25 years later, Nyange remembers gruesome attack, student heroes

It is around 7:30p.m and students are as busy as bees revising for their end-of-term exams. “It is a very busy time for us,” says one of the two students who are reading under an outdoor light bulb behind their S4 classroom, a few metres from a graveyard. “These were students like us, we are remembering them this week,” she says pensively, citing the remains of victims of a horrific attack on this school a quarter century ago. The yard is the final resting place of Chantal Mujawamahoro (Senior Six) and Valens Ndemeye (Senior Five), two of the bravest students this country has ever produced. Along with their classmates, the student heroes stood up to hatred and division, with seven of them paying the ultimate price. Nestled in the heart of one of Rwanda’s most mountainous regions, in Ngororero District, Ecole Secondaire de Nyange represents the worst and best of Rwanda. It was the scene of the deadly attack by the defunct FAR soldiers and the genocidal Interahamwe militia on the night of March 18, 1997. Mujawamahoro and Ndemeye died on the spot during the cold-blooded attack, along with five other students [Sylvestre Bizimana (S6), Beatrice Mukambaraga (S6), Séraphine Mukarutwaza (S5), and Hélène Benimana, who was in S5]. Phanuel Sindayiheba goes back in time as he explains the horrific events that unfolded in the former Senior Six classroom-turned exhibition room on the fateful night of March 18, 1997. The students were killed when the abacengezi (infiltrators) opened fire and hurled grenades in class after the learners heroically refused to separate themselves along ethnic lines. The death toll from the incident would rise to seven three years later when Ferdinand Niyongira succumbed to internal wounds caused by grenade explosions. He was in S5 at the time of the attack. “This is where I sat when we first heard gunshots in the compound,” Phanuel Sindayiheba, then a S6 student, recalls the distressing events of that fateful night 25 years ago. He sat next to a window. First, they heard gunshots from a distance. Then in the school compound. It was around 8p.m and students were busy reviewing their notes in their respective classes. ‘No place to hide’ “It was dark outside and there was no place to hide and no escape door,” Sindayiheba says, pausing briefly as he reflects on the traumatic experience that unfolded in his classroom 25 years ago today. Names of the victims of the barbaric attack on the Ngororero-based government-aided school 25 years ago today. And, before long, the moment they had dreaded arrived. Three armed men stormed their classroom, unannounced, brandishing weapons. “It was a chilling moment.” “They wore a combination of military and ordinary clothing, with guns, grenades, one of them carried a huge sword,” he recollects. When Sindayiheba, then aged 20, glanced at the attackers he reckoned they were in serious trouble. “They stood in front of us before the tallest of them, who I believe was their leader, asked in a menacing voice whether we knew them.” “No,” the fear-stricken students responded. “He said ‘you’ll know us, and if you cooperate and make our work easy you’ll be fine.’ “He then ordered that we separate along ethnic lines,” he recounts, walking us through the events of that traumatic night. “They said, ‘Tutsi to our right, Hutu to the left.’” ES Nyange students play on the basketball court on Tuesday evening. By then, he says, the students had frantically ducked under their wooden school benches absorbed in desperate prayer or screaming and pleading for dear life. Then, suddenly, in a show of the highest degree of bravery and fortitude, Chantal Mujawamahoro, defiantly retorted, “Twese Turi Abanyarwanda,” which translates to ‘We Are All Rwandans.” “It took them by surprise, they didn’t expect that kind of response,” says Sindayiheba. Mujawamahoro, who was 22, lay under her desk on the front row, face to face with the insurgents. The insurgents’ anger boiled over, he says. “Their leader signalled to them and they all walked out with great rage.” “What followed we will never forget,” he says, pointing to the spot where ended up lying in a pool of blood that night. The attackers immediately shattered the glass of the window next to Sindayiheba’s seat and then threw grenades in the class. Grenade explosions, gunshots The first one injured Angelique Nkunduwera and César Bavakure, he recalls. Soon, he too found himself in excruciating pain after sustaining serious back injuries in subsequent explosions. The attackers were not done. They returned within moments and gave the same orders: Tutsi here, Hutu there. But Sylvestre Bizimana echoed Mujawamahoro’s earlier response. We are all Rwandans, he insisted. “They started shooting at us, Chantal was the first to be shot dead, then Beatrice Mukambaraga, they also killed Sylvestre and continued shooting indiscriminately,” recalls Sindayiheba. Photos of some of the victims of the deadly attack in one of the exhibition rooms about the incident. Amid wails and desperation, the insurgents, perhaps thinking