Marie Aimée Umutesi’s life has been one of the extremes – from being born in an elite military family to fleeing the country as a 15-year-old, ending up in camps in Eastern DR Congo and forever struggling to free herself from the shackles of the ugly past attached to her father.
A daughter of one of the most notorious Genocide masterminds, Anatole Nsengiyumva, Umutesi has gone through it all but it was her decision to defy odds and advice of many to return to Rwanda that she was able to liberate herself from the grim history of her father.
For Umutesi, 42, being a daughter of Lt. Col. Nsengiyumva, who was the commander of Military Operations for the Gisenyi sector in the current Western Province, was a privilege as a child because he was one of the most powerful military officers at the time, with all the trappings of power.
So powerful was Nsengiyumva that he was part of the infamous Military 1 trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, together with Theoneste Bagosora.
They were both convicted and sentenced, at first to life which was later reduced on appeal.
Much as he was not very present in her life as she grew up, Umutesi would later be the victim of the consequences resulting from his ugly legacy.
Life was thrown off balance when the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi) forces successfully defeated the then government forces, or the FAR as they were known, and Interahamwe militia, forcing them to flee towards the then Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
"It was a total turnaround, from feeling protected to running away endlessly into the jungles of Zaire, fearing the unknown,” says Umutesi, whose journey over the past 27-years has been one of redemption.
Born in what was Commune Satinsyi, now Ngororero District, to Nsengiyumva and Bernadette Uwizeyemariya, Umutesi was the first born of her mother. She had two brothers.
Nsengiyumva married her mother after the death of his first wife. She was a sister of his deceased wife. He later abandoned them and married another woman.
When the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi broke out, Umutesi’s mother was working with Red Cross in Ruhengeri Hospital, where she had been transferred.
As RPF Inkotanyi captured parts of the country, people started fleeing towards the west. Umutesi’s mother fled while her daughter was at her grandfather’s home, where she lived as she studied at Groupe Scolaire de Rambura, in the current Ngororero district.
Over a million people drove towards Gisenyi and Goma, fuelled by rumours that RPA soldiers would kill them in revenge. Umutesi also thought of fleeing, knowing how powerful her father was.
"I was scared that if Inkotanyi found me there and discovered that I was Nsengiyumva’s daughter, they would kill me because of what he had done before fleeing was known to all,”
"The perception we had in our minds was that Inkotanyi were animals, killers and monsters. I had no doubt that they would kill me,”
The 15-year-old plotted her escape route when her grandfather refused to let her go. She visited her auntie, who had also refused to flee and that is where she planned her move.
"When I got to my auntie’s, I told my cousin that we should go to fetch water. As we went downhill through the garden, I said I was going to pick some lemons. I had carried a few things with me,”
She vanished and set off two days after the huge group of people had moved towards the west, heading to Zaire.
For someone privileged from childhood, she had to walk for four hours to catch up with the large group at Kabaya, where they had pitched camp as RPF-Inkotanyi advanced.
"I didn’t know anybody in that camp. When I had just got there, they told us Inkotanyi had captured Mukamira and were closing in on us. We used the route through Gishwati Forest, emerging at Mahoko in the current Rubavu District. We moved all night in a overcrowded truck.
"RPF had not captured the area but when we got there, we found that government soldiers and Interahamwe had ransacked shops and killed people,”
She had hoped that she would find her father in the area since he was the commander for the Gisenyi-Kibuye area. However, by the time they got there, government forces had fled from the barracks.
"I didn’t know what was really going on because I was young and naïve. I imagined they had gone to the battle but people were really running. At this point I had lost contact with my relatives and was just joining different families,” she recalls.
In Gisenyi where they spent about three days, she was approached by someone who was dressed in army fatigues but not similar to those worn by government forces. The man convinced her to not follow the huge crowd and instead return home.
He told her that she would be safe because people in areas captured by RPF were very safe and the same would apply to her, instead of going into Zaire, with no promise of safety.
"I told him that being a daughter of one of the most high-ranking military officers, my chances of surviving Inkotanyi were minimal. He gave up and left,”
"Immediately he left, the head of that family I had joined said that the person I was talking to is dressed like Inkotanyi, meaning that they had reached Gisenyi and we had to leave immediately before they closed in on us,”
The huge group then drove towards the border to force their way into Zaire.
Congolese soldiers ransacked them and stripped them of their valuables before allowing them in. At the same time, gunfire was ringing through Gisenyi and surrounding hills.
