Editor,

Refer to the article, "First Lady pays tribute to liberators” (The New Times, July 2).

The memory of those liberators still looms large. I remember when they emerged in the morning and found us (myself and my surviving family) in the swamp. One of them put his gun over the shoulder and tended his consoling hand to us. One by one, we came out of the swamp facing a new life towards us.

I will never forget that time, and I will never forget their battle-hardened but warm faces. They took us into one room and told us that they would be coming to take us into refuge during the evening. At around six, they came back and took us to their bases where génocidaires could never find us, where we were able to sleep once again without fearing that our mothers, sisters and daughters would be raped, mutilated, tortured and then killed.

Today I say, "Thank you so much for sacrificing your lives to liberate Rwanda, and thank you so much dear First Lady for paying tribute to those heroes”.

Dan Rumanzi, Rwanda