Huye/Nyamagabe- Staff from the Office of the Ombudsman, over the weekend,visited a number of genocide memorial sites in the Southern Province to honour the victims of the 1994 genocide against Tutsis.

The officials visited the Murambi memorial site in Nyamagabe District and the National University of Rwanda (NUR) in Huye district,  as well as the Kinazi memorial sites.

At Murambi, the officials heard how about 50,000 Tutsi, who sought refugee at the then technical school, now transformed into a memorial site, were brutally and savagely killed by interahamwe militias with the help of the gendarmerie and soldiers.

At the NUR memorial, they honoured over 500 staff and students who died at the campus during the 1994 genocide. At the site, staff members from the Ombudsman office expressed deep sorrow and condemned the intellectuals’ involvement in the killings.

The Ombudsman, Tito Rutaremara, noted that various factors contributed to the execution of the genocide, citing bad governance, discrimination, impunity,  corruption and  injustice as some of the causes.

"But with the leadership which  prioritises good governance, genocide is not possible: Some [leaders] are busy fighting corruption, others are against injustice in the society and their colleagues are occupied with other developmental  activities. There can’t be genocide when people are constructive,,” Rutaremara noted.

He appealed for everyone’s involvement in the fight against all kinds of  evil which led to genocide in the 1994.

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