, not necessarily to forgive, but to focus on the positive rather than the negative (particularly the memory of the Hutus who helped, which we will come back to), and even to ‘capitalise’ on it. He found love again, started a new family (he had three more daughters), resumed his studies in his thirties to obtain a degree in construction engineering and build a professional career. He also resumed daily karate practice to heal his body and mind, release aggression and find balance (P 215: ‘When I feel good, I do karate. And when I feel bad, I do karate’)… He will pass his grades and become a teacher in this discipline, through which he will strive to pass on the principles and values that saved him. This transmission will join a collective movement of memory and passing on the experience of the genocide by the survivors. Tharcisse Sinzi participates in commemorations. He shares his experience with younger generations so that it will never happen again. Beyond that, he refuses to hate the Hutus as a homogeneous group and considers that today, in his country, there are only Rwandans. Humanitarian workers have understood for years the importance of capitalising on this experience; it remains for us to decide to focus more on the positive than the negative.
Imagine, improvise, adapt
Tharcisse Sinzi and his fellow fighters were not trained soldiers or skilled combatants with generations of warfare experience. They came from a rural background focused on farming and livestock breeding. They had to ‘imagine’ how they would resist the organised killers every day; what tactics, what weapons? Stones, sticks, a few agricultural tools and machetes… How? As in martial arts, observe the opponent, identify the flaws, the weaknesses of the attack… Disrupt the enemy, disorient them, disturb them. Strike them where they are not prepared to receive blows. Adapt… to numbers (how many killers today?), to the weather (on rainy days, the assassins often preferred to stay at home, like field workers, because for them the extermination of the Tutsis was a ‘job’ and there were days when they could rebuild their strength, take care of the wounded, organise themselves for the future… ). And above all, ‘think while acting’, as in karate or judo combat, without a pre-established plan, responding in real time, with mind and body, to the changing reality one faces… Do humanitarian workers, who are increasingly demanding guidelines, logical frameworks, protocols and procedures, still have a similar capacity for improvisation? Often… Not always…
Not having pre-established thoughts; trying whenever possible
This absence of preconceived ideas, which Tharcisse Sinzi describes in his testimony as a condition for survival, is also reflected in the decision, dictated by necessity, not to give up on any attempt to approach former Hutu acquaintances once the killers’ attacks were over (the extermination, like a job, ends at 5 o’clock every day, after which the killers go home…), in order to ask them for help. And, although prejudice would lead them to believe that all Hutus were with the Interahamwe, Tharcisse recounts that some, sometimes childhood friends, took the risk at night to meet with Tutsi resistance fighters and inform them about the killers’ forces, their state of mind, their leaders, expected reinforcements, etc. Similarly, when it was time to flee to Burundi, Tharcisse and some of his desperate comrades would occasionally knock on the doors of unknown Hutu houses in the evening to ask for shelter… And they would be hidden by these Hutus who were supposed to be on the side of the killers (some of whom were killers by day… and protectors by night…). Perhaps there is a lesson here for humanitarians to ponder: do not remain within the limits of our documented and coherent analyses; sometimes there are opportunities that do not fit into logical frameworks, such as unexpected possibilities for access where it is objectively defined as impossible…
Alone, we can achieve nothing: mutual assistance and mutual prosperity, during and after
There are two main principles in the practice of martial arts. The first is: Mutual assistance and mutual prosperity (‘Jita Kyoei’). It is based on the premise that alone, we can achieve nothing. Any practice that allows one to achieve a new level of effectiveness depends on the participation of others in one’s own practice. It is the informal mutual aid produced by training together and interacting with others that allows the fighter to prosper, i.e. to master their art. Tharcisse Sinzi, a black belt in karate at the time of the genocide, applied this principle to the organisation of the resistance on Songa Hill. Everyone had a role that was essential to the group’s capabilities: the physically strong were placed in front of the weak to protect them and were in charge of direct confrontation. The weak, the elderly, women and children would be responsible for collecting sticks and stones, essential weapons and ammunition, and supplying them to the fighters (the women would gather stones in the folds of their loincloths and bring them to them). At night, the small and swift will go and steal food to bring back, and the strong will accompany the weak to the streams at the bottom of the hill to quench their thirst… After the genocide, Tharcisse explains how this mutual aid takes the form of support that survivors provide to each other, through exchanges, solidarity and emotional or material assistance, in a country where you can encounter the murderers of your loved ones every day… At a time when humanitarian resources are being reduced or cut, this spirit of ‘mutual aid and mutual prosperity’, which we would call ‘pooling of resources’, cannot fail to resonate strongly…
