'Tired bones' should be buried

2004-03-23 15:44

Murambi, Rwanda - In the run up to the 10th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, controversy still surrounds the fate of the remains of the victims.

Should they now be given a decent burial or left on display lest the horrors of the genocide be forgotten?

For human bones are on display in their tens of thousands in the numerous memorials scattered across the country to commemorate the genocide that was minutely planned and carried out by the Hutu extremists in power at that time - an organised slaughter in which, Kigali says, one million people were killed.

Some survivors, who lost family members ten years ago, particularly those living outside the country, think it is high time the remains of their relatives were given a decent burial.

"The bones are tired; they need to be able to rest now," said a survivor living in exile in London and who asked not to be identified.

"Bury these people!" is one comment that appears in the visitors' book at Murambi - in the southwestern province of Gikongoro - a school turned genocide memorial that is filled with row upon row of skeletons frozen in the position in which they were killed, their arms raised in an attempt to fend off a mortal machete blow.

But increasingly, survivors living in Rwanda, faced with the keenness of some of their fellow citizens to forget all about the genocide, feel that the bones should remain on display. To bury them, they say, would be to destroy the most tangible and the most powerful proof that genocide took place in Rwanda.

Forty-eight-year-old Emmanuel Murangira, the caretaker at Murambi memorial, is categorical.

"I couldn't accept their being buried. I would rather they be kept like that but displayed in a better way", he said.

'Glass-topped grave'

Emmanuel, who has a bullet hole in his forehead, lost almost all of his family in the killings at Murambi.

"Sometimes when you tell people that there was a genocide in Rwanda, they don't want to accept it. It's better to be able to show the bones to those who are disbelievers," he said.

For Murambi memorial a compromise solution has been found - the bones will be buried underground in a glass-topped crypt.

"That way the people are buried and yet they are still on display - it's a compromise," said Apollon Kabahizi of Aegis Trust, an NGO working to transform some of the country's genocide memorials into fully-fledged museums.

"It's a very delicate subject and one has to do what the survivors want," said Jean Paul Pinvidic, programme co-ordinator at RCN Justice and Democracy, an NGO that supports Rwanda's legal system.

He went on to say that it might be easier for survivors to mourn if the remains of their loved ones were buried.

"As a general rule there are two factors that help people in their mourning: one is the trial (of the killers) and the other is the tomb," he said.

"There are other perfectly good ways of ensuring that people remember," said Alison Des Forges, a Rwanda specialist and senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, adding: "There are museums and there are memorials without bones."

- AFP