Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi should be an opportunity for Rwandans to continue to denounce Genocide denial and ideology, Julienne Uwacu, the Minister for Sports and Culture, has said.
Commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi should be an opportunity for Rwandans to continue to denounce Genocide denial and ideology, Julienne Uwacu, the Minister for Sports and Culture, has said.
She was addressing mourners who turned up for commemoration at Nyanza in Kicukiro District on Monday.
She said, "This is the period when Genocide perpetrators, deniers and their supporters make more efforts to conceal and erase facts about the Genocide against the Tutsi as they do not want the truth to be known. It is also the period during which they make more effort to spread hate and trivialise the Genocide, and even tell the world that what happened in Rwanda was justified,” she said.
"This period is an occasion for all Rwandans to stand together to fight Genocide denial and ideology. It is also the time for us to reply to those sadists and tell the truth.”
At Nyanza, more than 11,000 Tutsi were killed after being abandoned by UN peacekeepers on April 11, 1994 at the former ETO Kicukiro, currently known as IPRC-Kigali.
Selemani Ntawuyirushintege, a Genocide survivor who was at ETO Kicukiro at the time said the international community should be ashamed of the actions of peacekeepers who decided to flee, leaving thousands of Tutsi in the hands of the killers.
He said, "we had fled to ETO hoping to be protected by peacekeepers there. Instead of protecting us, we saw them pack their bags and dogs leaving us at the mercy of the interahamwe militia, who had surrounded the compound.
"That indifference demonstrated by peacekeepers who were representing the international community should be a shame on the whole international community that failed to save us.”
Prof. Jean Pierre Dusingizemungu, the president of Ibuka, the Genocide survivors umbrella urged survivors to transcend what happened to them and show resilience.
He said, "it is necessary for us who survived the Genocide to keep remembering our love ones, but we also have to overcome grief caused by the Genocide and strive for better livelihoods,”he said.
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