As Rwanda marks 30 years of commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, survivors are reminded of the bloody and painful struggle they faced during 100 days that saw many lose most of their loved ones.

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Some were left as one tree standing. April, 7 of every year, Rwanda pays tribute to more than one million lives lost during the Genocide with a Flame of Remembrance that burns for 100 days at the Kigali Genocide Memorial.

While delivering his remarks during the 30 commemoration ceremony at BK Arena, President Paul Kagame shared his personal story, usually kept to himself.

It is a story of how his cousin sister, Florence, was left to die at the hands of genocidal militia while the peacekeeping soldiers were ordered to protect diplomats and foreign civilians. A story of value attached to two shades of life, and that many Rwandans relate with.

In 1994, Florence worked for the United Nations Development Program in Rwanda for more than fifteen years, and the Genocide found her trapped in her house near the Camp Kigali army barracks, with her niece, other children and neighbours.

There were around a dozen people in total, Kagame narrated.

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"The telephone in Florence’s house still worked, and I called her several times using my satellite phone. Each time we spoke, she was more desperate. But our forces could not reach the area.”

At that time, General Romeo Dallaire, who was the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, visited Kagame in Mulindi, and he asked him to rescue Florence, to which Dallaire said he would try.

"The last time I talked to her, I asked her if anyone had come. She said no, and started crying. Then she said, ‘Paul, you should stop trying to save us. We don’t want to live anymore anyway.’ And she hung up,” he recalls.

While he had a very strong heart, Kagame felt it weakened a bit because he understood what she meant.

"On the morning of May 16th, following a month of torture, they were all killed, except for one niece, who managed to escape, thanks to a good neighbour. It later emerged that a Rwandan working at the UNDP betrayed his Tutsi colleagues to the killers.”

According to Kagame, witnesses remember the traitor celebrating Florence’s murder the night after the attack, and he continued his career with the United Nations for many years, even after evidence implicating him emerged.

"He is still a free man, now living in France.”

Though President Kagame did not mention the name of the man who was responsible for the murder of his cousin, and hundreds other genocide victims, at the time, genocide survivors and a UN investigation in 2001, revealed that it was Callixte Mbarushimana, the then Executive Secretary of the DR Congo-based FDLR genocidal militia.

Mbarushimana was, in January 2011, transferred from France to the International Criminal Court (ICC), in The Hague, for trial and detention over crimes the genocidal militia he led committed in DR Congo, but he was never prosecuted. He returned to France where lives as a free man.

In 2010, Rwanda’s Prosecution sent an indictment – with genocide charges – to France but nothing has been done.

Mbarushimana is accused of playing a central role in organizing and executing massacres in Kigali during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, when he took over the administration of UNDP offices in Kigali after the evacuation of expatriates. He is believed to have used the logistics of the United Nations in killing sprees across the city.

When the Genocide began on April 7, 1994, it is reported that Mbarushimana was a computer technician with UNDP, in Kigali.

In 2001, the UN conducted its own investigation and linked Mbarushimana with the murder of 32 people, including Tutsi colleagues at the UNDP, during the Genocide.

When Kagame asked Dallaire what had happened, he said that his soldiers encountered a militia roadblock near the house, and they turned back. Meanwhile, Dallaire conveyed an order from the United States Ambassador to protect diplomats and foreign civilians evacuating by road to Burundi from attack by the militias.

"These two things happened at the same time. I did not need to be instructed to do something that goes without saying. That’s what I was going to do,” Kagame said.

"I do not blame General Dallaire. He is a good man who did the best that could be done in the worst conditions imaginable, and who has consistently borne witness to the truth, despite the personal cost.”

However, in the contrast between the two cases, Kagame "took note of the value that is attached to different shades of life.”

Dared to do the needful

The Head of State also shared another story whereby in the latter days of the Genocide, Kagame received a surprise visit past midnight from General Dallaire, again.

He brought a written message, of which Kagame still has a copy, from the French General commanding the force that France had just deployed in the western part of the country, Operation Turquoise.

"The message said that we would pay a heavy price if our forces dared to try to capture the town of Butare, in the southern part of our country,” he said, adding that Dallaire also warned him that the French had attack helicopters and every kind of heavy weapon to use in case the Rwandan liberators did not comply.

I asked Dallaire whether French soldiers bleed the same way ours do; whether we have blood in our bodies. Then I thanked him, and told him he should just go and get some rest and sleep, after informing the French that our response would follow.”

Indeed, the response followed, Kagame immediately radioed the commander of the forces they had in that area, Gen (rtd) Fred Ibingira, and told him to get ready to move.

"We took Butare at dawn. Within weeks, the entire country had been secured, and we began rebuilding. We did not have the kind of arms that were being used to threaten us, but I reminded some people that this is our land, this is our country. Those who bleed will bleed on it,” he noted.

The Head of State emphasized that each challenge or indignity just made Rwandans stronger.

"Our people will never — and I mean never — be left for dead again.”