"We were told that RPF Inkotanyi were closing in on the city; that was on July 17, 1994. I will never forget that day. The government forces and Interahamwe, who had mixed with civilians were trying to fight back,”
"In the process, a grenade went off in that huge crowd. I saw both legs of a woman being blown off. A fragment hit me on the leg. There was a stampede as people forced their way into Zaire. Somehow, I got to Goma safely, but injured,” she recalls.
Raped
While in Gisenyi, the 15-year-old was raped by a government soldier – an incident she says she will never forget, because it left her with lifetime scars. She was overcome by emotions as she narrated the ordeal.
With no knowledge of Kiswahili or Lingala and with no relative or anyone she knew in Zaire, Umutesi was really scared. They had nowhere to live in Goma and slept on the streets for the first week, with nothing to eat.
Life in Zaire was difficult. She became destitute. Goma was littered with bodies. She set out to look for her mother who was among the hundreds of thousands of people who fled Rwanda, especially Hutus, as RPF advanced.
As she continued the search, she learnt that her maternal uncle was in Mugunga camp, one of the camps inside Zaire which hosted Rwandan refugees. She went there and reunited with him. Luckily, she got a job in the camp.
"I didn’t know I was pregnant out of the rape incident but I had signs of pregnancy. When they figured out that I was indeed pregnant, they chased me. I joined another family of relatives, who also rejected me,” she recalls.
Umutesi later learnt that her mother was in a distant camp known as Katale and she made the long journey to join her, using her savings.
Fortunately, they reunited. Her pregnancy was now advanced and weighing her down due to the difficult conditions. Upon giving birth, her mother developed serious ulcers. Life was really hard.
One evening as she returned from Gishara, a far-off place she used to work for survival, she found everyone in the camp gone. People had scattered into the forest. Voice of America (VOA) reported that camps inside Zaire had been dismantled.
Word went around that Inkotanyi had entered Zaire to repatriate the refugees. Majority started fleeing deeper into the forests of DRC.
As naïve as she was, she didn’t know many of the ‘refugees’ were former soldiers or Interahamwe who committed crimes back home.
"Anybody who suggested that we return to Rwanda would be summarily executed. They would say you are an RPF cadre and a spy,” Umutesi remembers.
As people scattered, she was being forced to marry a Congolese man who had many wives and was taking advantage of the situation.
She was not ready. Her maternal uncle plotted a way to help her escape and return back to Rwanda with her baby, without being caught and killed.
When the remnants figured out that she had escaped along with different families, an operation to find them was launched but luckily, they had crossed over to North Kivu, getting closer to the Ugandan border. They immediately crossed into Uganda, escaping their pursuers.
Inside Uganda, in Kisoro district, they were put in a refugee camp in Mutorere, occupied by Congolese refugees. They were angry with Rwandans for causing them mayhem and insecurity.
"The Rwandans I fled with were avoiding me because they thought being a daughter of Nsengiyumva, I would put them in trouble,” the bubbly Umutesi says.
Returning home
Inside that camp, she disguised herself as Congolese since there was a lot of animosity targeting Rwandans. Later when she was discovered, she was subjected to a witch-hunt. When the suffering intensified, she made a decision to return to her country of birth.
"I confided in one of the women who worked in the camp and told her that I wanted to go back home but I was scared because I am so and so’s daughter. They will kill me if they find out but I was determined to die on Rwandan soil,”
"She assured me that I will be safe because Inkotanyi protected whoever they found. She got me a taxi from Cyanika, then from Cyanika to Musanze town, from where I found my way to Vunga, where we lived,” she says.
On the way home, she met many people, including soldiers and nobody really cared to know who she was but when she got to the uncle’s house where she used to live, someone who had occupied it came up with a section against her, mentioning the name of her father.
"The soldiers asked him who my father was and he mentioned Nsengiyumva, hoping that they would arrest me. The soldiers said that I could not be held accountable for my father’s crimes and they told the man to let me continue with my journey,”
The soldiers led her to her grandfather’s house. The old man was shocked to see her.
"At this point I was really confident. I was welcomed by RPF soldiers at the border, they protected me and got me to my grandfather’s home. I had the assurance now that they would not kill me,” Umutesi recalls.
It was around October or November 1996 when she returned, with the first batch of returnees. It was a huge relief, after more than two years of wandering and traversing DRC jungles, with a baby.
