They are well aware of many of Kagame’s atrocities (the 1990s had been the height of Kagame’s terror) but consciously whitewash Kagame’s image and paint Rwanda as a happy place.
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What we don’t understand is why, now that the full extent of Kagame and his RPF atrocities is known, it is still acceptable or even hip to worship and praise Paul Kagame,while it is (understandably) gauche to show any similar respect to Nazism and its head honchos.
© Survivors Editions
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by Nick Gordon
Excerpt from Sunday Express
The regime that slaughtered a million people was destroyed in 1994, but the nightmare didn’t end. With the Hutus beaten, the Tutsis are exacting revenge. Nick Gordon revisits the killing fields of Rwanda
It could, I suppose, be compared to eating a picnic outside Auschwitz. For a start we are not meant to be here. This is the Mutara, the forbidden zone of Rwanda – a desolate and treeless former game reserve in north-east of this homicidal little country that is off-limits to anyone but the army.. Anyway, Mutara or not, the photographer and I are sitting in a hired car in the only lay-by in Rwanda, tearing a baton of bread to shreds and trying not to be too conspicuous as we observe the buildings on the hill half a mile away.
The three primitive one-story barrack blocks, one with its roof being repaired, are basic shelters for the men at the Gabiro army camp. It all looks devastatingly innocent, a complex that may be an affront to the classic rolling African skyline, but no more than that.
There are no tell-tale chimneys, no railway lines leading into the restricted area. Indeed, as I munch my bread and wait for the photographer to snatch his picture, it is hard to believe that this dot on the map is an extermination camp.
But then belief, cognition, awakening to evil, call it what you will, has never come easily in Rwanda. Two years ago, the Hutu-led genocide of the Tutsi tribe reached an unimaginably grisly climax. Up to a million people were hacked, kicked, stoned, grenaded, even skewered to death.
When peace came, with the murderers out of the country or in prison and a Tutsi-led government in control embracing all ethnic groups, who would have thought that there would be any appetite for further slaughter in Rwanda?
When peace came, with the murderers out of the country or in prison and a Tutsi-led government in control embracing all ethnic groups, who would have thought that there would be any appetite for further slaughter in Rwanda?
But appetite there is – with one profound difference. It is not the Tutsis who are being hunted down. The minority who were once their countrymen’s prey are now themselves the remorseless hunters.
What goes on inside Gabiro is truly revolting, and it is not an isolated example. All over the country since the new government took control, Hutus have been killed in Their thousands. Granted, the numbers do not yet approach the 1994 slaughter. But, according to former members of the new government, a figure of 100,000 men, women and children killed would not be an exaggeration.
This being Africa, we are not talking about a high-tech way of death courtesy of Zyklon-B gas canisters. The death that is dealt out in the Gabiro camp and elsewhere is a makeshift Third Word version where the victim is held down and has his skull dented by a hammer…
Pierre N is a frightened man. THis 25-year-old Hutu is telling me about the nine months he spent as a soldier in the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the former rebel force. Its commander, General Paul Kagame, is now Rwanda’s Vice-President, Minister of Defense and self-styled “Protector” – a Tutsi version of Oliver Cromwell.
Pierre N is a frightened man. THis 25-year-old Hutu is telling me about the nine months he spent as a soldier in the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the former rebel force. Its commander, General Paul Kagame, is now Rwanda’s Vice-President, Minister of Defense and self-styled “Protector” – a Tutsi version of Oliver Cromwell.
“I didn’t want to join either the government army or the rebels,” Pierre tells me at a secret rendezvous. “During the genocide I hid. I detest war. I was a medical student in my second year at university when the genocide began.
“I had nothing to do with the interahamwe death squads, or the Hutu militia, or the CDR (the old Hutu government’s thuggish redshirts). But because I was learning medecine, I was told I had no choice.”
He hands me a piece of paper, a certificate which shows he is a private in the RPA. It gives his name, rank and number.
