Rwanda starts 100 days of mourning

PIC: Kagame and Magufuli light the Flame of Remembrance at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre to mark the beginning of the 22nd commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Looking on are First Ladies Jeannette Kagame and Janeth Magufuli, and Rwanda's first daughter Ange Kagame. (Village Urugwiro)

TODAY IN HISTORY: APRIL 7, 1994

On the morning of April 6, 1994 after the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana the previous evening, the presidential guard immediately initiated a campaign of retribution.

Leaders of the opposition political parties were killed and immediately, the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began.

Within hours, recruits were dispatched all over the country to carry out a wave of slaughter.

The early organisers included military officials, politicians and businessmen, but soon many others joined in the mayhem.

It has been 24 years, but the memories of the Rwandan genocide are still raw in the minds of humanity.

In the capital Kigali, President Paul Kagame and First Lady Jeanette Kagame will launch the commemoration week today at Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi, where they will lay a wreath at the memorial in honour of over the one million Genocide victims.

They will also light the Flame of Remembrance which will burn for 100 days during the mourning period to symbolise the courage and resilience of Rwandans after the Genocide.

A dark chapter that eerily haunts both its victims and those who chose to look away when they had the power to nip the wanton massacres in the bud, the Rwandan Genocide, just like the horror visited upon Jews in World war 11, is an indelible insignia of shame to humanity.

Rwanda is popularly known as the Switzerland of Africa on account of its hilly topography. But between April 6 and mid-July 1994, its lush undulating hills and meadows were suddenly transformed into one giant killing field, leaving an estimated 1 million people dead.

For Ugandan communities living around Lake Victoria, bodies of Rwandese floating down river Kagera, many of them with visible signs of hacking, while others with kids strapped on their backs, became a common ghastly sight - making some people to strike fish off their menu.

So, what was the spark of the 100 days' descent into barbarity, with neighbours turning on each other, wife against husband and priests against their parishioners on account of ethnic difference?

Although the undercurrents for the genocide had been building up for many years - a product of the political malaise and a bitter colonial legacy that accentuated the perceived tribal differences between Hutus and Tutsis - the death of then President, Juvenal Habyarimana in a plane crash, seemed to ignite the tinder box.

Gerald Prunier, a French Academic and Historian who chronicled the genocide in his book, The Rwandan Crisis: History of Genocide narrated the events of 6th April 1994. "At about 8:30pm local time, as the Falcon 50 was coming in low to Kigali airport for landing in the early evening dusk, two missiles were fired from just outside the airport perimeter. The aircraft received a direct hit, crashed in the garden of Habyarimana's house and immediately burst into flames, killing all aboard. Rwanda had fallen off the cliff," he notes.

Although the identity of those behind downing Habyarimana's plane, which also claimed the life of then Burundian President, Cyprien Ntaryamira, has been the subject of conspiracy theories and numerous investigations, that single incident, Prunier contends, set the genocide in motion. And to him, the shooting of the plane and the ensuing massacres were inextricably connected.

"The plane was shot down at around 8:30pm, and by 9:15pm there were already Interahamwe (militias) roadblocks everywhere in town and houses were being searched," Prunier reminisces in his book that tries to shade light on a truly dark episode.

Among the first victim of the genocide was the then Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her family. Sharing a neighborhood with then US Ambassador to Rwanda, Uwilingiyimana valiantly tried to seek refuge at the ambassador's residence to no avail.

The diplomat, who in Samantha Power's seminal book on major genocides in history admits to have struck an acquaintance with Uwiligiyimana, admitted that he was in no position to save the Prime Minister despite her blood curdling screams reaching his residence.

Other notable fatalities that evening included President of the Constitutional Court Joseph Kavaruganda, Minister of Agriculture Frederic Nzamurambaho, Parti Liberal leader Landwald Ndasingwa and his Canadian wife, and chief Arusha negotiator Boniface Ngulinzira.

Like Jews in WW11, reports about massacres of genocidal proportions were downplayed in Brussels, Paris, London and Washington, with the movers and shakers thinking taking it for the cyclic vicious conflagration typical of African countries. The US, for example, was reluctant to get involved in the "local conflict" in Rwanda and refused to label the killings as "genocide".

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) under the command of Brigadier-General Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian, was in no position to intervene on account of its rules of engagement which was limited to non-combat operations.

But to its eternal credit, Rwanda's top echelon, including its President, Paul Kagame, has been keen to avoid the blame game, eager to bring closure and healing to the country.

However, over the years, many world leaders have shown contrition for their failure to stop the genocide, even if it meant doing simple things like jamming the signal of RTLM radio - a ‘hate radio" station used by extremists to fan the embers of genocide.

In a Frontline Television interview, then US president, Bill Clinton, just like former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan (then undersecretary for peace-keeping operations), regretted his indecision admitting that he had the power to save over 500,000 lives by deploying 5000 US marines.

Two decades on, Rwanda has made a giant stride in many aspects, with its leadership sparing no pains to build a nation that would be a perfect tribute to the memory of all its genocide victims. As genocide masterminds Thoeneste Bagosora and his accomplices sit in jails around the world, Rwanda is on a steady path to recovery.