- Thirty years after the genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda, new mass graves are still being discovered.
- At least 1,000 bodies were found in a rural area in the Huiet district.
- Representatives from prominent genocide survivors’ organizations said the findings underscore the need to do more for true reconciliation.
The excavator’s hoe scrapes the brown soil, looking for fragments of human bone, which are often found. The women then wipe the bone fragments with their hands while others watch in solemn silence.
It’s a familiar sight in the lush rural countryside of southern Rwanda, but drilling continues. The discovery in October of human remains on the site of a house under construction sparked a further search for a new mass grave where victims of the attack are believed to be buried. The 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda.
In the months since, Rwandan authorities have announced that at least 1,000 bodies have been discovered in this rural area of Huie district, the result of the government’s 30-year effort to give dignified burials to genocide victims. is a surprising number.
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As Rwanda prepares to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the genocide next week, the discovery of a spate of mass graves underscores not only the country’s determination to come to terms with its tragic past, but also the challenges it faces in its quest for lasting peace. It’s a stark reminder.
Children play on the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda, on April 4, 2024. Thirty years after an estimated 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists in a genocide that lasted more than 100 days, new mass graves are still being discovered in Rwanda. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
Representatives from prominent genocide survivors’ organizations and several other Rwandans told The Associated Press that the findings underscore the need to do more for true reconciliation. .
Rwanda has made it a crime to withhold information about previously unknown mass graves. For years, the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, including those who served time and were released, have been urged to speak out and tell what they know.
However, mass graves are still mostly discovered by accident, resulting in new arrests and re-traumatization of survivors.
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The discovery in October led to the arrest of Jean-Baptiste Hishamunda, 87, and four of his relatives.
After six bodies were discovered under his home, excavators began combing his entire property, discovering dozens and then hundreds of bodies as the search extended to other parts of Hue. .
An estimated 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists in a genocide that lasted more than 100 days in 1994. Some moderate Hutus who sought to protect members of the Tutsi minority were also targeted.
The genocide began on April 6, when a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana, a member of the Hutu majority, was shot down in the capital, Kigali. The Tutsi were accused of shooting down the plane and killing the president. Enraged groups of Hutu extremists, supported by the military and police, began killing Tutsis.
The government of President Paul Kagame, who has ruled the East African country since 1994, has sought to erase ethnic divisions as rebels halted the genocide.
The government has imposed tough criminal laws to punish the genocide and outlaw the ideology behind it, and Kagame has fostered a culture of submission among the country’s 14 million people. Rwandan ID cards no longer identify individuals by ethnicity, and lessons about the genocide are part of the school curriculum.
Hundreds of community projects supported by government and civil society organizations focus on uniting Rwandans, and each April the country participates in solemn commemorations of Genocide Remembrance Day.
Today, serious crimes fueled by ethnic hatred are rare in this small country, where Hutu, Tutsi and Twa people coexist, but authorities have shown that genocidal ideologies have been used as an example, with the suppression of information about undiscovered mass graves. There are still signs that it is.
Naftar Ashakye, executive director of Ibuka, a Kigali-based genocide survivors group, said villagers later told mass grave investigators that they were searching for valuable minerals or that they had placed the dog’s carcass at the monument. There have also been incidents where people have asked if they have thrown away their belongings.
“It’s like saying, ‘What we lost in the massacre was a dog,'” Ashakye said.
There are still people who are reluctant to come forward with what they witnessed, he said. “We still need to improve, teach and reach out to people until they can tell us what happened.”
As more mass graves are discovered, Tutsi survivors are “beginning to doubt” the good intentions of their Hutu neighbors, he said. Their pleas for information about relatives lost in the killings went unanswered.
In the village of Ngoma, where lush farmland is dotted with corrugated-roofed shacks, miners find rotten shoes and bits of torn clothing among skulls and bones. Those who survive are re-traumatized.
“I’ve tried so hard to forget,” Beata Mujawayes said in a trembling voice as she recalled the April 25, 1994, murder of her 12-year-old sister at a barricade.
The girl knelt in front of the gang leader, who she addressed as “my father,” and begged the militiamen for her life. She was slashed with a machete.
“She was a lovely girl,” Mujawayes said of her sister on a recent afternoon as she watched the exhumation of a mass grave in the Tutsi-majority district. “One day, hopefully, we’ll find out where she was buried.”
Another Ngoma survivor, Augustin Nsengiyumba, said the discovery of new mass graves had disappointed his Hutu neighbors who had placed their trust in him.
“Imagine sleeping on top of the victims of a genocide,” he said, referring to cases where bodies were found under people’s houses. “These are things I really don’t understand.”
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Young people are less troubled by the past. Some Rwandans see this as an opportunity for reconciliation in a country where all citizens are under 30.
In Gahanga, a semi-rural area on the outskirts of Kigali, farmer Patrick Hakizimana says he sees in his children a glimmer of hope that Rwanda will one day find ethnic harmony.
Hakizimana, an ethnic Hutu who was an army corporal at the time of the genocide, was imprisoned from 1996 to 2007 on suspicion of involvement in the killings. He learned his lesson and is now trying to earn the respect of his neighbors, he said.
“There are people who still harbor hatred towards Tutsis,” he said. “The genocide has been in the making for a long time.”
He says it will take a long time for people to forget that hatred.
