WESTERN PROVINCE

KARONGI — "It was God’s mercy that I spent a whole day under dead bodies. Others had been killed but I thought that it was wise to die in the house of God,” narrates a survivor, Agnes Mukantabana.

Mukantabana recounted the kind of  suffering she had to endure in a Catholic church during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi.

During a burial ceremony of about 420 victims of Genocide at Home St. Jean cemetery in Karongi district, grief engulfed every one including the provincial Governor over the testimony Agnes gave.

Mukantabana was a resident of Mubuga Sector in Karongi district.

On 6th April, 1994, she and her family heard shots being fired. They were later told that killings had commenced after the shooting down of the former President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane.

"The killings started and every one had to look for a place to hide,” she says.

On the morning of April 10, Mukantabana’s neighbour was murdered and her father decided to find a hiding place for them. She said that immediately after her neighbour’s death, women and children were told to hide in Mubuga Catholic church.

"Later, the church priest handed over the keys to the Interahamwe whereupon they embarked on eliminating innocent people hiding inside the church,’ she said as tears started rolling down her face.

"The priest had first sung burial hymns to us before leaving the church,” she added. The men who were also hiding with us could not offer any form of credible resistance from the fury and the tenacity of the killer gangs.

"They were no match to the interahamwe and the church turned bloody in just a matter of time.” Whenever the killers approached, Mukantabana and another woman who was carrying a baby hid among the dead bodies.

"An Interahamwe militia member came and snatched the baby from the woman who was hiding next to me. He hit the baby on the altar and it died on the spot. He then killed the woman. I was safely hidden among corpses.”

In the evening after the killers were satisfied that they had finished off their work, she recalled that she thought that it was safe to get out of the church.

"As I crawled out, the priest saw me and he started shouting. To confuse him I also shouted and pretending as if I was a killer too.

"Before leaving the church, I met my young sister who told me that my father had been killed by our closest Hutu neighbour.”

At that moment she broke down and she started wailing uncontrollably. Luckily, Mukantabana managed to escape. 

Ends