I was based in Kigali (the capital of Rwanda). Soldiers kept coming up to me and asking me for a sick note. They were not wounded, or even ill with malaria. They just wanted an excuse, anything to get them off manpower duties.”
I was based in Kigali (the capital of Rwanda). Soldiers kept coming up to me and asking me for a sick note. They were not wounded, or even ill with malaria. They just wanted an excuse, anything to get them off manpower duties.”
I ask Pierre what he means by “manpower duties”. “Well, the officers would tell the men that there were ‘manpower problems’ and they should be ready to solve them. They would have to take prisoners to a house, tie their arms and legs, and then they took a hammer and they would hit them on the front bone.” Pierre taps his forehead, the frontal lobe. “And then they would burn the bodies. The stench was horrible.”
I ask him if he did it… used the hammer? He shakes his head. “No. I was a medic. But this house was nearby and I could smell the burning. A friend told me they killed 6,000 people in five days there.”
More than 1,000 a day? “Sometimes maybe 1,5000 to 2,000. But many times I signed those sick papers. The next month I was sent to Gabiro, to a training wing of the RPA. WE were there to learn to use guns, be a soldier.
“But one kilometre away there was another camp that had been built by the old government. This was a killing place manned by the DMI, the Diretorate of Military Intelligence.
“Every day on the road between our camp and their place I would see lorries, big trailers trucks carrying wood, and fuel tankers imported from Uganda. There were ‘manpower problems’ here, too, so many of my collegues were assigned to work with the DMI.
“Every day on the road between our camp and their place I would see lorries, big trailers trucks carrying wood, and fuel tankers imported from Uganda. There were ‘manpower problems’ here, too, so many of my collegues were assigned to work with the DMI.
It was the same method of killings as in Kigali. Every evening, at around six, they poured the paraffin on to huge piles of wood and got rid of the bodies that way. All day there was a bulldozer spreading the ashes into the soil. It was going on all the time for months. The smoke and the smell were horrible.
“I left this place, Gabiro, in April last year when I got permission to go back to university in Butare. When I got there I found the same thing happening. Hutus who had managed to flee from the Kibeho camp were taken to a military academy in the town, and a captain in the RPA told all of us students that we would be required to help out with a manpower problem.
“I knew then that I would have to do what I had been trying to avoid for the last nine months. I decided to desert, and I fled that night.”
“I knew then that I would have to do what I had been trying to avoid for the last nine months. I decided to desert, and I fled that night.”
Pierre is still in hiding, a seriously traumatised and frightened young man. Why did he risk talking to me? All I can say is that he had already made a far more courageous and dangerous choice: not to kill his fellow Rwandans.
Even in Nairobi, two plane hours from Kigali, one cannot escape the terror. Here, sitting in the shadows of a walled garden in a suburb of the Kenyan capital, two men are poring over page after page, name after name, of their countrymen.
These are the lists of the missing.
Until six months ago, these two men were among the most powerfull in Rwanda. They are Hutus, yet they played prominent roles in the revolution that ended the old Hutu regime. Seth Sendashonga was the Minister of Internal Affairs in the Tutsi-led Kagame government. Sixbert Musangamfura, a journalist when I met him in 1992, was Kagame’s director of civilian intelligence – boss of Rwanda’s MI5.
Until six months ago, these two men were among the most powerfull in Rwanda. They are Hutus, yet they played prominent roles in the revolution that ended the old Hutu regime. Seth Sendashonga was the Minister of Internal Affairs in the Tutsi-led Kagame government. Sixbert Musangamfura, a journalist when I met him in 1992, was Kagame’s director of civilian intelligence – boss of Rwanda’s MI5.
Both men were at the heart of the new government, heading particulary sensitive departments of state. Now they no longer live in Rwanda. They are viewed as deadly opponents of the governments, so much so that in February an attempt was made on Seth Sendashonga’ s live. Fortunately he was only slightly wounded – a bullet passed throught his right shoulder – but his nephew is still recovering from serious wounds in Nairobi hospital.
