Remembering the Rwandan Genocide

Coming into Rwanda for the second time, I remembered what I had thought the first time I came – that the country and its people have come so far since the horrific genocide in 1994. The human spirit here is incredible although the scars both physical and mental would still run deep.

It was my second visit to the Genocide Museum and I was just as affected as the first, however, this timeI wrote down excerpts from the walls that both moved and disturbed me.

One such excerpt was that as early as 1990, Kangura, one of the propaganda newspapers, published the Hutu Ten Commandments, stating that any Hutu associating with or carrying out any business with Tutsi neighbours and friends was a traitor.

Another was that Hutu radicals dehumanised the Tutsi by calling them ‘inyenzi’ meaning cockroach, had a pre-prepared death list and promised an apocalypse.“Genocide was instant… Rwanda had turned into a nation of brutal, sadistic merciless killers and of innocent victims overnight…Neighbours turned on neighbours, friends on friends…even family on their own family members.” They used machetes, clubs, guns and any blunt tool to inflict as much pain on their victims as possible.

Over a million people died. “Many families had been totally wiped out, with no one to remember or to document their deaths. The streets were littered with corpses. Dogs were eating the rotting flesh of their owners. The county smelt of the stench of death. The genocidaires had been more successful in their evil aims than anyone would have dared to believe. Rwanda was dead.”

The videos were the most moving as I remembered from last time as was the kids’ room remembering the kids killed in the genocide. It lists facts such as their name, age, mannerisms, behaviour, favourite food, etc. followed by the brutal manner in which they were killed. The tombstones in the gardens are also a reminder of the lives lost along with a wall into which the names of victims they have been able to gather so far have been engraved.

The country and its people really have come a long way since those horrific days. As stated in the Museum, “It is impossible for us to forget the past. It is also extremely painful to remember… We need to learn about the past…we also need to learn from it.”