EASTERN PROVINCE

NGOMA — All roads in Ngoma district on Monday afternoon led to Kibungo Parish as thousands of people converged to mourn their loved ones massacred during the 1994 Genocide.

People who included relatives, friends, survivors and well wishers from the district, first gathered in Kibungo Parish Church for a requiem mass before proceeding in a single procession to Kibungo memorial centre in Amahoro cell, where they laid wreaths at the site with remains of 20,000 victims. A night before, the mourners spent a night vigil at the site.

On Tuesday they held another procession to Economat Kibungo where remains of another 10,000 group of victims who had sought refugee there, are buried.

The memorial centre contains only bodies of those who were killed at Economat Kibungo and Kibungo sector headquarters formerly Birenga commune.

During the commemoration, MP Liberate Irambona observed that 14 years after the Genocide, some people still habour genocide ideology despite government’s unity and reconciliation campaign.

The law maker appealed to the survivors especially the youth to work hard, and study to ‘fill the gaps left by their late relatives and friends.’

She called for cooperation between the survivors, Genocide criminals who were forgiven after revealing the truth, leaders, the government and all Rwandans in order to weed out the vice.

With 14 cases of genocide ideology, Ngoma district ranked top, countrywide last year among the districts where the ideology was rife.

"But you should know that even if we help the survivors with shelter, without visiting to comfort them they will never feel at home," Irambona said.

"We should be close to them and be with them in such days (mourning period) to help them in healing the Genocide wounds. Survivors are still many, they need us and we should also be there for them."

She added, "We have a government that does not discriminate among Rwandans. The government wants all citizens to live in peace and this in what everyone should struggle for."

Francois Niyotwagira, the district Mayor warned Genocide perpetrators, saying they would be tracked everywhere.

"It’s hard to forgive some one who is still bothering you. They committed atrocities but they seem not to be done. This time they should count their plans a myth more than a reality," he said.

"Genocide affected all Rwandans not only those who call themselves Hutu or Tutsi. The consequences are affecting us all," Emmanuel Rutagendwa of IBUKA said.

"And by this time we should count our selves as one in the same country (Rwanda) but not Hutu, Tutsi or Twa," he added.

The 1994 Genocide claimed about one million Rwandans.

Ends