There were dirty old rags with dry cakes of human blood, piles of human femur bones, white and neatly arranged in heaps, one on top of the other, hundreds of human skulls, and more than 1000 hard copies of pictures of the conflict’s victims. They include old and young, men and women pinned to the museum’s wall. These are a few of the grim exhibits at the Kigali Genocide Memorial (KGM) centre in Rwanda. It is a place where any visit is sobering, to some traumatic, but yet irresistible to any tourist visiting the country. For this writer, no trip to Rwanda is complete without a tour of the museum. The making of KGM started on April 7, 1994, when the majority Hutu took up arms against their fellow Tutsi citizens and started killing them. One hundred days after, when the carnage was finally stopped by the invading Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel army from Uganda led by President Paul Kagame, more than 800,000 Rwandese had been killed.
Last Sunday, April 7, 2024 the world stood still for a moment to remember Thursday, April 7, 1994, when hell was unleashed on the beautiful tropical paradise of Rwanda. It was the day Eris, the mythical Greek goddess of strife and discord was let loose on the Land of a Thousand Hills. After 100 days, when normalcy returned, the carnage was unbelievable. Both Tutsis and moderate Hutus were gruesomely murdered in what is referred to as the Rwandan Genocide. This year is the 30th remembrance (Kwibuku) of the killings. The country is currently mourning for one week.
Rwanda as a country has moved on, but she chooses never to forget this blot in her history. It is in remembrance of this, and to graphically capture this episode in the country’s history that the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre was created. However, for any individual beating the drums of civil conflict in a country, it is appropriate for such an individual to visit the Kigali Genocide Museum and understand that no society should choose this road as a means of conflict resolution.
The idea of the Kigali Genocide Memorial was borrowed from the National Holocaust Centre in the United Kingdom. The Rwandan government collaborated with the Aegis Trust for Genocide Prevention, to conceptualize and build the edifice. The KGM is the burial ground for about 250, 000 victims of the genocide.
Located on KG 14 Ave, the KGM is well known in Kigali, any commercial vehicle or local commercial cyclist could take one. The complex is well-organised and orderly. The popularity of the place as a tourist attraction can be seen in the number of visitors that keep coming.
Due to the high number of visitors – both local and inbound tourists – the visit to the structure housing the exhibit from the genocide is done in batches. Visitors are normally prepared with a five-minute explanation from the attendants and curators before entering the edifice.
From the entrance and reception area, the memorial’s main building is directly opposite, less than 30 metres. The surrounding area is decorated with plants and beautiful flowers. On the right is the exit, and on the left is a staircase that leads down to the area where thousands of victims are buried. There are thousands of names of the genocide victims written on the wall.
The main building itself is a one-story building and visitors are told not to take any pictures while on tour of the KGM. To the credit of those who conceptualise the KGM, nothing is done to reduce the gruesomeness or save the visitors from the horror of the 1994 crisis. In most cases, it is not unusual to see visitors burst into loud eerie cries while touring the memorial. Some ended up not being able to cope and had to be carried to the reception area to be pacified. Nobody tours the memorial and would not be made sober by the exhibits of war.
It was opened to the public in 2004, and the Memorial is used for peace and values education which is part of Rwanda’s national schools’ curriculum. The country wants to use it to strengthen community resilience against division.
Speaking about the memorial, according to the centre, “Kigali’s Mayor – along with Rwanda’s Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture – visited the UK National Holocaust Centre, created by the founders of the Aegis Trust. They identified this as a valuable model. A place to honour those murdered in the past, it is also one where young people meet survivors and explore important questions for the present and future. So the Aegis Trust was invited to establish the Kigali Genocide Memorial.
“Aegis was briefed to establish the Kigali Genocide Memorial as a place confronting the ideas which lead to genocide; not one which could alienate the children of perpetrators. This commitment to remembrance as a starting point for Rwandan unity and global learning tied in with the Aegis model for genocide prevention. It laid the foundations for the Memorial to become a place with a truly global vision.”
After the Genocide against the Tutsi was stopped by the RPF in 1994, Kigali’s authorities chose this hillside in Gisozi for mass graves where 250,000 residents murdered during the genocide could have their final resting-place. Memorial buildings were put up beside the mass graves.”
Scars of war are difficult to heal, sometimes they never do. Rwanda has learned to move ahead as the country is doing well in almost every developmental index, but scratching a little underneath, the psychological scars of war, have not fully healed.
Little wonder that the Rwandan President, while speaking at the 30th Kwabuku said: “Our journey has been long and tough. Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss, and the lessons we learned are engraved in blood. But the tremendous progress of our country is plain to see, and it is the result of the choices we made together to resurrect our nation.
“The foundation of everything is unity. That was the first choice: to believe in the idea of a reunited Rwanda and live accordingly. The second choice was to reverse the arrow of accountability, which used to point outwards, beyond our borders. Now, we are accountable to each other, above all.”
At the Kigali Genocide Memorial, though a tourist site for locals and visitors to Rwanda, the message for humanity resonates beyond the boundaries of tourism and speaks to the real essence of humanity. It is like a place of purification where locals and visitors go to learn about horror men are capable of inflicting against fellow humans, and use these images to personally commit oneself to the ideals of peaceful living.