WESTERN PROVINCE
 
RUSIZI - Another survivor of the 1994 Genocide has been killed in the Western Province, barely four days after the death of Séraphine Uwankwera.

The latest survivor who was killed on Wednesday night is Ramadan Uzabukiriho, a resident in Rusizi and he was allegedly killed by one Patrick Kaneza.

According to police sources, Uzabakiriho, 29, was attacked on Wednesday night by Kaneza who broke into the deceased’s house and stabbed him to death with a knife.

The sources say that the assailant who was armed with a gun first shot one bullet before breaking into the house, ordering two other people who shared a house with the deceased to stay down as he hacked him to death.

It is said that immediately after the incident the suspected assailant fled and Uzabakiriho was later rushed to Gihundwe hospital also in Kamembe sector, Rusizi District from where he died shortly on arrival.

A police source in the district said in a subsequent interview that Uzabakiriho’s killing was not connected to the Genocide ideology, saying that they had other wrangles related to money. However, IBUKA and Genocide survivors in the area refuted the idea.

"According to the experience and information we have and the manner in which he was killed, we have no doubt that the deceased lost his life because of his ethnic affiliation,” said Jean Claude Tabaro, the president of IBUKA in Kamembe sector.

He added that even the timing of the incident—immediately after the Genocide Commemoration week — shows that the murder was related to the Genocide ideology.

"And we think that the people behind his killing are Genocide suspects who wanted to eliminate him in order to conceal what they did in 1994.”

Tabaro added that the deceased was a Genocide survivor both of whose parents and siblings were killed by Interahamwe militia and Ex-FAR in Kamembe sector during the Genocide

Another security sources intimated to The New Times that Kaneza, the suspected assailant, was a soldier with the Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) but had deserted recently.

Security officials also say that the accused was arrested in a joint operation by police and military officials and he was found with two pistols.

He is currently detained at Kamembe police station in Kamembe sector but would be transferred to Cyangugu Central Prison also in the same sector.  

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