Many people who will read this article have heard about the movie with that title.
Many may have not only heard about it but watched it too.
I still recall the deep
indescribable emotions that overwhelmed me the first time I saw the movie. I had
earlier seen “Hotel Rwanda” before it
and later, I also saw “Shooting Dogs”.
They taught me a lot about life and people. They taught me about what hatred could
cause and the capacity of the human heart to perpetrate evil. I knew then man
could commit any conceivable evil, no matter how atrocious. It can be
considered and can equally be executed.
The Rwandan genocide is one of the heaviest moments in human history.Never will such
evil be allowed to happen again.
We in this part of the world cannot really understand what
actually happened in Rwanda within those 100 days. Only a Rwandan genocide
survivor can explain and most times, it’s never the best story to tell or the
best memory to call up but, it has to be called up-at least nationally-once a
year to help build a solid future devoid of hate and any likelihood of a
repeat.
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| Two 20-year-olds carry the Kwibuka Flame as it arrived in Midlands, UK. The Flame started in London, then Oxford, Reading and Coventry |
How does it feel when ones neighbors and friends suddenly
rush into your compound, armed with knives, clubs and other dangerous weapons
and begin to cut down their longtime friends? Ever imagined a man picking up a matchet
against his wife and club her to death, because she is from another ethnic group?
And another rude shock is when some of those killers were woman, killing their
fellow women and their children. How does it sound that parents abandon their
kids because they were fathered by a man from the rival tribe?
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| Matching in commemoration |
Rape was used as a war instrument against the Tutsi women.
The Hutus were charged to rape the Tutsi women in the most ignominious manner
that left many of them totally devastated.Many grown up women who livedthrough the genocide had SOME bad experience to tell. Between 250,000 - 500,000 women were raped.
The militiamen released hundreds of prisoners suffering from AIDS and used them
deliberately to infect the Tutsi women by raping them such that today,
thousands of them are HIV positive, many children born by newly infected
mothers from rape and not knowing their true father. Add this to the trauma of
the mother recalling how her child was conceived and having to live with the
reality for decades.
The movies tried a lot to depict what might have happened but
no matter how they tried, they couldn’t show the actual atrocities and how it
was done in Rwanda. Much of what you see that brought tears to your eyes, were
some soft core wickedness compared to what real people experienced in 1994.
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| St John's Catholic church,Kibuye.More than 11,000 people | killed here |
A Roman
Catholic missionary would be quoted in Time magazine as saying that:
"There are no devils left in Hell. They are all in Rwanda."
No evil is impossible to conceive in the mind of men the
reverse is also the case-that man is capable of carrying out every good action
that his mind can conceive.
It was estimated that during this period of
terrible slaughter, more than 6 men, women and children
were murdered every minute of every hour of every day.
This brutally efficient killing was maintained for more than 3 months. None-stop and by
the time the RPF took over the country in July, more than 800,000 people were
dead.
But how did it all start? What actually caused the genocide in the first place?
In brief, the genocide began on April 7; 1994.On the 6th of April
1994 an airplane crash in 1994 carrying the presidents of Rwanda, Juvenal
Habyarimana, and Burundian president, Cyprian Ntaryamira provided a spark for
an organized campaign of violence against the Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians
across the country.
The entire country became a killing field. Approximately 800,000
Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered in a carefully organized program of
genocide over 100 days, making history as the quickest killing spree the world
has ever seen.
Approximately 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered in a
carefully organized program of genocide over 100 days, making history as the
quickest killing spree the world has ever seen. But the death
of the president was by no means the only cause of Africa's largest genocide
in modern times.
Ethnic tension in Rwanda is nothing new. There have
been always been disagreements between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis,
but the animosity between them has grown substantially since the colonial
period.
And so, as you read this, homes in Rwanda and Rwandans in diaspora are today,
April 6, preparing to commemorate the 22nd memorial of the 1994
genocide against the Tutsis by the Hutu led government. The following week is
regarded as a week of mourning by the country as families.
April 7 to July 14th,
is a period that every Rwandan recalls especially because it was a time, way
back that changed, their lives, changed their perception of about a lot of things,
left many of them deeply wounded and continually hurting, and impacted deeply
on the faith of thousands of them. The memorial is called Kwibuka.
A statement from Kwibuka website reads,”Kwibuka
means ‘remember’ in Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s language. It describes the annual
commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
More than one million Rwandans died in the hundred days of the genocide. It
was one of human history’s darkest times. Twenty years later we, Rwanda, ask
the world to unite to remember the lives that were lost.
We ask the world to come together to support the survivors of the genocide,
and to ensure that such an atrocity can never happen again – in Rwanda or
elsewhere.
Kwibuka is a series of events taking place in Rwanda and around
the world. These events lead up to the national commemoration of the genocide
in Rwanda, which begins on 7 April 2016. The genocide began on 7 April 1994.”
You might be asking “why the memorial “? Or “Why should they remember such a
dark
Yes. You mow know why that movie was named “Sometimes In April’. The genocide,
one of the most barbaric, hellish, wicked and inhuman evil was perpetrated in that
small east African country, known as “The land of a Thousand Hills’ because of
its hilly terrain. A missionary describes it this way,’’
The 2016 commemoration will be marked under the theme “Let us commemorate
the Genocide against Tutsi fighting genocide ideology.”
The commemoration week will start on April 7 with lighting the flame of
remembrance at Kigali Genocide Memorial Site in Gismos. Talk sessions will be
held at a village level every afternoon. They will end on April 13 at Rebero
Memorial Site with the remembrance of politicians killed for opposing genocide.
However, commemoration activities will continue for 100 days – until July 3
– across the country.
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| Present day kigali:peaceful,clean and prosperous |
Rwanda has tried a lot to pull out of the ugly past and build a future full of hope and promises.It is very obvious and the people are optimistic and enthusiatic of achieving a future full of stability and sucess.
To read more about the genocide and the rememberance-KWIBUKA,check out below resources.
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Nyamata church where thousands were massacred. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13153982.Rwanda__20_years_after_the_genocide/
Statistics of the genocide
http://survivors-fund.org.uk/resources/rwandan-history/statistics/
Kwibuka
How It Happened
brief history of Rwanda
some survivors narrate ordeal
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/29/rwanda.chrismcgreal
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