10 years after Rwanda genocide
The genocide in Rwanda lasted 100 days and claimed about 800,000 lives. The shock waves spread far beyond the borders of the tiny Central African state, dethroning Mobutu Sese Seko after Rwanda’s army marched across Zaire to avenge his support for the Hutu murderers.
by Chris McGreal
The genocide in Rwanda lasted 100 days and claimed about 800,000 lives. The shock waves spread far beyond the borders of the tiny Central African state, dethroning Mobutu Sese Seko after Rwanda’s army marched across Zaire to avenge his support for the Hutu murderers.
Gnawing guilt at western indifference to the genocide - one high-ranking Rwandan official told me that British diplomats at the UN reacted to his pleas to stop the slaughter as if he were talking about the killing of ants, not people - laid the foundation for Africa’s first international tribunal in The Hague and provided the backdrop for Britain’s military intervention in Sierra Leone four years ago.
Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan, who was head of UN peacekeeping at the time, offered half-hearted apologies for their failure to save the Tutsis, premised on the lie that they did not know.
That was further than France was prepared to go over its military support of the Hutu regime. More recently, the tables have turned with critics of Rwanda’s Tutsi leadership accusing it of subsequently overseeing an orgy of killing, rape and plunder in eastern Congo.
But for many of the survivors, the genocide lives on. Madalena’s tiny home is decorated with religious pictures even though she refuses to go near the church any more.
She gestures at a painting of Christ on the cross. “I believe Jesus was crucified, crucified like the Tutsis.â€
Madalena took in six orphans from her extended family, bringing them up alongside her own four children. Almost all the girls and women in the family were raped, and one of the adopted children died of Aids.
Survivor organisations estimate that two-thirds of Tutsi women who were raped are HIV-positive.
One-quarter of all Rwandan children are orphans because of the genocide, war and Aids.
Nearly one-third of all households in Rwanda are headed by women because so many of the men were killed.
There are about 1,000 Tutsi survivors living in Kibuye town. Today the number of freed killers on the streets outnumbers them. “They live in the neighbourhood. They drink in the bars. We saw what they did. We live in fear because they are free,†Madalena says.
All but the worst killers - those who organised the slaughter, or were particularly noteworthy in the scale or brutality of their atrocities - are eligible for release if they confess their crimes, apologise to the families of their victims and agree restitution. The freed prisoner must also go before the gacaca courts as a witness against other genocidaire.
“Some write us letters saying, ‘You can help us to get out of prison.’ They don’t want to talk about the people they killed. They say ‘for what happened’, never for ‘killing your family’. They think that is confessing. One came to my husband and offered him a cow to forgive him. It’s like a bribe,†says Madalena.
Parasi is a small, wiry man of 36, wearing a torn red vest with a Marlboro cigarette logo. He begins by lying. “Myself, I didn’t kill but I went with a person who had a grenade. There were four of us in that group. I was there with the killers,†he says.
As the conversation progresses, Parasi admits that he was the one who threw the grenade. He says he does not know the names of any of his victims.
Parasi was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
As a condition of his release, he agreed to pay compensation of 32,000 Rwandan francs (Pounds Sterling 36) to the father of the teenage boy he murdered. He did not have the money so his mother handed over a piece of land instead.
Another former prisoner, Francois Ndangamira, spent seven years in jail before confessing that he clubbed two girls to death.
The Catholic Church brought the 37-year-old builder together with the aunt of the two girls. “Before they came, they sent a letter asking if I was serious, if I was truly sorry. After, they came and we met face to face. They forgave me because they could see I was really sorry for what I did,†he says.
The children’s aunt, Adria Mukarukaka, is among the last survivors in her family. Ndangamira says he and the aunt meet regularly. “We have become good friends now,†he says. “She has forgiven me completely.â€
Mukarukaka shakes his hand but does not look him in the eye, and as soon as he has stepped out of earshot, she says: “He didn’t kill only two. He killed at least six in my family and others too. He killed my two brothers, the wives of my brothers, my nieces. I did not forgive him because I think he is sincere, I forgave him because the church told me to.â€
The Catholic church is at the forefront of pressing the guilty to confess and the survivors to forgive, but it has yet to acknowledge its own role in the transformation of so many churches to extermination centres.
A few weeks after the massacre in Kibuye, the Catholic congregation filed in to what had been Father Senyenzi’s church, for Sunday mass. The new priest, a Hutu, offered no prayers for his murdered predecessor.
Father Jean Francois Kayiranga previously officiated at a parish in the east of the province but needed a new church, having ordered his own to be bulldozed with 2,000 Tutsis inside.
He was not a lone criminal within the clergy. Many priests and nuns were courageous - about 200 of them were murdered - but others were at the forefront of the killing.
In Butare, a group of nuns poured the petrol used to immolate Tutsi women. Other nuns led children by the hand to the waiting interahamwe.
Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka was to be found at his church in Kigali with a cross around his neck, a pistol on his hip and a list in his hand from which he announced those selected to die.
GUARDIAN
The genocide in Rwanda lasted 100 days and claimed about 800,000 lives. The shock waves spread far beyond the borders of the tiny Central African state, dethroning Mobutu Sese Seko after Rwanda’s army marched across Zaire to avenge his support for the Hutu murderers.
Gnawing guilt at western indifference to the genocide - one high-ranking Rwandan official told me that British diplomats at the UN reacted to his pleas to stop the slaughter as if he were talking about the killing of ants, not people - laid the foundation for Africa’s first international tribunal in The Hague and provided the backdrop for Britain’s military intervention in Sierra Leone four years ago.
Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan, who was head of UN peacekeeping at the time, offered half-hearted apologies for their failure to save the Tutsis, premised on the lie that they did not know.
That was further than France was prepared to go over its military support of the Hutu regime. More recently, the tables have turned with critics of Rwanda’s Tutsi leadership accusing it of subsequently overseeing an orgy of killing, rape and plunder in eastern Congo.
But for many of the survivors, the genocide lives on. Madalena’s tiny home is decorated with religious pictures even though she refuses to go near the church any more.
She gestures at a painting of Christ on the cross. “I believe Jesus was crucified, crucified like the Tutsis.â€
Madalena took in six orphans from her extended family, bringing them up alongside her own four children. Almost all the girls and women in the family were raped, and one of the adopted children died of Aids.
Survivor organisations estimate that two-thirds of Tutsi women who were raped are HIV-positive.
One-quarter of all Rwandan children are orphans because of the genocide, war and Aids.
Nearly one-third of all households in Rwanda are headed by women because so many of the men were killed.
There are about 1,000 Tutsi survivors living in Kibuye town. Today the number of freed killers on the streets outnumbers them. “They live in the neighbourhood. They drink in the bars. We saw what they did. We live in fear because they are free,†Madalena says.
All but the worst killers - those who organised the slaughter, or were particularly noteworthy in the scale or brutality of their atrocities - are eligible for release if they confess their crimes, apologise to the families of their victims and agree restitution. The freed prisoner must also go before the gacaca courts as a witness against other genocidaire.
“Some write us letters saying, ‘You can help us to get out of prison.’ They don’t want to talk about the people they killed. They say ‘for what happened’, never for ‘killing your family’. They think that is confessing. One came to my husband and offered him a cow to forgive him. It’s like a bribe,†says Madalena.
Parasi is a small, wiry man of 36, wearing a torn red vest with a Marlboro cigarette logo. He begins by lying. “Myself, I didn’t kill but I went with a person who had a grenade. There were four of us in that group. I was there with the killers,†he says.
As the conversation progresses, Parasi admits that he was the one who threw the grenade. He says he does not know the names of any of his victims.
Parasi was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
As a condition of his release, he agreed to pay compensation of 32,000 Rwandan francs (Pounds Sterling 36) to the father of the teenage boy he murdered. He did not have the money so his mother handed over a piece of land instead.
Another former prisoner, Francois Ndangamira, spent seven years in jail before confessing that he clubbed two girls to death.
The Catholic Church brought the 37-year-old builder together with the aunt of the two girls. “Before they came, they sent a letter asking if I was serious, if I was truly sorry. After, they came and we met face to face. They forgave me because they could see I was really sorry for what I did,†he says.
The children’s aunt, Adria Mukarukaka, is among the last survivors in her family. Ndangamira says he and the aunt meet regularly. “We have become good friends now,†he says. “She has forgiven me completely.â€
Mukarukaka shakes his hand but does not look him in the eye, and as soon as he has stepped out of earshot, she says: “He didn’t kill only two. He killed at least six in my family and others too. He killed my two brothers, the wives of my brothers, my nieces. I did not forgive him because I think he is sincere, I forgave him because the church told me to.â€
The Catholic church is at the forefront of pressing the guilty to confess and the survivors to forgive, but it has yet to acknowledge its own role in the transformation of so many churches to extermination centres.
A few weeks after the massacre in Kibuye, the Catholic congregation filed in to what had been Father Senyenzi’s church, for Sunday mass. The new priest, a Hutu, offered no prayers for his murdered predecessor.
Father Jean Francois Kayiranga previously officiated at a parish in the east of the province but needed a new church, having ordered his own to be bulldozed with 2,000 Tutsis inside.
He was not a lone criminal within the clergy. Many priests and nuns were courageous - about 200 of them were murdered - but others were at the forefront of the killing.
In Butare, a group of nuns poured the petrol used to immolate Tutsi women. Other nuns led children by the hand to the waiting interahamwe.
Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka was to be found at his church in Kigali with a cross around his neck, a pistol on his hip and a list in his hand from which he announced those selected to die.
GUARDIAN