The National Industrial Research and Development Agency (NIRDA) staff and its partners on Friday, May 12, honoured former employees of the now defunct Institut de Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (IRST) killed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
The Agency took over from IRST as part of the restructuring of public institutions.
The commemoration event was preceded by a night vigil on Thursday night in Huye District where the NIRDA research centre is based. It was marked by a walk to remember from NIRDA premises to the University of Rwanda’s memorial site where more than 400 genocide victims are laid to rest.
At the memorial site, mourners observed a minute of silence before they laid wreaths on the graves to honour the lives lost during the Genocide in which more than one million innocent people were killed.
Speaking during the commemoration event, NIRDA Director-General, Dr. Christian Sekomo Birame, hailed efforts by the men and women who sacrificed their lives and stopped the Genocide, stressing that Rwandans are living a better life without any form of discrimination.
"The Genocide perpetuated against the Tutsi was prepared and orchestrated by the bad government that promoted hatred among Rwandans and promoted the ethnic divisionism that led to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi,” he said.
"We are thankful to the Rwanda Patriotic Army’s men and women who stopped the Genocide and also to the good government that gives equal rights and opportunities to all Rwandans to live a better life,” he added.
Dr. Sekomo urged mourners to remain vigilant and fight the Genocide ideology that lingers, especially in Rwandans living abroad.
"We still see people who spread genocide ideology and continue to deny it or minimize it. It is our responsibility to fight them with all means. We have got all it takes to do that,” he noted.
He underscored the role of the current researchers and elites to work hard to bridge the gaps left by those who were killed in the Genocide.
During the event, NIRDA staff also pledged to support the vulnerable. They raised funds and paid for community health insurance to over 150 vulnerable people in Huye District.
Sharing testimonies, Assoumpta Urujeni, one of former IRST staff members who survived the Genocide narrated the horrible events that marked the killings during the genocide.
She said that the Tutsi were targeted and killed by people they lived with and worked together while leaders who were supposed to protect them watched on.
"Until today, I failed to understand how elite people from research and academic institutions could let people be killed in day light and did nothing to protect them but some of them were also involved in killings,” she said.
She called on the government and international community to work together to arrest and bring to justice genocide fugitives who still enjoy save haven in host countries.
Claire Mukeshimana, the Director General in charge of Corporate Affairs at the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM), urged Genocide survivors to soldier on and always strive for a better future. She stressed that they are alive to make proud those whose lives were lost during the 1994 Genocide.
The National Industrial Research and Development Agency is a government institution mandated to enable a generation of industrial innovators to become competitive through technology monitoring, acquisition, development and transfer and applied research.