Hutu killer's song and dance
2004-03-17 15:04
Kigali - Stanislas Hategekimana stares at the ground as he recounts how he danced and sang while he killed Tutsis during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and admits that he killed so many, he can't put a number to them.
"In the killing groups that I took part in starting in 1992, we killed so many people that I can't count them," says the former member of the Interahamwe militia, a Hutu group held largely responsible for the 100-day spree of violence, sentenced two years ago to life in prison for his role in the massacres.
From April to July 1994, up to one million people were slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide, ethnic Tutsis and Hutus who tried to shelter them.
Stanislas, now 36, is serving his sentence in Ruhengeri, in northwest Rwanda. He has admitted to having bludgeoned to death two elderly men and a child.
"They loaded us into vehicles to take us to the hills to kill people. We sang and danced," he said, his voice hardly a whisper and unable to control a nervous twitch that sent spasms through his legs, clad in the pink prison garb of Rwandan genocide prisoners.
Practically a party
"It was practically a party. We killed cows for food, the authorities bought our drinks for us," he said.
After the genocide, he felt "remorse" for what he did, he said, and that made him confess to his crimes.
But not to take responsibility for them. That he places firmly on the shoulders of the Hutu authorities at the time, saying they planned the massacres.
Another prisoner in Ruhengeri, 47-year-old Claude Maniraho, said: "The mayor told us Tutsis had to be killed, their goods looted, their homes destroyed."
Maniraho, a well educated former accountant, who speaks flawless French, has admitted to having murdered seven people.
"When you kill the first person, when they fall, you feel something. In my case, it was a neighbour, who lived a few metres from me.
"When you kill, you don't really hear the noises around you, just a cacophony of sound," he said.
Maniraho was sentenced to death by a Rwandan court in 2001 for the murders of 250 people who had sought refuge inside a church from the orchestrated slaughter.
But the former accountant denies he was involved in those killings.
"I didn't have any more bullets. I only watched," he said, before tempering his protests by saying: "If I had had a loaded gun, I would have killed."
Eugenie Mukarusiga is also serving a life sentence, despite claiming that she was not part of the killing sprees during the genocide.
Eugenie had joined the CDR before the start of the genocide, but she, too, places responsibility for the killings on the authorities at the time.
"If they gave orders, the people carried them out, out of sheer ignorance," said the former teacher.
Many of Rwanda's so-called "genocidaires" have admitted to having done wrong, to the barbaric nature of their crimes, because without those admissions, their sentences would not be commuted and they would be on death row.