Rwanda

As we drove slowly down the dirt road and entered the small town of Ntarama three young children ran out from between two houses to the passenger’s side window. They spoke with our interpreter who then passed on that the children wanted us to see the town’s church just up the hill. Not much further down the road we could see the small red brick church at the top of a small hill to the right.

We got out of the vehicle and started walking towards the church. Then, about 20 meters ahead, on the ground to my right, I noticed what looked to be someone laying face down. On closer inspection it was a decomposing body, obviously still there from the time of the genocide. As we started to get closer to the church the number of bodies increased. There were possibly 20 laying about in various stages of decomposition.

Obviously, this was the sight of a massacre that had yet to be cleaned up, for whatever reason. What was to confront me in the church I will never forget.

Peering in through the main door there were hundreds of bodies, still lying strewn all about, over the pews, and each other. There was no way to walk through the church without walking over people so we just stood on the pews closer to the door to inspect the room as best as we could.

The smell is something I hope to never experience again.

Later we were to learn that this church massacre had been preserved by the local people as a reminder of what happened in Rwanda, and would be made into some type of memorial, which it now has.



The story goes that the Tutsis of the area fled to the church in the hope that they would be protected there. Unfortunately, the Priest was a Hutu, and advised the Interahamwe militia that his church was full of Tutsis and that he would keep them there. Late in the evening, the militia came, threw hand grenades into the church, and then proceeded to hack their way through the church with machetes.

Only a couple of people survived.



On 12 March this year, the priest's sentence was increased from 15 years to life in jail. On hearing the news, it brought back some painful memories. Not really of my own experience in Rwanda, but of the atrocities that were committed by human against human, neighbour against neighbour, friend against friend, doctor against patient, and priest against parishioner. The stories are almost too incredible to believe. The women were treated especially brutally prior to being killed, often in front of their husbands and children.

Another perspective

The Church: A sancuary of death

For those who have seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, it's a good way of getting a feeling for what went on, but it concentrates on a personal story, not the real violence, or history.

Putting Rwanda Genocide into Amazon will get you plenty of options for a book. I've read a few but recommend: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, by Philip Gourevitch, with a review here.

The lead up to the genocide is quite complex and I could not cover all the detail but for those interested, Wikipedia does a pretty good job of it here.


In 1994 I deployed to Rwanda as part of UNAMIR II, the UN mission that deployed to stabilise the country after the genocide.

I deployed as the Administration/Operations Officer of the Australian Medical Support Force based in Kigali.

While a life changing event for myself, I can still hardly imagine what both the Hutu and Tutsi has gone through over the past 200 years of continued violence and what must be incredibly deep seeded pain, and hatred.

Probably only to be repeated in the future.


I'm still not sure what I've learnt from this experience, except for how brutal people can be too each other.