'Even as Rwanda moves on, it does not want to forget...'
[Transcript + audio] Jeb Sharp: The memorial at Murambi sits on a hilltop near the town of Gikongoro in the southwest. The site was supposed to be a technical college. The campus was still under construction when the genocide began. Thousands of Tutsis sought refuge in the empty buildings. They were slaughtered there. The bodies were dumped into mass graves.
The day I visit with my translator, the place is deserted. There are two guides who work at the memorial. They catch a ride up with us from the village below. A lone dog lies in the road near the entrance. It heaves itself up and lopes off into the grass. Rolling green farmland stretches out in every direction. All you can hear is the buzz of insects. One of the guides, Francois Rusanganwa, launches into his spiel.
Rusanganwa: "Many people, Tutsis, have been killed here, in 1994. They came here to find their protection because it was the plan of the genocide by the authorities told them to come here, to be protected."
Sharp: But it was really a ruse, according to Rusanganwa, to get the Tutsis to assemble in one place to be killed. Rusanganwa explains that a year after the massacre some of the bodies were exhumed and reburied. About a thousand were kept above ground for the memorial. I brace myself, knowing I'm about to see those remains...
Read entire article at Public Radio International/The World
The day I visit with my translator, the place is deserted. There are two guides who work at the memorial. They catch a ride up with us from the village below. A lone dog lies in the road near the entrance. It heaves itself up and lopes off into the grass. Rolling green farmland stretches out in every direction. All you can hear is the buzz of insects. One of the guides, Francois Rusanganwa, launches into his spiel.
Rusanganwa: "Many people, Tutsis, have been killed here, in 1994. They came here to find their protection because it was the plan of the genocide by the authorities told them to come here, to be protected."
Sharp: But it was really a ruse, according to Rusanganwa, to get the Tutsis to assemble in one place to be killed. Rusanganwa explains that a year after the massacre some of the bodies were exhumed and reburied. About a thousand were kept above ground for the memorial. I brace myself, knowing I'm about to see those remains...