Nyaruguru District commemorates the 1994 genocide at the very place where the first Tutsi was murdered in the District

Over 500 residents (plus some neighbours and friends) of Ruramba village in Ruramba cell of Ruramba sector in Nyaruguru district, Southern Rwanda, on Sunday gathered in Ruramba village as the whole of Rwanda launched the 19th commemorate the 1994 Genocide against. People laid flowers on mass graves at Ruramba Genocide memorial site where 321 dead bodies have been decently buried.

It’s in Ruramba sector where the first Tutsi across Nyaruguru district was killed on April 7, 1994.

The mourners − in their grey-colored scarves, among other grey-colored clothes – keenly listened to soft songs, poems and speeches – the core message of all of which was rotating around the brutality with which Tutsis were killed during the Genocide and how Genocide survivors have so far managed to carry on moving forward with hope.

And for the first time, grey has replaced purple as the national color as a symbol of remembering the Genocide, with grey alluding to the traditional way of mourning the dead using ashes.

“Within the first days [of the Genocide], Tutsis including my father [late Gasimba] offered their cows to the killers in exchange for their lives”, recalls Valens Ngendahayo, one of the Genocide survivors in Ruramba sector.

“After eating them [cows] up, they [killers] could come back and finish you off. That’s how people including my father got killed”, Ngendahayo, by then a second-year primary school student, added, his voice tone changing with sadness as if he were about to sob.

“But today I have hope to carry on living. And that’s how I have managed to complete my primary and secondary education and I am now an employee at Sacco [a savings and credit cooperative] Ruramba. And I even plan to go to university someday”, said Ndendahayo, closing his testimony.

Bertin Muhizi, head of IBUKA (an umbrella organisation of Genocide survivors) in Nyaruguru district, also did hint at Ngendahayo’s hope message.

“Let’s keep collaborating, having hope and building for a bright future”, said Muhizi, who also thanked the then RPA (Rwandese Patriotic Army), now the Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF), for halting the Genocide.

Over 200 extra remains of those killed during the Genocide have so far been recovered throughout Nyaruguru district, said Muhizi, calling the district officials to arrange for their “decent burial”.

To this, Nyaruguru district Mayor, François Habitegeko, responded that a sum of Rwf 100,000 (about $160) has been earmarked for that particular purpose plus revamping the existing Genocide memorial sites across Nyaruguru, and construction activities, the Mayor said, are set to begin before the end of this year.

Sunday’s ceremony in Ruramba village to mark the week-long Genocide commemoration also took place in Rwanda’s 14, 873 villages, including Ruramba village itself. And the commemoration theme for this year’s 19th anniversary of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi is: “Let’s commemorate the Genocide against Tutsi by striving self-reliance”.

And Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame hinted on that “self-reliance” while at Gisozi National Memorial Site on Sunday.

The Head of State said the commemoration period is an opportunity for Rwandans to look back to their Genocide history and see how far Rwandans have gone in rebuilding their country. He also said there is need for Rwandans themselves to write their history so that those who were still young and those who were born after the Genocide can grasp the repercussions of “bad politics” that led to the Genocide.

For a week, the national flag will be flying at half-mast and different commemoration activities like talks on how the 1994 Genocide was masterminded and on Genocide prevention will be held all across the country.

Such activities, including decent burials of recovered remains of those killed during the Genocide, are expected to carry on for a hundred days just in the memory of slightly over three months – from April to July 1994 – that the Genocide claimed over a million lives according to Rwanda’s official statistics or over 800,000 people according to the UN records.

Monday 8 April 2013

http://www.newsofrwanda.com/ibikorwa/17806/nyaruguru-district-commemorates-the-1994-genocide-at-the-very-place-where-the-first-tutsi-was-murdered-in-the-district/