The City of Kigali will today remember 47 victims of the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi who were staff of the Kigali prefecture at that time.

This commemoration event will be started with a visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial where Genocide victims will be honoured, and mourners will later head to the City Hall for testimony sharing and other activities.

During the Genocide, Kigali prefecture was headed by Tharcisse Renzaho, a war criminal and Genocide convict who was the prefect, a Colonel in the Forces Armes Rwandaises (FAR), and the president of the Civil Defence Committee for Kigali.

He fled Rwanda in July 1994 when RPA-Inkotanyi forces took control of the country, and went to Zaire where he was arrested in 2002. He was being charged with genocide, or, in the alternative, complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity (murder and rape) and war crimes (murder and rape) for his role in the Genocide against Tutsi.

Renzaho was in July 2009 found guilty of genocide, murder and rape as crimes against humanity and murder and rape as war crimes. Specifically, the ICTR concluded that Renzaho had supported the killings of Tutsis at roadblocks, which were set up following his directives.

He was also found guilty to have ordered the distribution of weapons that were later used to kill Tutsis, and that he had supervised a selection process at a refugee site called CELA, where about 40 Tutsis were abducted and killed.

The trial chamber also found that Renzaho had participated in an attack at the Sainte Famille church, where more than 100 Tutsis had been killed, and that he had also encouraged the sexual abuse of women and was found criminally liable for the rape that followed.

Renzaho was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in these events, and this decision was upheld by the Appeals Chamber in 2011. 

Kigali is among the areas that were most hard hit by the Genocide due to the concentration of anti-Tutsi armed forces and militia. Its residents couldn’t even manage to cross over to other parts of the country because of several major roadblocks.

The Kigali Genocide Memorial alone is home to a quarter of all Genocide victims and it is not the only one in Kigali.