Letter to newspaper El Mundo´s director

Medellín, July 6th, 2008

Mister Director,

Let me address this letter to you, not only as a writer and a poet, but as a mother who carries the burden of death, who is trying to reconstruct and to be a small light in life.

I address you as a mother who died forever in the Tutsi genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. There, I not only lost my husband and all my children, but I also lost all hope in what a mother can expect of life.

I do not live, Mr. Director, I survive.

Since the age of five, all I have lived is the consecutive slaughter of my people and massacres that still remain unpunished. All I have lived is exclusion. I only became a writer because of suffering. I witnessed, submerged in absolute impotence, the destruction of my people’s culture, where everything that had some culture in it was forbidden. This was one of the reasons that led us to fratricide.

On Saturday, July 5th, 2008, I was incredibly proud to be in front of thousands of young Colombians who have understood the usefulness of culture and of poetry.

Mr. Director, if I accepted an invitation to this festival, it was not only because of the poetry per se, but also because of the opportunity to share my experience with the Colombian civil society and to warn it about what happened in Rwanda, because these events can happen to any society, and can be repeated in any other part of the world, even in Colombia. It is my duty to protect humanity through my testimony.

Mr. Director, culture is the identity of a society. Culture is an instrument against violence. If you know this year’s International Poetry Festival of Medellín’s slogan, you will understand that we were invited to promote solidarity amongst people, in general, and amongst poets, in particular.

Mr. Director, mass media was used in Rwanda as an extermination machine for genocide. The genocidal bible was printed in newspapers, the ten commandments of Bahutu sensitized people towards hatred and violence and ended up leading them to the massacre of the Tutsi, from elders to children, and even the sick in their beds. The directors of such media were tried and sentenced by the International Penal Court of Arusha in Tanzania for the crime of genocide.

Mr. Director, don’t you realize that your newspaper has been used to settle a personal issue?

If the author of the article “Does the Festival of Poetry sympathize with FARC?” has personal issues to settle with whomever, out of respect for journalistic ethics, he has no right to use your newspaper, and much less the International Festival for which we are gathered here in Colombia.

That you would allow the publication of an article that promotes hatred, suspicion and violence, that uses the name of an individual in order to attack a group, Mr. Director, is unacceptable. Not only does it deny your newspaper’s credibility but, above all, it destroys Colombian civil society.

Mr. Director, I have never received a visit from FARC in my hotel room. I do not know them. My only reason for being in this country is Colombian civil society. I don’t belong to a group of terrorists. I don’t know, Mr. Director, if you are aware of the gravity of this accusation. I feel deeply insulted, accused, as if my husband and children had died because they were terrorists. As if their murderers had been right.

Finally, Mr. Director, let me tell you this, none of the poets who are here from all over the world, nor I, have received the visit from FARC. Not a single one of us is an instrument for the destruction of life. Not a single one of us is an instrument of evil, of misfortune or of death. This is the reason why I insist, Mr. Director, that you publish my letter in your newspaper.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Long live Colombia,
Long live the Colombian people who desire nothing but peace and life.

Yolande Mukasagana
Poet of Rwanda, Survivor of the Tutsi genocide.