Wiping out Tutsi families during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi was premeditated by anti-Tutsi extremists and the genocidal regime, Jean-Damascene Bizimana, the Minister for National Unity and Civic Engagement has said.

"They proudly said it in their political gatherings that in the future, people will look back in history and wonder how a Tutsi person looked like and fail to know,” Bizimana said in a documentary streamed during the commemoration event for completely wiped out families at the Kigali Genocide Memorial on June 4.

He said, we mostly trace the hatred against Tutsi between 1990 and 1994, but to fully understand the Genocide against Tutsi, we have to go way back because it is where the hate ideology started.

"Hate seeds were sown in 1959, but words about the extermination of Tutsi were said by Kayibanda in 1964, he had talked about an apocalypse for Tutsi in 1963. There were no new terminologies. Instead, this ideology was taught since Gitera’s leadership and Kayibanda took it on from 1963 to 1973. Habyarimana then implemented it in his politics; education, social affairs and in governance. All this made the plan to exterminate Tutsi possible,” Bizimana added.

Every year since 2009, the Alumni of Genocide Survivors’ Students Association (GAERG) holds memorial events for families that were not survived, with the theme "Ntukazime nararokotse” (Never be forgotten when I survived).

A family is considered wiped out when both parents and all the children in the household are killed.

The most recent count that was concluded in 2019 by the association indicates that there were 15,593 completely wiped out families comprising 68,871people.

This year’s commemoration event had different activities such as poems, reading out names of wiped out families, and songs, among others.

Speaking at the event, the Vice President of GAERG, Dimitrie Sissi Mukanyiligira said that remembering wiped out families is to weaken the main goal of the Interahamwe, Impuzamugambi, their trainers and supporters to exterminate Tutsi.

"This is a special time to tell stories and remember the values of our elders, men, women, and people that were our age, who were killed just because they were Tutsi. It is also a time to thank Inkotanyi who made sure that we were not exterminated like the genocide planners had orchestrated,” Mukanyiligira said.

She further called for support during the association’s campaign to document survivors’ stories in the form of books and documentaries.

Mukanyiligira herself launched her book ‘Do not accept to die,’ that talks about her survival of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and how she embraced life despite many challenges.