they had killed almost everyone in the class, suddenly left and headed straight to S5. The two rooms are about 60m apart. There, the assailants repeated the same orders they gave in S6. “They tweaked the question a little and asked students to identify Tutsi classmates. Interestingly, Hélène Benimana gave the same response; there are no Tutsi, no Hutu, just Rwandans. “One of their tormentors immediately singled out Séraphine Mukarutwaza and said she was a Tutsi and they killed her, when Hélène denounced them she was also shot dead.” As the assailants opened fire indiscriminately, one brave student, Valens Ndemeye, stood up and issued a rallying cry to his classmates to force their way out, rather than die one by one. The students scampered out for dear life but Ndemeye was shot and killed. Ecole Secondaire de Nyange students clean the ‘garden of peace’ in preparation of the silver commemorative events due Friday and Saturday. Another student, Ferdinand Niyongira, suffered severe injuries and died three years later. In total, 40 students who were in the two classrooms that night survived – 18 in S6 and 22 in S5. The survivors, along with their deceased colleagues, would later be conferred upon the honour of National Heroes (Imena category). One of them, Ananie Sibomana, has since died of unrelated causes. But how did young learners in two separate classes give the same defiant message to the attackers? “We did not communicate but we had learnt from the bad history of Nyange about the consequences of division and government officials and school authorities always encouraged us to embrace and love one another because we are all Rwandans,” says Sindayiheba. Nyange is the same place where a Catholic priest, Athanase Seromba, used a bulldozer to raze down his own church, killing 3000 people inside during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Aside from the students who lost their lives during the attack, the assailants also killed a guard as they entered the hilltop compound. It remains unclear how many insurgents were involved in the deadly attack, which lasted between 10-15 minutes. The assailants fled when government soldiers from a nearby military base arrived. The insurgents are thought to have come from a hideout in Mukura forest, with support from local collaborators. At the time, the new Rwanda Patriotic Front-led government in Kigali was battling an insurgency that had spread across large swathes of northern and western regions. The graves of Chantal Mujawamahoro and Valens Ndemeye, two of the departed student heroes, at the school. The infiltrators had crossed back into Rwanda from the Congo where they had arrived with their weapons when the genocidal government in Kigali fell in 1994. More than a million Rwandans lost their lives during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. At the height of the insurgency, between 1997 and 1999, the infiltrators used to attack civilians, public transport, and destroy local government offices and other infrastructure. Some of their top commanders would later be captured or persuaded to surrender and were reintegrated into the military or community. ‘A shining light’ “Nyange bears deep scars from the insurgency,” says Father René Claude Hakizimana, the head teacher of the government-aided Catholic school. “However, we continue to be inspired by the courage and unity of those students. They have become a shining light for us all.” “The commemoration will stir our deepest emotion but it’ll be a proud moment to look back at the heroism manifested by schoolchildren here,” he adds, asked about the memorial events due Friday and Saturday this week. The story of Nyange school maybe a symbol of Rwanda’s tragic past, but, most importantly, it represents our heroism, resilience and unity as a nation, says Sindayiheba. For Fr Hakizimana, who was himself a student at Petit Séminaire Saint Pie X de Nyundo in Rubavu at the time of the attack, Nyange heroes “taught us that heroism is not about age or gender or where you come from.” Claudien Harelimana, a Math and Physics teacher who arrived at E.S Nyange almost a year after the deadly attack, recalls that the school continued to suffer at the hands of infiltrators even after. He recalls one predawn attack on September 5, 1998 which killed three people, including interim head teacher Sixfield Dukizwenayo, Léonard Gakote (school bursar) and Valens Bwandagara, a Biology and Chemistry teacher. “The killers did not achieve their objective,” he observes. “At the end of the day, Nyange emerged even stronger, this is a proud legacy that we deeply cherish.” Ange Shimo Igeno, a S4 student offering History, Economics and Literature at the school, looks back with pride. “The solidarity and unity demonstrated by the students is something that inspires us every single day, I want to walk in their footsteps.” “We will always remember them,” adds Kelly Shami, a Senior One student at the school. “They showed extraordinary courage.”

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25 years later, Nyange remembers gruesome attack, student heroes