The genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis of Rwanda explained to its children (eBook)

Jean-Marie Vianney Rurangwa (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
110 Seiten
Books on Demand (Verlag)
978-2-322-60680-1 (ISBN)

Infos

« In a dialogical, clear, pedagogical style and a resolutely scientific, documented, and reasoned approach, the author, through his spokesman, Professor Jean de Dieu Namahire, explains the unheard-of crime that bereaved Rwanda in 1994 by answering questions about its genesis, its execution and its memory. A beautiful work that easily instructs any reader and is a high quality didactic tool for parents and teachers. » Koulsy Lamko, postfacer

Jean-Marie Vianney Rurangwa was born on 1 February 1959 in Runyinya in the former prefecture of Butare in Rwanda and currently lives astride Rwanda and Canada. He studied French literature and African linguistics at the University of Burundi and the Université Libre de Bruxelles respectively, and sociology at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome and the University of Ottawa, where he obtained a Master's degree and did doctoral studies in sociology. He taught French as a second language for several years at the "Centre de Langues Internationales Charpentier". Fluent in several European languages, Jean-Marie Vianney Rurangwa is in charge of translation services (French, Italian, English, Spanish) at Archipel Research and Consulting Inc. Author of novels, essays, plays and poetry, he is an active member of the AAOF (Association des Auteures et Auteurs de l'Ontario Français) and Mosaïque Interculturelle.

Textauszug

PART ONE :

RETURNING FROM THE NYAMATA

GENOCIDE MEMORIAL

The last Saturday of April 2017, Jean de Dieu Namahire was on his way back from the Nyamata Genocide Memorial with his four children but this time without his wife Sylvie, when he stopped at the «Nyabarongo River Bar», a bar located a few meters from the eponymous river on the left side of the Bugesera-Kigali road, to buy them lemonades and have a beer himself. Previously, this bar was called «Bar Chez Yaburunga», named after its owner Jean-Marc Yaburunga, a Tutsi merchant from the region. Since the war of liberation unleashed on October 1, 1990 by the RPF3, the local leader of the MRND4, Epimaque Ndimubanzi, an extremist Hutu from the former province of Ruhengeri, forced him to change the name of the bar and to call it from now on – ironically – «Bar de la Concorde»5. During the genocide, when they were tired of their horrible work, the killers who in the meantime had taken over the bar, would come to drink free of charge, its legitimate owner Jean-Marc Yaburunga having left, a week before the genocide, to Bujumbura in Burundi where he had a prosperous business and many bank accounts. Everyone thought he was killed, the day after the attack on the presidential plane on April 6th 1994, in Kigali where he also had a business that was doing very well. After the victory of the RPF over the Genocidal Forces, Jean-Marc Yaburunga returned to Rwanda and went home. He first found that what was once his large and beautiful house was now a pile of rubble. He then learned from his surviving neighbours that all his belongings had been looted and that all his family members had been ignobly massacred before being thrown into the Nyabarongo River by unrepentant MRND and CDR6 militiamen and other ordinary Hutu citizens indoctrinated all day long with hateful words by extremist RTLM7 journalists and encouraged by the inflammatory speeches of the local authorities. Jean-Marc Yaburunga rebuilt and enlarged the bar that the rabid militiamen had meanwhile destroyed before fleeing to Zaïre8, defeated by RPF forces. He called it «Nyabarongo River Bar» in memory of all the members of his family and the people of his region massacred and then thrown into the Nyabarongo River. Usually, on their way back from the Nyamata Genocide Memorial, all the surviving visitors who had just collected in front of the bones of their loved ones in the Nyamata or Ntarama memorial churches would stop at the «Nyabarongo River Bar» to exchange bitter memories of the terrible year over a glass of beer. And sometimes, Jean-Marc Yaburunga, who absolutely wanted to listen to the story of their tragic experiences, joined them and kindly offered them the second round. The «Nyabarongo River Bar» thus became almost every weekend a place of collective catharsis! Sitting on a bench in front of his children in the shade of one of the many straw huts that Jean-Marc Yaburunga had built around the central building of the bar, Jean de Dieu Namahire told his children that he could answer the questions that he had not wanted to answer at home on the last Saturday of the previous month. That Saturday, in fact, in the living room of his sumptuous villa in the Kacyiru district of Kigali, Jean de Dieu Namahire had not been in the mood to say anything. The visit to the memorial church of Nyamata had brought back to his mind all the horrors committed by the assassins in his native Bugesera. After one of the young waitresses at the Nyabarongo River Bar brought them a beer, doughnuts and lemonade, Diane, his youngest daughter, asked her father the first question.

DIANE: Daddy, what’s a memorial?

NAMAHIRE: Before I answer your question, I would like someone to tell me another word that the word «memorial» reminds me of.

YANNICK: Memory!

NAMAHIRE :Okay. And what is memory, Yannick?

