Kigali Genocide Memorial

The Kigali Genocide Memorial is a harrowing experience, but one which you cannot overlook if you are visiting the Rwandan capital. Over a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in just under 100 days in 1994, and the memorial that Claire and I visited was the burial place of over 200,000 of those victims. The memorial explained how the genocide came to be, starting with the divisions created by the colonial rule and ending with the actual act of genocide itself. Rwanda was an incredibly peaceful nation, with different tribes living side-by-side for many years until German and then to a larger extent Belgium colonialism drove a wedge between the Hutus and the Tutsis. This was then exploited through propaganda eventually leading to mass killings that saw a huge portion of the nation’s population murdered, many by people they considered friends.

As we entered we were welcomed at the reception and paid for the optional audio tour to listen to as we made our way around. We were then ushered into a room with a handful of other visitors to watch the introductory video. The video saw survivors of the genocide telling their stories, all of which were tragic. It was hard to watch, and set the tone for the rest of the museum. After the introductory video we made our way into the museum itself. The first part was dedicated to describing the nation before colonialism. A peaceful place where the different tribes lived side-by-side and even spoke the same language. Rwanda was rare in this instance, however, it wasn’t to last much longer.

The next part of the exhibition focused on the impacts of colonialism. Germans were the first to colonise the nation and after the First World War, it moved into the hands of the Belgians. It was the Belgians that carried out intensive studies into the difference between the two tribes, measuring facial features and essentially highlighting the ways in which the Hutus and the Tutsis were different. The Tutsis, it seemed, had larger skull sizes – which meant the Belgians thought they had larger brains – and they were also taller with paler skin, making the Belgians think that they may have had Caucasian ancestry. The colonialists therefore thought that the Tutsis were superior and the majority of the political power was handed to them, who were in the minority. The Belgians also introduced identity cards that were required to feature the person’s tribe, which later made it very easy for the genocidaires to carry out their massacres with ease.

The old tactic of divide and conquer was utilised by the Belgians to help them rule the nation and it drove a dangerous wedge between the two tribes, which would later be exploited by the hate fuelled few who instigated the horrors of 1994. The colonialists were most certainly not fully to blame, but they do share a huge portion of the responsibility for creating the issues that lead to the Rwandan genocide. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant novel Half of a Yellow Sun, about the Biafra war in Nigeria, may be about a different set of circumstances, but one line is very apt – ‘They [British colonialists] may have collected the firewood, but we [the Nigerians] lit the match’. It was the work of the Belgians that created the platform upon which the genocidaires could build their campaign of hatred and violence.

After reading about the history of the nation we then went through a number of stages that focused on the horror of the genocide itself. Some of the imagery was graphic and hammered home the true terror of the situation. We were presented with video testimonies from people as they explained how people they had once considered friends were suddenly murdering their relatives. We also heard how the UN failed in its mission to help keep the peace as not enough resources were offered to help the mission which was clearly flawed from the start. It still baffles me as to why the UN decided to send anyone. If they weren’t willing to send a force strong enough to keep the peace then there was no point in being there at all.

There was also a part of the exhibition that was dedicated to the heroes of the genocide. The people who risked their own safety in order to save the lives of potential victims. There were many heart-warming stories of Hutus hiding Tutsis in order to protect them from the Interahamwe – the militia behind the violence. I cannot remember all of them but I did jot down the name of one man, called Froduald Karuhije. This man was a Hutu and built houses for a living. During the genocide Froduald and his family bravely hid fourteen refugees in their garden in a specifically dug trench. He then laid wooden beams across the top, covered it in soil and planted vegetables in the soil to disguise the hiding place. His family would sneak food supplies to the refugees under the cover of darkness in order to avoid being seen. Just like the Germans who hid Jews during the Holocaust, Froduald performed this act of kindness and heroism safe in the knowledge that if he was caught, he would most certainly have been killed. This restored my faith in humanity, which was almost completely eroded from the museum so far.

Claire and I were then presented with the part of the museum that was dedicated to the victims of the genocide. There was one room with photographs hung from the walls. Thousands of pictures of happy, smiling Rwandans, all of whom were subsequently killed. The next room was filled with bones of some of the victims – skulls and an assortment of other bones were laid out in display cases. This room was particularly difficulty to walk through. The final room in this section had hanging clothes that were being worn by some victims on the day they died.

The next stage of the museum was focused on the way Rwanda dealt with the perpetrators once the genocide was over and the rebels had won the war. Hundreds of thousands of people had committed the atrocities and whilst many had fled to the Congo, thanks to France’s incredibly unhelpful interference in the genocide which essentially created a corridor for the Interahamwe members to flee once the war looked as good as lost, many others were still in Rwanda. Whilst those who were responsible for the genocide as a whole were to be jailed for incredibly long times, it was impossible to jail literally everyone who had murdered during those horrible 100 days. Therefore, many people who confessed their crimes were given reduced sentences and some were given community service as punishment, allowing them to help rebuild the broken nation. Many are now living back in the community, side-by-side with survivors.

Rwanda was slowly reunited in the following years despite some attempts by members of the Interahamwe who were still at large to continue killing. There was one instance that really stood out for me, when a massacre was attempted at the Nyange Secondary School in the west of Rwanda near the border with Congo. On March 18^th 1997 three men wielding machetes – the weapon of choice during the genocide – as well as guns and grenades, entered a classroom full of students. Phanuel Sindayiheda was a student in the class that day. He said that the men entered the room and one of them said: “I want you to help me, to facilitate me to do my job. I want Hutus in this room on the right, and I know we have Tutsis here, so Tutsis go on the left.” According to Phanuel this command was met with a ‘deathly silence’ before the man asked again. After the second time the command was issued a girl, called Chantal Uwamahoro, replied saying: “We do not have Hutus or Tutsis here, we are Rwandans.” The three men apparently then left the room, threw in smoke grenades to intimidate the children and entered when the smoke had cleared issuing their demands a third time. This time a boy responded. Sylvestre Bizimana said: “We have already told you, we are not Hutus or Tutsis, we are Rwandans.” Angered, the three men pulled out their guns and began indiscriminately firing on the students. Six were killed before the men left. These six students are remembered every year on the 1^st February on Heroes Day. These weren’t soldiers or politicians, they were just children at school and this story really hit me as I couldn’t believe the bravery and unity showed by these teenagers despite the fact that they were in grave danger.

There was one part of the genocide museum that took the focus away from Rwanda and touched on other genocides that had taken place in the last few centuries. This was to emphasise that these situations took place all over the world, drawing similarities from each other. A large part was dedicated to the Holocaust and others that were covered included the Cambodian genocide, the Bosnian genocide, the Namibian genocide (where German colonialists slaughtered thousands of Namibians), the Bosnian genocide and the genocide committed by the Turks, where they killed a large number of Armenians. I knew very little of the last genocide on this list but it left many Armenians fleeing across Europe as refugees. Britain accepted a mere 200 Armenians in their time of need, with France taking in 63,000.  It is also worth mentioning that the UK and the US have both refused to recognise what happened to the Armenians as ‘Genocide’, a fact that is completely baffling.

The final room of the museum was most probably the hardest of all. It was dedicated to all of the children who had died in the genocide. There were giant pictures of children on the walls accompanied by their names, their favourite foods, hobbies and the way in which they were killed. It was traumatising to walk through that room, looking at their smiling faces and reading how they liked to spend their time when they were alive. Whether their hobbies were playing with their siblings, singing or jogging with their dad, it was these snippets about their lives before the genocide that was truly humbling.