Optimising means and resources for sustainability: maximum efficiency for minimum energy
The second major principle of martial arts practice is ‘maximum efficiency for minimum energy’ (‘Seiryoku Zenyo’). It stipulates that you cannot win a decisive battle without efficiency, i.e. without optimising the use of your energy, at the right time, in the right place, without wasting it, because you never know when a real battle will end, and you have to last… Tharcisse Sinzi will apply this principle in the daily combat of the group he leads: the strong will be placed in strategic locations, with the mission of intervening at the decisive moment. He will teach the resistance fighters not to exhaust themselves, to strike only when they are sure, and not to waste their resources, stones or otherwise. Every opportunity to regain strength and replenish their stock of projectiles is used… Of course, this will have its limits at some point; too many deaths on their side, too many attackers in reinforcements, armed with automatic weapons… They will have to try to reach Burundi with the last survivors, but, with their meagre resources, they will have held out for weeks against waves of exterminators. For humanitarian workers, it is imperative to persevere and continue to act for as long as necessary, and efficiency is a requirement at a time of scarce resources; we must always target our interventions more effectively for maximum impact, optimise the use of our resources and not spread our efforts too thinly…
Conclusion
While strictly transposing the experience of those who resisted the Rwandan genocide to humanitarian action is an approach that has its limitations, as the two things are of course very different – not least because humanitarians are volunteers who ‘choose’ to engage in their ‘fight’ for others and can leave at any time – the resilience, efficiency, ability to invent, improvise, adapt, persevere and overcome that Tharcisse Sinzi demonstrates in his book can be a source of inspiration for humanitarians, whose future looks clouded with threatening clouds.
Pierre Brunet
Writer and humanitarian
Pierre Brunet
Writer and humanitarian
Born in Paris in 1961 to a French father and Spanish mother, Pierre Brunet found his first calling as a freelance journalist. In 1994, he crossed paths with humanitarian work and signed up as a volunteer in Rwanda, which had been devastated by genocide. In early 1995, he left again on a humanitarian mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was then torn apart by civil war. There, he took on the responsibilities of programme coordinator in Sarajevo, then head of mission.
On his return to France at the end of 1996, he joined the headquarters of the French NGO SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL, for which he had gone on mission. He was responsible for communications and fundraising, while also returning to the field, such as in Afghanistan in 2003, and beginning to write… In 2011, while remaining involved in humanitarian work, he committed himself fully to writing and devoted a significant part of his time to his vocation as a writer.
Pierre Brunet is member of the Bureau of the SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL association. He has travelled to the field in north-eastern Syria, to the Calais ‘jungle’ in November 2015, and to Greece and Macedonia to work with migrants in April 2016.
Pierre Brunet’s novels are published by Calmann-Lévy:
January 2006: publication of his first novel, Barnum, by Calmann-Lévy, a story inspired by his humanitarian experience.
September 2008: publication of his second novel, JAB, the story of a young Spanish orphan who grew up in Morocco and became a professional boxer as an adult.
March 2014: release of his third novel, Fenicia, inspired by the life of his mother, a young Spanish orphan during the civil war who sought refuge in France and later became an anarchist activist and seductress, dying in a psychiatric institute at the age of 31.
End of August 2017: release of his fourth novel, Le triangle d’incertitude, in which the author ‘returns’ once again, as in Barnum, to Rwanda in 1994 to evoke the trauma of a French officer during Operation Turquoise.
In addition to his work as a writer, Pierre Brunet works as a co-screenwriter for television series and feature films, in partnership with various production companies. He also contributes to various magazines by publishing opinion pieces and articles, particularly on international current affairs.
I invite you to read these interviews and articles published in the edition :