![]() For them, it was their second experience of such chaos. On April 7, I heard people screaming on the hills that surrounded our area. Rwandan families get food at a Red Cross Centre in Kabgayi on Journalists from Radio Rwanda told people to stay at home until given further instructions. By the following morning, people were being stopped at them by both the army and armed fighters and asked for their ID. Roadblocks were put in place within minutes of the crash. On April 6, the plane carrying the president, Juvenal Habyarimana, was shot down killing him and all the others on board. I remember RTLM broadcasting that something big was going to happen and that the National Army should be on standby to protect the country. My last memories from before the genocide are of my family preparing for Easter.Įaster was on April 3. Everything from getting a job to your freedom of movement was linked to your ID, which stated your ethnic group.Īs a young boy, my life consisted of school then home and church on Sundays. The dehumanisation of the Tutsis began in the years before 1994. Now that I have children myself, I realise how difficult it is if you have no hope. I was scared by what I saw in my parents. These youth movements were key to executing the genocide.Īs a child I was scared. P olitical slogans were translated into song and young people were mobilised into youth movements. The songs would openly call for our extermination. I remember RTLM broadcasting songs conveying hatred and demonising the Tutsi. We listened to learn – to know what was developing. RTLM, on the other hand, was directly propagandistic. ![]() There were some radical journalists at Radio Rwanda, but there was still a degree of moderation. There was Radio Rwanda, the national radio station which was controlled by the government, and a few other radio stations that could be heard by short wave. ![]() We had very few radio stations before then. When some of us said we did not know, our teacher asked us to come back the next day with an answer. One of my first experiences at school was being asked what ethnic group I belonged to. ![]() A response like “I don’t belong to any party” could easily be interpreted as support for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was fighting the government. But my parents did not join any party.Īs the political turmoil evolved, this recruitment process became an indirect way of mapping the political affiliation of Tutsi families. People from different political parties came to our home and asked: What party do you belong to? The desire to know where each one belonged was so important. When the multi-party system started in Rwanda in 1991, new parties started to recruit members. But I remember my family and friends being targeted by the government from as early as 1990. I was 11 years old when the genocide against the Tutsis started in April 1994. My father was a secondary school teacher and my mother a primary school teacher. My family lived in Kabgayi, a town 60km south of the capital Kigali that is well known for its Catholic cathedral, school and hospital. Survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi, (from left to right) Claver Irakoze, Beatrice Uwera and Honore Gatera Claver Irakoze: ‘We prayed to die softly’ Here, three survivors share their stories and reflect upon the significance of Kabuga’s arrest. In 1997, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), an international court established by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to judge people responsible for the genocide, indicted Kabuga on seven criminal charges including genocide. Once the genocide started, the station broadcast the names of people to be killed and information about where they could be found. Kabuga, once one of the wealthiest men in Rwanda, was the co-founder and funder of Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), a station established in 1993 that regularly called Tutsis “cockroaches” and encouraged people to “cut down the tall trees”, in reference to Tutsis. When Felicien Kabuga, an 84-year-old former businessman from Rwanda, was arrested in France on May 16, the world was reminded of one of the darkest chapters in recent history.ĭuring 100 days in 1994, at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
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