There is no doubt who sent the assassins. A Rwandan diplomat was arrested nearby, carrying a pistol. So why should Protector Kagame want to kill his former colleagues in the rebel movement and in government? “Because I and Sixbert know too much. We know there is a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing. We know they are attempting social engineering on a vast, murderous scale.”
Why? “First, to instill terror. Then to even up the population figures.. Look at the Rwandan equation: how can a minority tribe of 1+ million govern a country dominated by a tribe of enemies who outnumber them three to one?” He pauses, and looks back at their lists that litter the table and patio. “They want to make it Hutus 50 per cent, Tutsi 50 per cent,” he says. “But to do that they will have to kill a lot of hutus.”
Why? “First, to instill terror. Then to even up the population figures.. Look at the Rwandan equation: how can a minority tribe of 1+ million govern a country dominated by a tribe of enemies who outnumber them three to one?” He pauses, and looks back at their lists that litter the table and patio. “They want to make it Hutus 50 per cent, Tutsi 50 per cent,” he says. “But to do that they will have to kill a lot of hutus.”
“When I was in charge of civilian intelligence I started to make a list, “Sixbert adds. I had a network of informers, and soon saw that something bad was going on. By the time I left in August 1995, we had the confirmed names, dates and methods of killing of 100,000 people. But the killing still went on after I fled, and we are investigating the fates of another 200,000 people.” But hadn’t these people taken part in genocide?
“There are killings and killings,” says Seth. “I can understand revenge killing, when a soldier comes home and discovers that his family has been wiped out. But this is something far more repellent. I would call it “counter-genocide. “
Seth says that the killing began as soon as the new government took over. “I warned Colonel Charles Kayonga, who commanded the RPA battalion in Kigali, about the conduct of his troops. He said the RPA did not take prisoners. I was very shocked”.
Seth also warned General Kagame, but he did nothing. “I had been a member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front since 1991,” says Sendashonga. “I was a political interface between the army and politicians. I knew the people we would need in Rwanda was to recover, but many of these people were being got rid of. It seemed crazy, because our businessman were like businessman anywhere: they were not loyal to any party. Often they backed both sides.
“I had a good relationship with Kagame. Most people were scarred of him and told him what he wanted to hear, but I knew it was my duty to inform him about the killings. I wrote six memos to him with lists of names of the missing. I met him and expressed my concerns. He reassured us that something would be done. But the killings did not stop.” Seth describes what he went on whenever the RPA took more territory.
“People would be called to meetings where they would be given food. At the next meeting they would come in large numbers. Then the place would be surrounded and grenades thrown in. So many reports were similar, I realized these were not random killings. This was large-scale. It had to be planned.” “They were even making jokes about it,” says Sixbert. “Rwandans have two expressions – kwitaba imana and kwitaba inama. The first means to die naturally. The second, to go to a meeting. Now, they mean the same.”
Both men paint a dark picture of Rwanda after the civil war. Wherever the RPA went, the pattern was the same: meetings, killings, then burials or burning. So who were they killing? “Innocent people, largely,” says Seth. “The real killers, the leaders of the interahamwe, had fled across the border into Zaire or the camps in Tanzania.
“The people who were left were easy prey. Some of these killings take place in areas where there had been no genocide, so what was the excuse for them?” Despite Seth’s attempts to draw attention to the killings, they went on unabated. He and Sixbert realized there was no future for them in Rwanda. “We felt that we were going to be next,” says Sixbert. “It was ironic really, because I had opposed the last dictator here, President Habyarimana, and survived the interahamwe gangs by hiding in a sewer for over a week.
“I thought Kagame and the RPF would mean freedom for our country, but all he has brought is more oppression, more death.”
