The government has announced that the Nyanza Genocide Memorial Site is to be turned into a monument symbolising the international community’s failure to stop the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. This could not have come at a better time.

Almost 15 years after the Genocide, some individuals, or rather countries, seem to have forgotten the plight of the Tutsis who were massacred in their thousands on a daily basis for one hundred days while the entire world watched and followed the events from the comfort of their couches – in the media.

There arguably could not have been a better example than the recent arrest of Rose Kabuye, a woman who stopped the Genocide, her arrest being sanctioned by the same countries that watched as the blood-thirsty militias massacred innocent victims.

Some of these countries, we dare say, even facilitated these killings both directly or indirectly. The memorial site will therefore stand as a monument of ‘shame’, especially against the unrepentant who still do not apologise for the worst human tragedy to ever take place.

At the site, are buried thousands of people who would not have met their untimely deaths had there been an inch of effort by UN troops to whom they had gone to seek protection.

Instead, these soldiers who were at the ETO technical school did the most cowardly thing by brazenly boarding their trucks for the airport and off they flew to the comforts of their countries.

This, they did without even considering toddlers who cried out for mercy as machete wielding militias attacked the school even before the last of these troops could board their trucks.

Some did not even feel ashamed of taking with them their pets—dogs and cats at the expense of these babies!

Let the world be haunted by this historic garden at the Nyanza Genocide Memorial Site, for failing these innocent people.  Let it be a reminder of the ‘Never Again’ vow; that never shall the international community, more specifically the UN, stand aside again while innocent civilians are massacred.

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