Kigali:

Rwandans will on Sunday mark 30 years since a genocide orchestrated by Hutu extremists tore apart their country, as neighbours turned on each other in one of the bloodiest massacres of the 20th century.

The killing spree, which lasted 100 days before the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel militia took Kigali in July 1994, claimed the lives of around 800,000 people, largely Tutsis but also moderate Hutus.

The tiny nation has since found its footing under the iron-fisted rule of President Paul Kagame, who led the RPF, but the scars of the violence remain, leaving a trail of destruction across Africa’s Great Lakes region.

In keeping with tradition, April 7 — the day Hutu militias unleashed the carnage in 1994 — will be marked by Kagame lighting a remembrance flame at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where more than 250,000 victims are believed to be buried.

Kagame will place wreaths on the mass graves, flanked by foreign dignitaries including former US president Bill Clinton, who had called the genocide the biggest failure of his administration.

The international community’s failure to intervene has been a cause of lingering shame, with French President Emmanuel Macron expected to release a message on Sunday saying that France and its Western and African allies “could have stopped” the bloodshed but lacked the will to do so.

Kagame is also expected to give a speech at a 10,000-seat arena in the capital, where Rwandans will later hold a candlelight vigil for those killed in the slaughter.

Week of national mourning

Sunday’s events mark the start of a week of national mourning, with Rwanda effectively coming to a standstill and national flags flown at half-mast.

Music will not be allowed in public places or on the radio, while sports events and movies are banned from TV broadcasts, unless connected to what has been dubbed “Kwibuka (Remembrance) 30”.

The United Nations and the African Union will also hold remembrance ceremonies.

Karel Kovanda, a former Czech diplomat who was the first UN ambassador to publicly call the events of 1994 a genocide, nearly a month after the killings began, said the massacres should never be forgotten.

“The page cannot be turned,” he told AFP in an interview in Kigali, urging efforts to ensure that “the genocide (doesn’t) slip into oblivion”.

The assassination of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on the night of April 6, when his plane was shot down over Kigali, triggered the rampage by Hutu extremists and the “Interahamwe” militia.

Their victims were shot, beaten or hacked to death in killings fuelled by vicious anti-Tutsi propaganda broadcast on TV and radio. At least 250,000 women were raped, according to UN figures.

Each year new mass graves are uncovered around the country.

In 2002, Rwanda set up community tribunals where victims heard “confessions” from those who had persecuted them, although rights watchdogs said the system also resulted in miscarriages of justice.

Today, Rwandan ID cards do not mention whether a person is Hutu or Tutsi.

Secondary school students learn about the genocide as part of a tightly controlled curriculum.

The country is home to over 200 memorials to the genocide, four of which were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list last year.

Fleeing justice

According to Rwanda, hundreds of genocide suspects remain at large, including in neighbouring nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.

Only 28 have been extradited to Rwanda from around the world.

France, one of the top destinations for Rwandans fleeing justice at home, has tried and convicted half a dozen people over their involvement in the killings.

The French government had been a long-standing backer of Habyarimana’s regime, leading to decades of tensions between the two countries.

In 2021, Macron acknowledged France’s role in the genocide and its refusal to heed warnings of looming massacres, but stopped short of an official apology.

Ahead of the 30th anniversary, there were renewed calls from rights watchdogs for remaining genocide suspects to be held to account.

“I urge states everywhere to redouble their efforts to bring all surviving suspected perpetrators to justice — including through universal jurisdiction — and to combat hate speech and incitement to commit genocide,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said on Friday.

 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Family photographs of some of those who died hang on display in an exhibition at the Kigali Genocide Memorial centre in the capital Kigali, Rwanda on April 5, 2019.
| Photo Credit: AP

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that France and its allies could have stopped the 1994 Rwanda genocide but lacked the will to do so, a strong declaration ahead of the African country’s 30th anniversary of the slaughter that left over 800,000 people dead.

Mr. Macron’s office said in a statement that the French President will release a video on social media on Sunday as Rwanda marks the solemn commemoration of the genocide.

In the video, Mr. Macron says that “France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, lacked the will to do so.”

In 2021 during a visit to the central African country, Mr. Macron acknowledged France’s “responsibility” in the genocide that left over 800,000 people dead, mainly ethnic Tutsis and the Hutus who tried to protect them.

He stopped short of an apology, but Rwandan President Paul Kagame signalled that a page had been turned in France-Rwanda ties, following a series of French efforts to repair ties between the two countries.

Since he was first elected in 2017, Mr. Macron notably commissioned a report about France’s role before and during the genocide and decided to open the country’s archives from this period to the public.

In Sunday’s video, Mr. Macron will recall that when the genocide started, “the international community had the means to know and to take actions” based on the knowledge about genocides that had been revealed by survivors of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, his office said.

Mr. Macron will reaffirm that “France stands by Rwanda and the Rwandan people, in memory of the one million children, women and men martyred because they were born Tutsi,” according to his office.

Mr. Macron’s office said France will be represented by Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné at the commemoration of the genocide scheduled on Sunday in Kigali, the French President himself being held back in France by World War II commemorations that day.