In Rwanda, thirty years after the Tutsi genocide
How to commemorate a genocide? Thirty years later, the shadow of a bloody memory continues to weigh on the land of a thousand hills. On April 7, 1994, the day after the attack on President Habyarimana's plane, one of the largest waves of massacres of the end of the 20th century began. In three months, around 800,000 men, women and children (Tutsis and Hutus considered too moderate) were massacred, often with knives, at the initiative of Hutu extremists. Thirty years later, all over the world, universities, museums and cities will reflect on this occasion on the questions left open by the Rwandan genocide. What understanding of the drama do we have today?
Are gray areas doomed to remain so? Why do historians and political figures continue to disagree on the causes of the inability of the international community to put a rapid end to the massacres at the time? How did the Rwandans, finally, perceive the action of the international, French and Belgian justice systems which judged some of the genocidaires?
Of course, today, Rwanda, ruled with an iron fist since 1994 by Colonel Paul Kagame, who aspires to make his country “the Singapore of Africa” with encouraging economic results, is looking towards the future. One in two Rwandans is under 20 years old. Only one in four inhabitants experienced the events of 1994. But, even among the younger generations, the trauma of these three disastrous months of 1994 remains. Thirty years later, we continue to discover and exhume mass graves from the Rwandan genocide.