YANNICK: It’s being able to remember what you’ve seen and never forget it.

NAMAHIRE: Very good. And the ability or the faculty of remembering what we saw is called «visual memory. »

ALICE: But memory is also being able to remember what you heard, isn’t it, Dad?

NAMAHIRE: Exactly, my daughter! You are absolutely right. And the ability to remember, to keep in your mind what you have heard is called auditory memory. And the human being needs both those memories to remember what has seen or heard. But these two memories are not equal in all individuals. There are people who have more developed visual memory than auditory memory and vice versa. I noticed, for example, that Yvan describes with great precision all the places we have visited while he does not retain some of the things I told you about them. Alice, on the other hand, does not describe with precision all the places we visited, even though she never forgets all the things I’ve told you about them. Yvan is more visual than auditory, while Alice is more auditory than visual. Now I come back to Diane’s question. A memorial can mean three things. The first is a written record of things you want to remember. For example, if I write a book in which I recount everything my parents told me when they were still alive, everything they did for me, everything I did, said and heard as a family, everything my brothers, sisters and I liked to do or say as a family and that I remember vividly, I would call it a “family memorial book”.

A memorial then refers to a monument erected in honour of people who have died by virtue of extraordinary deeds done during their lifetime. For example, to a king, a president, an artist, an ordinary citizen who loved his people very much to the point of sacrificing his life, monuments can be dedicated after their death. To people who lost their lives for their faith or ideas, memorials can also be dedicated. To people who were massacred for their national,

religious, racial, ethnic or political affiliation, memorials can also be dedicated. For example, here in Rwanda, we have monuments in many parts of the country in memory of the Tutsis who were killed during the 1994 genocide for being born Tutsi. You have just visited one in Nyamata. I will show you some others. They are all over the country. But memorials also exist in other countries around the world. Yannick, what did we visit in Uganda last year?

YANNICK: The Namugongo Memorial

NAMAHIRE: What did they tell us about this monument?

YANNICK: We were told that it was built in memory of the forty-five Ugandan Catholic and Anglican martyrs killed by order of King Mwanga II between 1885 and 1887.

NAMAHIRE: Excellent! Can you quote me, Yannick, at least ten of these martyrs?

YANNICK: Yes, Charles Lwanga, Achille Kiwanuka, Kizito, Danieri Nakabandwa, Luc Banabakintu, Adolphe Ludigo Mkasa, Mbaya Tuzinde, Mukasa Musa, Nuwa Sserwanga, Athanase Bazzekuketta.

NAMAHIRE: Very good. You have a very good memory.

DIANA: And what is a martyr, Daddy?

NAMAHIRE: The term is used to refer first of all to a person who was put to death for his or her religious faith or for a cause to which he or she had dedicated himself or herself. For example, those forty-five Ugandans who were burned alive or beheaded for loving Jesus Christ and refusing to betray or deny Him are called martyrs. Those who were killed for preaching peace, racial or religious tolerance among peoples are also martyrs of peace. Politicians who fought for the independence of their countries and who were killed by scoundrels for this purpose are also martyrs. Yes, martyrs or heroes of the homeland. And every country has its martyrs. But let us return to the term «memorial». When I was doing my doctoral studies in Belgium, I had the opportunity to visit in Brussels the «Arcades du Cinquantenaire», a monument erected on the initiative of King Leopold II on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Belgian independence. People say that when they were built, the socialist politician Emile Vandervelde called them «the arcades of the severed hands».

YANNICK: Because the people who built them lost their hands, dad?

NAMAHIRE: No, because the money that financed this work came from Congolese rubber.

YANNICK: Dad, I don’t see the connection between the rubber and the hands that were cut off.

NAMAHIRE: I was going to explain it to you.

DIANE: Daddy, first tell me what rubber is!

NAMAHIRE: Rubber is a material that can be obtained by processing latex …

DIANE: And what is latex?

NAMAHIRE: Latex is defined as a liquid substance, with a more or less thick consistency, secreted by certain plants such as rubber trees. And the latex that is extracted from it is used to make rubber.

DIANE: And what is rubber used for, Dad?

NAMAHIRE: Rubber is used to do many things. For example, it is used to make disposable gloves, belts and tires. It is also used to make artificial turf, artificial lawns, or to cover tennis rackets.

YANNICK: And now why were the «Arcades du Cinquantenaire» called «the arches of cut hands»?

NAMAHIRE: I’ll tell you. At the end of the Berlin Conference held in Germany from November 15th, 1884 to February26th, 1885, the leaders of the great nations that had just divided Africa recognized the Congo as the private property of King Leopold II of Belgium, which was called the «Independent State of the Congo. »

YVAN: What do you mean, dad,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.7.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• ISBN-10: 2-322-60680-4 / 2322606804
• ISBN-13: 978-2-322-60680-1 / 9782322606801