Students from several institutions of higher learning on Monday visited Nyandungu Genocide Memorial site in Gasabo District as part of the countrywide mourning week that came to a close yesterday.

They included students from the School of Finance and Banking (SFB), Kigali Institute of Management (KIM) and the Adventist University-Mudende.

The main propose of the visit was to join efforts in cleaning the memorial site that is located along the Kigali-Kayonza highway.

During the event, Anatole Manzi, the president of the Survivor Students’ Association (AERG-SFB) urged those present, especially survivors of the Genocide, to always work hard and become achievers, in order to give their loved ones the respect they lost.

He added that all Rwandans should always strive to ensure that the memorial sites are well tended throughout the course of the year, and not wait for the mourning period.

"We shall never sit and watch the remains of our people getting destroyed every now and then; this is the right time to give them respect in their burial grounds,” Manzi said.

The remarks were sparked off by the state in which the Nyandungu site is in where running water has found its way inside the site, threatening to wash away the remains.

The remains at the site are not properly kept and students tried to do a general cleaning out and inside it but they could not get far due to the poor state it is in, which also incited trauma in some of the students.

Bernadette Niyonzinza, the president of AERG-KIM, accused some local leaders of being reluctant to render support in maintaining the site.

The students agreed to organize a general cleaning that will bring together all students from these institutions to dig trenches to divert the water.

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