The 1994 Genocide

But the real change came as we neared Kigali. We were leaning on a wall looking down at Rwanda's main river - the heavily sedimented red brown River Kagera. Our guide was Rwandan and we had been reticent about raising the subject of the 1994 genocide, an horrific and relatively recent part of Rwandan history. But as we were on the way to see the Genocide Memorial it came naturally into the conversation. When we did raise the subject Kirenga was open and direct about it. In fact one sentence stands out from our memories of this journey.

"It wasn't until mutilated bodies started to pile up against the wall of the Owen Falls Dam on the upper Nile that the international community started to take reports of violence in Rwanda seriously".

It was the River Kagera below us that had carried the bodies to Lake Victoria

The Memorial (left) takes the form of a modern exhibition setting out a graphic description of the sequence of events. Outside the Memorial building there are actual mass graves (right) with internal views coverd by Rwandan flags, (below). The account includes by way of context descriptions of the build up to other genocides including the Jewish holocaust in the Second World war, the Armenian massacres in Turkey in the First Great War and more recently the Kmer Rouge killings in Cambodia and slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans after the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

MASS GRAVE INTERIORS
The inside of mass graves with flags covering the buried bodies






















What the Memorial Account does not in our view adequately describe is the the 1994 genocide was one episode in a long term struggle for supremacy between the Hutus and the Tutsis which had not only continued sporadically for years but had involved an extended area of central and eastern Africa including Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Congo (DRC) in addition to Rwanda. The First and Second Congo Wars, the Burundi Civil war all originated from this same ongoing conflict.

This would partly explain why it took so long for neighbouring countries never mind the international community to take seriously new reports of violence in Rwanda in 1994. What was new? This is where our guide's reference to bodies piling up behind a dam on the Nile becomes significant. For this to happen meant that that bodies in incredible numbers were being carried from Rwanda (see map below) through western Tanzania, into Lake Victoria at Bukoba (see map) across the lake and into the White Nile a distance of up to 300 miles.
___________________________________________________________________
Below: Map of Lake Victoria showing the surrounding countries involved or affected by the Hutu Tutsi conflicts. Also shown are BUKOBA (left centre of Lake) where the River Kagera enters the Lake JINJA (top centre) where the White Nile leaves the Lake.