At the Milles Collines Hotel in Kigali, a solitary European businessman strokes his way through the Hockeney-blue swimming pool. It is very peaceful here, but the confidential document I am reading tells another story. Whoever compiled it has done a thorough job. It is unsigned, but that is no surprise, given what it contains.
It lists 174 sites where there are mass graves – such as Nyamabuye, where 20,000 are buried, and the veterinary college at Butare, where the bodies have been exhumed and moved to the Mutara. The document even pinpoints schools, military barracks and latrines.
Scratch the surface, the red earth of Rwanda, and you will, it appears, find one vast cemetery. The people who passed me the document know it will be hard to investigate. Many areas are no-fly zones. The government has exhumed graves, dried the skeletons and burned them. Some graves have been used more once: they contain bodies from both the first genocide and the counter-genocide. Often the people who have buried the dead, the creusers, are themselves killed so they cannot bear witness.
Jean Rudakubana, a judge who works for the Association for the Defense of Liberty in Rwanda, tells me that many people believe there could be a repeat of the slaughter of April 1994. “It could happen this April” – as a reminder.”
Rudakubana shows me a copy of a letter he has sent to the authorities. It reports that twice during November, a group of armed men tried to enter his house in the night. He identifies them as members of the army.
He says that every day he receives reports of “incidents”, but nothing comes out, such is the authorities’ grip on public information. And when some incident does escape censorship, it is explained away as an “anti-terrorist initiative”.
In Kigali there is triumphalism mixed with the doom. Triumphalism because it is tutsi Town now. Doom because their mind are intoxicated by the dark trauma of genocide. They continually talk about it, but it is not therapeutic. Hutus, they say, are murders, and should be wiped out. Away from Kigali, in Nyakinama, a man who refuses to give his name tells me that when the villagers see a soldier, they hide. They are afraid. They don’t want to have to bury the bodies. “What bodies?” I ask.
But he doesn’t want to speak to me any more. He is too frightened. This is the dangerously oppressive atmosphere that choked Sixbert Musangamfura and Seth Sendashonga. Now, they are committed to telling the world just what is going on in their country. They do not think it will be easy. After all, the West, particularly the media, took little interest in Rwanda before the genocide of 1994. No doubt it will choose to turn a blind eye to the present events. “People will say that because we are hutus we have no right to expose what is going on,” says Sixbert. “They will ignore the fact that we fought the old dictatorship, and were fortunate to survive the genocide ourselves.”
Seth Sendashonga says there is “a politically correct attitude to Rwanda. The tutsis are the small guys, the downtrodden tribe, who hold the moral high ground, and they can get away with murder. Literally”.
He is right, of course. It suits the world to think this way. Why dig up more graves, discover more trouble in a country which no one understands and which cannot solve its own problems anyway? But that will not stop Seth and Sixbert pressing for an international commission of inquiry.
Meanwhile, people live in fear, and hide when soldiers come for them to bury the bodies.
Sixbert Musangamfura and Seth Sendashonga held high office in Paul Kagame’s government, but have fled Rwanda to try to draw the world’s attention to “ethnic cleansing on a vast scale”. Seth, was hot in February but survived. Paul Kagame, leading the RPA to victory. Below: Now in power, he mourns the 1994 genocide – but his army is behind the current killings.
Sixbert Musangamfura and Seth Sendashonga held high office in Paul Kagame’s government, but have fled Rwanda to try to draw the world’s attention to “ethnic cleansing on a vast scale”. Seth, was hot in February but survived. Paul Kagame, leading the RPA to victory. Below: Now in power, he mourns the 1994 genocide – but his army is behind the current killings.
The Truth can be buried and stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a “time”, yet It cannot be destroyed. ==> Wolverine
The Truth can be buried and stomped into the ground where none can see, yet eventually it will, like a seed, break through the surface once again far more potent than ever, and Nothing can stop it. Truth can be suppressed for a time, yet It cannot be destroyed => Wolverine
