Turkey hosts Rwanda Renaissance Seminar

By Dilara Hamit

ANKARA (AA) - Rwandan foreign minister on Tuesday attended Rwanda Renaissance Seminar to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Rwanda's freedom movement, organized by the Institute of Strategic Thinking (SDE) in Ankara.

Richard Sezibara touched Rwanda's history referring to pre-colonization, colonized and post-colonized stages of Rwanda.

"The colonial powers destroyed our historical structure that held us together and threw away our history," Sezibera said.

"The colonial enterprise was aimed to destroy the foundation of our country," he said.

Sezibera noted that the colonial powers separated the unity and integrity of Rwanda in 1931 by discriminating people for their ethnicity and gender.

"The popular saying at the time had been so strong that we believed that Rwanda could never be attacked, Rwanda can only attack, this is because of centuries of nation building," he said.

The foundations of the genocide in 1994 were laid during the 1930's when the colonial powers established permanent identity cards in which ethnic groups were separated.

The minister said that social segregation is inevitable at the place of colonialists and due to this consciousness is also lost collectively.

Sezibera noted that around 2,500,000 people were displaced from their homeland and around 3,000,000 Rwandans became refugees during the genocide.

"A country like mine with a single community, a single culture and a single language experiences an isolation leading to a genocide than no country in the world is safe," Sezibera added.

More than 800,000 Rwandans were massacred in 1994 in a matter of 100 days, between April and July, by the members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the East African country. Those killed were mainly from the Tutsi minority.