Rwanda Is a Beautiful Country Still Coming to Terms With an Ugly Past
By Sharon Broussard | November 11, 2011 | Rwanda
The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre is built over the remains of 300,000 victims of the 1994 genocide.Photo: Jody Kurash, Associated Press
Thanks to the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University, I'm in Rwanda for the next two weeks. When most people think of Rwanda, they think of the 1994 genocide where nearly a million people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were shot or hacked to death with machetes by extremist Hutus. President Paul Kagame, who once chased those Hutus out of the country, thinks of a grand, modern Kigali, and already you can see his vision taking shape. The airport is being expanded, hotels are shooting up, Chinese contractors are building roads and slums are being cleared for affordable housing or more profitable investments.
The Homes of the Living
Slum-clearing is controversial even in a place like Rwanda, where the government allows little dissent. One mother of two said she was \"very angry\" about her move four years ago from Kiyovu cy'abakene to Batsinda, outside of Kigali. She said she and others can no longer walk into Kigali, impairing people's ability to find jobs or get their children into decent schools. The cratered dirt road to Batsinda (no guard rails) is a hazard to life and limb and desperately needs paving. Government compensation was also too low, she said through a translator. \"We were just cheated,\" the woman added later, in an email. \"It is so disgusting how it happened.\" A fence surrounds her simple but solid cement house, which has running water and a cistern. But in her email, the woman said the anxiety and stress of her expropriation were not worth it, unless new opportunities come to Batsina.
The Bones of the Dead
It's amazing that such a beautiful country was the scene of such evil. The view from Hotel Rwanda, now renamed Hotel des Mille Collines, where Paul Rusesabagina famously saved hundreds of Tutsis, is of undulating hills and green mountains. So is the view for the not so fortunate -- those who were murdered and laid to rest in the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in the heart of the capital. The remains of about 300,000 people are in white coffins buried under 14 cement blocks in the lush garden, said a museum guide on Wednesday. A fountain gurgles loudly. Visitors are silent. Family members and foreign dignitaries bring flower arrangements to remember the unthinkable, maybe even the unforgivable. Inside a small museum, tourists see pictures of the dead, videotaped accounts by survivors and the machetes and guns that hordes of Hutu militia members used to slaughter men, women and children from April 6, 1994, until they were defeated by Paul Kagame's Tutsi-led rebel group that July. \"Tutsis were not human beings then,\" said one survivor in a video in the museum. For some, the nightmare continues. People still find body parts around the city and bring them to the center, 17 years later. There is room for more, said a guide. Sharon Broussard, associate editor and editorial writer for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, is in Rwanda on a two-week Gatekeeper Editor fact-finding trip with the International Reporting Project (IRP).
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