Rukumberi residents endured untold suffering prior to Genocide

NGOMA – Life under the previous regimes which centred on discrimination brought untold suffering to the Genocide survivors prior to the Genocide itself within Rukumberi, Ngoma district. Damien P. Niyonshuti, the coordinator of a genocide survivors’ grouping in Rukumberi, known by its French acronym as ARGR, revealed this during the closure of commemoration activities in the area. “The previous regimes wanted us to suffer based on very narrow considerations.Which is why we were relocated to Rukumberi a place that was infested with tsetse fly which was meant to give us unbearable suffering.” Théogène Mudaherenwa, 35, another ARGR official said that although he was 8 then, the suffering subjected to the victims are still fresh in his mind. He said that ARGR is committed to making Rukumberi a standard memorial site in respect of the dead. “The killings in Rukumberi are no doubt going to be classified in the same category as that of Murambi, Nyarubuye and other areas, where the horrors of the genocide remain embedded in people’s minds,” he said. ARGR was started in 2003 to help the local authorities organise the survivors and others, to remember those who perished in the Rukumberi killings. Today the group has over 600 members. Ends