30 years after the genocide in Rwanda, victims and executioners learn to live together

From Sunday, Rwanda commemorates the genocide of the Tutsis which took place in 1994. 30 years after these massacres which cost the lives of a million people in 100 days, Rwandan society is trying to live between forgiveness and reconciliation, in a fragile peace.

From Sunday April 7, Rwanda will commemorate the genocide of the Tutsis which occurred in 1994. Rwandans massacred by other Rwandans, nearly a million dead, these are 100 days of horror marked in the memories. A memory with which Rwandans had to learn to live. For three decades, the country has been making an ongoing effort at reconciliation in which many survivors retain considerable trauma even though they have to rub shoulders with their former tormentors.

When the calendar approaches the fateful date of April 7, the day the genocide began, Concessa’s body reacts. “I have terrible stomach aches, I’m cold all the time and at night I can’t sleep”. The testimonies of survivors like her are heard everywhere: TV, radio, in the press. An entire country is plunging back into horror. 30 years ago, Concessa is 26 years old, after hiding in the bush, she takes refuge in a relative’s house. “It was members of my own family who killed my husband and my two young children”she testifies.

For five years after the genocide, the pain was such that she no longer knew the difference between day and night, lying prostrate at home without speaking. She hasn’t rebuilt her life, but at least, Concessa continues, hearing other people’s children play, taking care of orphans, is no longer painful. “I granted my forgiveness to the killers not because the state asked me to, to be able to live in peace with the community, it’s my therapy, the killers did not ask me for forgiveness too bad, I did it for me, to get better”, she confesses.

Physical and psychological aftereffects

Béatrice also relives her ordeal as this “birthday” approaches. At the time, she was barely 15 years old and part of her family had been decimated. “A militiaman took me into his house and made me his wife. In total, I was raped by six different men in one month. Today, I have a family, four children, but with my husband, intimate relationships are complicated”she confides.

For her, each childbirth was an ordeal because of unbearable back pain, the after-effects of the sexual violence she suffered and which she still keeps secret from her children today. But Béatrice says she has forgiven “through training on unity and reconciliation“, she says.

“Sometimes in the village, when I go to cultivate my plot, I come across some of these men who did me so much harm, they have come out of prison. And I live with them. In my heart, I have forgiven them.”

Béatrice, a genocide survivor

at franceinfo

Forgive the executioners who exterminated yours, the price to pay to be able to live in peace for Béatrice and these survivors. With other survivors, they come to visit Agnès, 84 years old, another survivor, who only expresses herself with her eyes. Her husband and eight of her ten children were massacred. Survivors like her, they give her a traditional basket. Dances on the red earth and songs on the memory of the genocide accompany the ceremony.

Reconciliation policy

This policy of unity is also aimed at the executioners. Raise your head and move forward after such devastation? According to a minister at the time, it would have taken more than 200 years to judge all the alleged perpetrators of the killings, which are estimated at more than a hundred thousand people. So the repentant genocidaires who confessed their crimes and asked for forgiveness before the “gacacas“, literally justice on the grass, the people’s courts, have seen the length of their sentences shortened. Once released from prison, they return to their village in the hills among the survivors, often alongside their own victims.

Among these female survivors, he plays the guitar. Ephrem, 44, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but he only served ten because he confessed to his crimes. “I participated in the killings of five people, three children and two adults. I used a big stick with nails. The other militiamen had machetes“, he says “Everything was planned in the evening, during meetings. A leader designated to the young militiamen the families to be killed and in the morning, we started hunting,” says Ephrem.

“The authorities kept telling us that the Tutsi were not human beings. That it was them or us. For me, it was like killing a snake, I didn’t feel anything. It was what we had to do. “

Ephrem, a repentant genocidaire

at franceinfo

When April 7 approaches, he says he feels like a monster. He helps organize commemorations of the genocide and is involved in an association helping survivors. But it’s frowned upon. “Hate still exists. Many of those who came out of prison do not want to hear about reconciliation. Many of my relatives criticize my commitment, the fact that I testified, that I handed over the remains of people’s bodies that I killed to their families so that they could be buried with dignity. They fear that society will discover that they are involved in atrocities”, he reports.

A fragile peace

Beyond the official speeches on appeasement, there is what everyone nourishes in their hearts completes Concessa. Officially, ethnic insults have been banned, under penalty of prison. The words “Hutu” or “Tutsi” no longer appear on identity cards. “I always feel this hatred in my own family, apparently they live like everyone else. In reality, if it weren’t for the state to protect me, I would already be dead. They don’t have exchange”she assures. With the renewed tensions between Rwanda and the neighboring DRC where in 1994 the genocidal army and militia took refuge, Béatrice is also afraid. “Those who massacred the Tutsis, many live on the other side, I hear that they are preparing and that they will come back to finish the job”.

Peace is fragile concedes Sandrine Umutoni, the Secretary of State for Youth, in this country where almost half of the population is under 20 years old, speeches are spread on social networks in particular. “Some will say, ‘we were told that there were two genocides in Rwanda’ or ‘Me, in my family, my father and my mother do not get along because they are of two different ethnic groups and pass day insulting each other. The genocide in 1994 was officially stopped, but the ideology continued. We see it in other countries, in Belgium for example, in Holland, in France too… We know that today, with social networks, the media, people play with words. No one will openly say there was no genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, but they will say there was a genocide. Or, they will say the figures have been exaggerated even though we are still digging up bodies today in mass graves. That’s because it’s something that is still very delicate.” And Sandrine Umutoni concludes: “In the history of Rwanda, it has only been 30 years since there have been massacres”.