Hundreds of mourners over the weekend thronged the fishing village of Kasensero in southern Uganda to pay tribute to victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that were recovered from Lake Victoria.
The commemoration event was held at Kasensero Genocide Memorial where mass graves containing remains of nearly 3,000 victims who were killed and dumped in water bodies in Rwanda that are tributaries to Lake Victoria.
The ceremony was marked by prayers and hymns as well as laying of wreaths on the mass graves.
The mourners, led by Rwanda’s High Commissioner to Uganda, Frank Mugambage, condemned Genocide propagators and revisionists.
In reference to the FDLR militia that operates in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the envoy called on the mourners to resolve to always challenge genocidal ideology, hate campaigns and divisionism.
"The unity of Rwandans is strong enough to defeat these negative forces wherever they are,” Mugambage told the mourners, who included a delegation from Humura Genocide survivors association in Rwanda.
He announced that there are plans to upgrade the Genocide sites into international centres of learning.
Mhamood Noordin Thobani, a Ugandan businessman who played a significant role in giving the victims a decent burial at this site, donated the land on which the site is established.
In his speech, Thobani announced a donation of 10 million shillings from a friend of Rwanda to help in constructing a new Genocide museum.
Thobani added that he will work closely with the Rwanda High Commission in Uganda in upgrading the memorial sites, starting with Ggolo memorial site which is not only home to the largest number of Genocide victims burried in Uganda but is also more accessible compared to Lambu in Masaka district and Kasensero in Rakai district.
"We want to thank the Rwanda Patriotic Front which stopped the massacres, otherwise all of us here would be in these graves,” Humura vice president Jean Bosco Nubumwe, told the mourners.
Humura handed over a cash donation of two million Uganda shillings to help in the construction of the museum.
Among other planned activities, there will be a fundraiser for the construction of the Ggolo memorial site in Mpigi District in June this year
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