April 12, 1994 brought out the worst of mankind one can ever imagine during the Genocide against the Tutsi. Genocidaires went all out to apply the most gruesome methods of taking human life.
According to available documents, in Kayonza District, pregnant women would be cut open, and the foetuses they carried removed and burned. There were cases of men’s genitals that were cut off, including in the current Nyamasheke District.
The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was so cruel that there were even cases of cannibalism practiced in Church premised in Nyarubuye, Kirehe District. The genocidal machinery was getting more and more enthusiastic in recording the highest number of Tutsi killed across the country.
Calls were being made to intensify the killings, bodies were piling up on streets and bulldozers had been called in to push the bodies in mass graves, some of which were already prepared even before the first person could be killed.
The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi was in full scale.
Call on all Hutu to use extreme measures in exterminating Tutsi
Speaking Radio Rwanda, the national broadcaster early on the morning of April 12, MDR-Power leader Frodoard Karamira told listeners that killing the Tutsi was "everyone’s responsibility,” a message that would be repeated frequently over the next few weeks.
He called on Hutu to "not fight among themselves” but rather to "assist the armed forces to finish their work.” This was a directive to the MDR-Power supporters to put aside their indifferences with other extremist outfits like MRND and CDR and join the common front of exterminating the Tutsi.
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On the same day, Radio Rwanda aired a press release from the Ministry of Defence. It denied claims of divisions in the armed forces and among Hutu generally and insisted that: "Soldiers, gendarmes [Police], and all Rwandans have decided to fight their common enemy in unison and all have identified the enemy. The enemy is still the same. He is the one who has always been trying to return the monarch who was overthrown....”
On the same date, the genocidal government left Kigali and set up in Gitarama, the present-day Muhanga city - where it continued to coordinate the extermination of the Tutsi in all prefectures.
Romeo Dallaire report
On the April 12, 1994, General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded UNAMIR, the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, learnt from UN military observers that massacres were underway in Gisenyi and Kibungo.
He reported that in Kigali, prisoners had been deployed to remove the bodies from the streets and thrown in dumpsters or mass graves dug by bulldozers, to ensure that the few international journalists who were in Kigali don’t capture the full scale of the killings.
These mass graves were dug by the department bridges and roads in the Ministry of Public Works (MINITRAPE) under the supervision of Alphonse Ntirivamunda the son-in-law of President Juvenal Habyarimana.
Boutros-Ghali proposes withdrawal of UNAMIR
In Bonn, W. Claes, the Belgian Minister for Foreign Affairs, told Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the then Secretary General of the UN: "UNAMIR has become useless. [...] UNAMIR is in danger. [...] There is an anti-Belgian climate.” He proposed "the suspension and withdrawal of UNAMIR."
Boutros-Ghali replied: "I share your analysis. " Until then, the United Nations consistently refused to strengthen the mandate of UNAMIR – the UN mission in Rwanda – despite relentless appeals from General Dallaire.
Boutros-Boutros Ghali was out of his office in the United States throughout, he continued his travels abroad despite alarming reports from UNAMIR reporting several massacres since April 7.
Tutsi dumped in River Nyabarongo
Meanwhile, on the same day, Tutsi from Kamonyi district were dumped in Nyabarongo river at a spot called Ruramba. The victims were Kigese health Centre where they had taken refuge and brought to Nyabarongo and drowned.
This continued in the following days, those who would be found alive would be thrown into the river sometimes after walking a very long journey of more than three hours.