Lest we forget
2004-04-14 14:16
Kigali - It is Sunday and rain has been pouring down since early morning in Kigali. There is mud everywhere. It streams down the green mountainside between shabby houses nestled around banana plantations, right down into the valley.
The St Famille church in downtown Kiyovu is jam-packed. People are squashed on wooden benches and shuffle to the front one after the other to receive the host from a white Belgian priest.
Nothing appears to have changed.
The church, dating from 1913, had been the scene of a bloody massacre in April 1994. More than three thousand people had been trapped there and hacked, and shot to death. Similarly in many other churches, men, women and children who had sheltered there had been at the mercy of their murders.
"The priest hid the people. But when the Interhamwe (Hutu murderers) came he told them, take that one and that one," says Ladislas. At first he was hesitant to talk to me, but then agreed on condition I did not mention his full name.
Ladislas sells wooden crosses, statuettes of Christ and wooden beads in a stall adjacent to the church.
"They dragged the people from the church and murdered them outside," he says.
Then it is deathly quiet
One wonders how people can find it in them to attend church after priests had betrayed them thus. Have they forgotten and forgiven?
Ladislas had been one of the few to escape. One feels slightly embarrassed asking him to relate his story.
"It's okay. Talking helps to dislodge things, because at night, when one is sleeping, it all comes back." And yes, he still attends church. "Please remember, a priest who betrayed people to the Interhamwe, is not the church. The church is the Word of God."
Most people living in Kigali are Hutu. In 1994 they had been on the other side of the fence, yet, today they all sit next to each other peacefully in church.
The tenth anniversary of the genocide has once again brought memories of those events in the open.
But has reconciliation truly been achieved among ordinary people? A taxi driver had warned earlier: "You have to realise the genocide is commemorated each year. Then the streets are deathly quiet. Then most people do not dare venture on the streets."
For the ordinary Rwandan the words 'Hutu' and 'Tutsi' are taboo. Explanations to foreigners are done with the utmost circumspection. For many Tutsis and moderate Hutus who had been victims, reconciliation is a mirage.
There are concerns that Hutu groupings might deny the genocide or the existence of victims in a year or two - similar to denials in certain European circles that six million Jews had died in concentration camps during World War 2.
Like lice and ants
Tatiana Gitinakazi is chair of the Association for Widows of the Genocide (Avega) in Butare, about three hours down a winding road south of Kigali.
In this bustling town, ten years later, people have resumed their lives.
"We can't lock people away in jail for ever. There have to be ways to dispel these feelings of vengeance," says Gitinakazi in the small Avega office from where widows are aided to become financially independent.
In the adjacent room two women are sewing on sewing machines. The 400-odd Avenga members in the Butare area receive help from welfare organisations to run self-help projects. The Rwandan government, following the genocide, had allocated five percent of its budget to orphans. The women on the other hand, have to fend for themselves.
'We are furious'
"We were dumbstruck after the genocide, as if we had died. But now we have to face the future," says Gitinakazi. Her colleague, Symphrose Mukamazimpaka, disagrees with her. "We are furious. We cannot accept what has happened."
She finds it totally unacceptable that people should be released from prison, if they agree to appear before the gacacas (local courts) and admit guilt.
"People should be punished. Otherwise they will still regard sections of the population as lice and ants," she adds, clearly in an emotional state.
Gitinakazi tries to calm down emotions. "Things are much more complicated than that."
Another woman joins us. She relates how she had to pretend to be Hutu, joining the attackers for a time on the march during the massacre. She is the only member of her family who survived the terrible Murambi massacre.
In Rwanda, Murambi is synonymous with 'mass murder' and it has become one of the most important sites visited by those who want to try and understand what had happened here ten years ago.
"My wife, my children'
In what was once Murambi Technical School, on a hill facing Butare, the evidence of Rwanda's darkest hours are preserved in 24 brick buildings.
"Look. Go inside," the guide, Emmanuelle Murangira invites.
Tightly packed together, the white skeletons lie next to each other. Some have their arms bound behind their backs; most skulls have holes on one side, some are horribly mutilated by the pangas and cudgels of their attackers; there are children and adults ...
Following the genocide, the Rwandan government had decided to leave certain locations untouched - with skeletons - lest anybody forgets. To keep the memories alive.
"There are 24 rooms. We plan on converting it into a museum, but it is not ready yet," says Murangira.
He also miraculously escaped from the murderers' clutches. "I hid for three days and then walked over the border into Burundi."
"Do you want to see more?" he asks reticently, shutting and locking the wooden doors.
On cannot help asking: What is he doing here? Why is he in this place of horror, offering to guide visitors through it?
"My wife is here. My five children. I was not able to identify them. But I know they are here somewhere - I'm close to them."