"It was a second lease on life for me. I had been saved by Inkotanyi, the same people I thought would kill me. My child was a year old. I stayed with my grandpa. In 1999, I went back to school,”
"I went to Commune Kageyo and met the Burgomaster, he was called Ishimwe Evariste. I will never forget him because he was good to me. He guided me through the process, I filled a form and just like that I got a government scholarship,” Umutesi says.
She recalls that everything was shocking to her. After being told that she would be killed by RPF Inkotanyi, here she was being given government support regardless of her father’s history.
"I could not imagine the kindness I was being shown. I had this constant burden of being Anatole Nsengiyumva’s daughter. Sometimes I could not mention that I was his daughter,” Umutesi says.
Haunted by father’s actions
Umutesi’s biggest challenge was that she looked like her dad and people would easily identify her as Nsengiyumva’s daughter.
It weighed heavily on her, to the extent that when she wanted to get her national ID in 1997, she feared mentioning his name.
"It was really embarrassing to be his daughter. I would mention one name or not mention it at all. I imagined that I would pay a price for it but surprisingly nobody held me against it,”
"I also had friends who were Genocide survivors but I could not mention my dad because it would traumatise them. One day at a time people convinced me that his crimes didn’t concern me, I shouldn’t feel burdened by that,” she says.
What really made it difficult was that she never had a close relationship with her father, since he had married another woman, abandoning her mother, but his actions, which she was not party of, were now haunting her.
When he was convicted by the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR), it was some sort of closure for her, because she felt to some extent justice had been served.
"His conviction taught me that in this life, nobody should use what they are or the power they possess to the extent of depriving others of their life. No one has a right to take anyone’s life or shed blood,” Umutesi says.
But above all, returning home and being treated like any other Rwandan, regardless of her family background, liberated her in unimaginable ways, and it was only possible because that is the ideology RPF-Inkotanyi espoused.
As Rwanda celebrates 27 years of liberation, Umutesi is grateful that she enjoys all the rights as a national and she is not discriminated against based on her ethnicity or who her father is.
"For me liberation means being able to co-exist with others with no discrimination whatsoever and doing whatever you want, without anybody stopping you or questioning who you are,” Umutesi says.
She advises people who still harbour negative ideologies to give up whichever missions they have and accept that Rwanda changed for the better and join the cause.
"Those who have issues can bring them to the table as long as they are constructive. We need to put together our efforts as Rwandans. The government has put in place means for all of us to make a contribution in whichever sector you are in,” Umutesi says.
She said that some people living abroad would call or write to her wondering how she can live in Rwanda with her father’s background.
"They ask me whether I really live in Rwanda or if I actually have a job and they can’t believe that Anatole Nsengiyumva’s daughter can live in Rwanda freely,”
"All I do is encourage them to come and see for themselves. Some of them have their parents out there, who are still wanted, but I always tell the young ones to take the personal initiative to return home and forget about their parents,” she says.
Umutesi says that sometimes she has to show people her degree or take photos at work, to prove that what she says is true.
"My message to those still stuck in the past is that Rwanda changed for the better. We are all Rwandans and are treated equally and we are all working towards the transformation of the country,”
"The choice is yours to join us and it is never too late,” says Umutesi, who is a social worker and counsellor at Murunda District Hospital in Rutsiro district.
She is happily married with two children, including one adopted child.
About Nsengiyumva
Anatole Nsengiyumva was arrested in Cameroon on 27 March 1996. He was tried in the so-called "Military I” case at the ICTR alongside Théoneste Bagosora, Aloys Ntabakuze and Gratien Kabiligi.
He was charged with conspiracy to commit genocide; genocide; complicity in genocide; direct and public incitement to commit genocide; and murder, rape, persecution, extermination and "inhumane acts” as crimes against humanity.
Additionally, Nsengiyumva was charged with the killing of civilians and outrages upon personal dignity. The crimes were committed in Gisenyi and surrounding areas of Mudende, Nyundo and in Bisesero. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In a Judgement deliver on December 18, 2008, Nsengiyumva was convicted of conspiracy to commit genocide; genocide; complicity in genocide; and crimes against humanity and handed a life sentence.
In December 2011, the appeals chamber of ICTR reduced Nsengiyumva’s sentence to 15 years and he was immediately set free, because he had already served that time, to the chagrin of genocide survivors. He still lives in Arusha awaiting a country to take him in.