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Bush tours genocide memorial
19/02/2008 13:54 - (SA)
Kigali - United States President George W Bush on Tuesday toured a memorial to the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, saying the horrors remembered there showed the world that "evil must be confronted".
"It's a moving place that can't help, but shake your emotions to their very foundation," Bush declared after laying a wreath near a set of mass graves that memorial officials said held remains from 258 000 people.
He said: "It reminds me that we must not let these kinds of actions take place, and that the people of Rwanda need help to reconcile and move forward after a brutal period."
Bush, who had called the violence in Sudan's Darfur region "genocide", was to announce later that he was making $100m available to help train and equip African peacekeepers, including 12 million for Rwanda.
800 000 people slaughtered
With US First Lady Laura Bush at his side, the American president noted the memorial to "the horrors of the genocide that took place here," and invoked "God's blessings" on the survivors, especially children.
The 1994 genocide saw the slaughter of about 800 000 people, mostly from the Tutsi minority but some moderate Hutus, by Hutu extremist militias and government troops, according to United Nations figures.
Museum officials walked reporters past the displays that Bush was to see during his visit, including a darkened room with skulls and femurs in lighted glass cases and a devastating display on children killed in the violence.
Patrick Gashugli Shimirwa, a five-year-old with a striped t-shirt, smiled broadly from one of the large black and white photos of some of the genocide's youngest victims, above a plaque that described the life taken from him.
Bush hails memorial officials
Favourite sport: Riding his bicycle. Favourite food: Meat with fries and eggs. Best Friend: His sister, Alliane. Personality: Very calm, a well-behaved boy. Cause of death: Hacked apart with a machete, said the plaque.
Down the hall sat cases of rifles and machetes, a room filled with victims' photographs dangling from wires, and tributes to other large-scale massacres, including the Holocaust and Cambodia's Killing Fields.
The US president thanked memorial officials "for putting on such an exhibit to remind people that there is evil in the world and evil must be confronted".
Bush was later to meet with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, the third stop on a five country tour that had taken the US president to Benin, and Tanzania, and would see him travel to Ghana and Liberia as well.
The new US peacekeeping funds would also go to Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, Burkina Faso and Malawi, said White House spokesperson Dana Perino.
Bush's visit to Rwanda came 10 years after predecessor Bill Clinton, US president at the time of the genocide, travelled here to apologise for not doing enough to halt the violence.
- AFP
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