high school students travel to Rwanda to visit genocide memorials

On this day of commemorations of the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, Sunday April 7, the strong words of Emmanuel Macron in a video published on this occasion. He more or less repeats what he had already declared on May 27, 2021, that France and its Western and African allies “could have stopped the genocide but did not have the will”. Nearly a million people were massacred between April and July 1994 across the country. The Duclert report had already established the responsibility of France led at the time by François Mitterrand.

It was this French involvement in one of the worst mass killings of the 20th century that a group of French final year students specializing in history-geography, geopolitics and political science at the Thierry-Maulnier high school in Nice were confronted with. Led by two professors, genocide survivor Félicité Lyamukuru and historian Marcel Kabanda, they went to several memorials including that of Murambi, in the south of the country, where 50,000 people were massacred in a school where the remains of the bodies are on display to the public today.

“Does everyone have a Kleenex or two? Because you might need it.”advises Muriel Blanc, history and geography teacher at the Thierry-Maulnier high school, in the bus that takes the class to the Murambi memorial, a 3.5 hour drive from Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

“It’s not because we ask them to take a handkerchief that we are being emotional. It’s really a duty of history more than of memory.”

Muriel Blanc, professor of history and geography

at franceinfo

His colleague Bénédicte Gilardi, librarian professor, adds: “We absolutely want to train them from September on what images or testimonies they will receive.” A first moving image nevertheless, arriving in front of the memorial surrounded by green and peaceful hills, the immense black steles on which the names of the 50,000 victims are engraved.

On the walls, posters, photos

Just before arriving at the memorial, Marcel Kabanda, Franco-Rwandan historian and president of Ibuka France, an association for the memory of the victims of the genocide, gave the students some historical references. “This memorial is emblematic of the role of the territorial administration in the organization of the genocide, he explains. The prefect of this region, therefore the person responsible for that, who was called Laurent, took refuge in France, he remained for 27 years without being prosecuted, then there was a trial, a judgment at first instance, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, he appealed and between the first instance and the appeal he died last November. He died innocent, we cannot say that he was genocidal because he was not found guilty. These were buildings that were supposed to house a school and that’s where these people were killed.”

“I remind you that there were 50,000 deaths. Some spaces can be disturbing. If you feel uncomfortable, don’t insist.”

Marcel Kabanda, Franco-Rwandan historian

in front of high school students

On the walls of the former Murambi technical school, posters, photos and official texts recall the anti-Tutsi pogroms from the 1950s, the impact of state propaganda and how the 1994 massacres were planned. by the authorities. “The Tutsis were killed with machetes, with grenades, with rifles”, Stanley lists in front of the group of silent students. He, whose entire family was decimated in 1994, specifies that for “to be killed with a gun, you had to pay”.

Faced with intimate and banal photos of victims, the students search for words. “They were children, they didn’t deserve this,” deplores Hamza alongside them. Félicité Lyamukuru, a survivor who works on the transmission of memory and accompanies the class, responds that “Adults didn’t deserve it either, but it’s true that seeing children who didn’t know what was happening to them be murdered…”

Mummified bodies in the dormitories

After a final warning from the guide, the students enter in small groups into the dormitories located in the dark. Bénédicte Gilardi tells them that “We chose to leave these clothes where the people were killed”. Faded boxer shorts are still visible on a small child’s body, a tuft of hair and a mouth open like a torture cry on another skeleton.
Stunned, frightened, sometimes in tears, the high school students support each other in front of these abominable tangles of mummified, emaciated and whitewashed bodies.

“They first left them to die of hunger and thirst for two weeks and came to finish off those who had survived with grenades, rifles, machetes”, breathes Félicité Lyamukuru. A high school student rushes out of the room with tears in her eyes. Another specifies that even having been prepared by the teaching team, “seeing is a huge shock. It hurts”. Felix shakes his head, “the smell has a huge impact, it makes it real, it’s overwhelming. As a student of history, looking death in the face has a much more significant impact, not for understanding a genocide is impossible but to realize it. We’re never prepared enough for that.”

“It’s a super pretty setting, everything is beautiful, it almost seems like a paradise, when you see the history of this place it’s quite the opposite, but this beautiful setting inhabits so many dark things.”

Danakou, final year student

at franceinfo

The group arrives in the third part, Stanley the guide draws the students’ attention to two steles which remind us that as part of Operation Turquoise deployed by France officially to “stop the massacres”but according to Stanley“instead they helped the genocidaires to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo”. Operation Turquoise saved 10 000 Tutsis, but some soldiers are also accused of having raped Tutsi women. Instruction is at a standstill. The guide also shows what remains of a volleyball court installed by the French army when it was established in Murambi, transformed into a camp. “To get the ball, the soldiers had to step over the pits” (where the bodies of the victims were piled up).

“The names of the soldiers have disappeared”

“Sorry, but before wasn’t there the name of the soldiers?” asks Muriel Blanc. “The texts have been revised”, replies Stanley, “Ah”reacts the teacher who had already come to the scene in 2019, “and at the time, there were the names of the French soldiers involved on the steles, now that no longer appears so I ask myself questions, did geopolitics intervene in all of this and the fact that relations Franco-Rwandan relations are improving, the names of the soldiers have disappeared or if it is to speak more broadly of the involvement of France and the heavy responsibilities of France in the genocide against the Tutsis.”

“The shame that he committed these acts and that they are not judged, it is this impunity that shocks the most.”

Félix, final year student

at franceinfo

“It is not normal”blurted out a student. “It’s hard to think that our own soldiers could have acted like this” deplores Hamza. “As a French citizen, it’s important to face thisJudge Félix. Anaïs and Céline measure the scope of this trip to Rwanda on an educational and human level, “It’s good that we made this trip because even if we have classes, we can’t really carry out atrocities. Despite the long months of preparation, it remains difficult even for the teachers.”

Congratulations Lyamukuru, “survivor of the 1994 genocide”, lost his entire family except his brother and wrote a book about it, The hurricane hit Nyondo. She would like to pay a final tribute to the teachers. “I accompany teachers in Rwanda regularly like this class, there are rare teachers who do such work, they started at five, they found out, met us, have an exceptional database. It’s unheard of to build a relationship like that.”
An unwavering link with Rwanda, a small country in East Africa more than 6,000 kilometers from France.