Op-ed day 5: Genocide and Conflict Tourism --by Gina

When working in post-genocide societies like Cambodia and Rwanda, I have always struggled to understand this form of unimaginable, systematic, cruel violence. There seems to be no sufficient vocabulary that can fully describe the horrors of genocide, the thought processes of its perpetrators, nor the resilience of its survivors. Genocide is beyond human comprehension, and yet it is planned and implemented by men, experienced and survived by ordinary individuals.

During my work in Rwanda, it was not uncommon to hear international tourists speak to my Rwandan friends and colleagues as though they were tourist attractions themselves. One friend laughingly told me, “The only things tourists ever ask me about are the two Gs: Gorillas and Genocide.” She politely nods as strangers naively ask, “Are you Hutu or Tutsi? Where were you in 1994?” As she patiently answers, her smile fades.

In Kigali, this story is as cliché as it is real and painful. The tourists’ questions – while perhaps yearning to understand the inexplicable mechanisms that drive and sustain communal violence – exist as a form of conflict tourism. This type of travel has positive and negative implications; the worst examples include insensitive voyeurism and a fetishization of violence, and direct questions about genocide are dangerously close to both. Through witnessing the pain such questions evoke, I simply refuse to be involved in such exchanges. Today, I felt like I was.

As part of our day-long workshop with Cambodian students, our international facilitators asked our Cambodian peers to share the experiences of family members during or after genocide. As soon as this topic was announced, I felt cold, sick. I wanted to escape from the room, but couldn’t seem to pull myself from my chair. What followed was, for me, a horribly uncomfortable discussion, one that violated every personal ethical belief I hold about conducting international work. The students – while clearly born after the end of the genocide – are not immune from its legacy or from the trauma that comes from a parent or close family member experiencing brutal violence. Some shared stories, others chose not to. Some smiled or joked while sharing, others cried.

Later, when our expedition discussed the day, we were split according to our thoughts about the session, illustrating the controversial nature of how to approach genocide and when attempting to understand becomes self-serving and counter-productive. But the point of all this is not to diminish the work of the expedition, but as a way to create awareness and growth within this community and beyond. It is a cautionary tale that encourages cultural and conflict sensitivity while still engaging with local populations in constructive ways. The onus remains on the visitors to conflict zones to responsibly address how and why we engage with local people, many of whom are directly or indirectly affected by the legacy of genocide on a daily basis.

The balance between learning and negative conflict tourism is a delicate balance, one that is difficult to negotiate with local communities and even more complicated to understand.