30 years after a genocide in Rwanda
Painful memories run deep during the anniversary
KIGALI, Rwanda — When the marauding militia members arrived at her door on that morning in April 1994, Florence Mukantaganda knew there was nowhere to run.
It was only three days into the devastating 100-day genocide in Rwanda, when militia members rampaged through the streets and people’s homes in a bloodshed that forever upended life in the Central African nation. As the men entered her home, Mukantaganda said, her husband, a preacher, prayed for her and their two small children and furtively told her where he had hidden some money in case she survived.
He then said his final words to her before he was hacked to death with a hoe.
“He told me, ‘When they come for you, you have to be strong; you have to die strong,’ ” Mukantaganda, 53, recalled on a recent morning at her home in Kabuga, a small town about 10 miles east of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. “There was nothing we could do but wait for our time to die.”
The agony of those harrowing days loomed large for many Sunday as Rwanda marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide in which extremists from the country’s ethnic Hutu majority killed some 800,000 people — most of them ethnic Tutsis — using machetes, clubs, and guns.
“Our journey has been long and tough,” President Paul Kagame said Sunday at a ceremony at an indoor arena. “Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss, and the lessons we learned are engraved in blood.”
Representatives from regional and global institutions including the African Union, the European Union, and the United Nations were present at the ceremony, as well as ministerial delegations and current and former leaders from some 60 nations.
Those included Bill Clinton, who was president of the United States at the time of the genocide and has acknowledged America’s failure to swiftly stop the bloodshed. President Emmanuel Macron of France, who did not attend the event but has in recent years talked of France’s role in the genocide, released a video urging the continued study of the past. His statement stopped short of what his office had promised last week, when it said that he aimed to say France and its allies had lacked the will to halt the slaughter.
The daylong event in Kigali included the lighting of a remembrance flame, a night vigil, and a wreath-laying ceremony at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, which is the final resting place for the remains of more than 250,000 victims of the slaughter.
For many, the event was a reminder of the horror that began after a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down. While those responsible for the crash were never identified, the Hutu-led government blamed it on Tutsi rebels and immediately began a campaign of systematic killing.
The rebels, led by Kagame, said the Hutu extremists downed the plane as a pretext for genocide.
In interviews with a dozen survivors across Rwanda in the two days preceding the commemoration Sunday, many spoke about the paroxysm of violence that gripped this lush, landlocked nation. They spoke about the horrors they endured for more than three months as their towns and villages became giant killing fields. Many remembered how they fled their homes and hid in bushes and forests, churches and mosques, in coffins and closets, only to be found and forced to flee again.
One man, Hussein Twagiramungu, spoke about hearing his mother calling out his name as her killers hacked her to death. Velene Kankwanzi said she had survived by lying still, pretending to be dead, among relatives killed by militias. She said she had heard the men saying that they should take a break because their “hands are tired” from all of the killing. Rashid Bagabo recalled how his own hands went numb as he and five others buried some 300 people.
The commemoration event in Kigali will also be a testament to the power of Kagame, whose governing Rwandan Patriotic Front party ended the genocide. Kagame has led Rwanda since then and has transformed his nation from a byword for genocidal violence to an African success story.