Comments on: Today In History: Massacre In Basel

By: Stacey

Stacey — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:47:47 +0000

I wasn’t there for the months of genocide, but came about 2 1/2 to 3 months after, during the cholera epidemic in Goma, Zaire (now back to being the Congo), where the backs of large trucks were filled with bodies stacked up like cordwood. While touring the medical facilities, we saw people lose their fight. So frustrating, no matter which side of the genocide the people were on (the refugee camps were , unofficially, run by the same folks who brought the April killings on). Cholera doesn’t have to be a killer if you have access to clean water while it runs through your system.

The stories, the pain of the killings were all there and were pretty fresh. Some reporters stayed in rooms where nuns were executed in Kigali. We went there but were lucky to be at a hotel instead. One of the images I can still see was bloody handprints along the walls of a church building where people hid and were slaughtered. As we walked from room to room, you could see the desperation. This was in the French held quarter where the last of the killings took place and it was close to the stadium. Also in that region, we met people who we knew had killed and others who facilitated. We met one mayor who may have done the latter, or he may have been really trying to save people let he told us… it’s hard to know. The Catholic church was a party to the killings as well. Sad but true. I imagine it was in the Basel killings if it was paired with the baptisms.

A Belgian reporter we met told us of seeing people passively allowing themselve to be macheted. She said she saw this in the streets of the capital and it was upheld by other stories people told us. When we hear of the Chinese massacres or the Basel killings, I think we all need to feel that we have some control, so when the killings were getting so out of hand, frenzied, the victims took control by kneeling down for their killers. I thought of that on 9/11 when I heard of flight 93. I was glad that some of us take control by fighting, even when the outcome is clear. I always wonder which I would be.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:32:41 +0000

Maybe we should update the old joke about friends and real friends, something like:”Mayors make sure that the trash doesn’t pile up in the streets. Real mayors make sure that the bodies don’t pile up in ths streets.” Seriously though Stacy, it was bad enough watching hotel Rwanda, to have actually been there for the aftermath….It makes me thankful that I’ve never been forced to rub my nose in man’s inhumanity to man up close and personal like that.

By: Brett

Brett — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:03:43 +0000

Sadly humans are really good at compartmentalizing, someone did think about all the things you point out John and they found the solutions. People are good at finding answers to difficult problems, it is the choice of which problems they solve that makes the difference. You can find answers to how to dispose of bodies, or you can find solutions to the problems that don’t involve bodies. Too often we find ways to dispose of the bodies.

By: John C.

John C. — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:10:26 +0000

It’s kind of weird to process an event like this by contemplating the undertaking as a project. When I hear “600 people burned at the stake” my first reaction isn’t “wow, where did they get that much wood? Did they season it first so it would burn? Where did they hold the people while they were building the bonfires? What did they do with the ashes and bodies? Man, that must have been a tough day at the office!”

You’ve seen stadiums where people were mown down by gunfire, and seen 60 bodies at one time? Personally? There’s a weird fascination in that thought as well. I would think it would simultaneously personalize and de-personalize the experience … if that makes any sense LOL

By: Stacey

Stacey — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:38:21 +0000

It’s hard to wrap my mind around the scale of such massacres. I’ve seen about sixty dead at a time and they take up space. Burning that many people at (basically) one time? Quite a civic undertaking (pun intended since they left the bodies out unburied). You’ve also got to imagine that the town involved had to hold the people while preparing the stakes and scare off the people they expelled. 600 human beings? That must’ve been a vast reduction in the population of the city and environs and this was in 1348! Who raised the 140 children they forcibly baptised?

I’ve always wondered if the numbers recorded were off when the Chinese historians wrote about the 207 BC massacre of 200,000 Qin prisoners-of-war by order of Xiang Yu, the leading rebel leader, but even if they exaggerated a hair, it’s still a massive undertaking, don’t you think? In Rwanda in 1994, an estimated 800,000 people were killed throughout the country over about 100 days. They at least had modern technology (though the good old machete was used quite a bit as well). I’ve seen the stadiums where people huddled for safety and were mown down by gunfire and knives. It’s mind boggling!