Unesco asks for full Genocide info to add memorials to world heritage

There is need for a wide compilation of information about four Genocide memorials that have been short-listed to be part of the World Heritage Sites if they are to be fully added to the global heritage list, an official at the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) has said. Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Gisozi, Ntarama Genocide site in Bugesera District, Murambi memorial centre in Nyamagabe District, and Bisesero Genocide Memorial in Karongi District, were temporarily added to the World Heritage Sites list by UN cultural agency, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organisation (Unesco) in 2012. But CNLG officials say the addition was just one step in the relatively long process of enlisting sites as part of world heritage and the next step is going to require a lot of work to put together all the details describing the Genocide sites before Unesco can completely add them to the world heritage. The short-listed Genocide memorial sites hold significant history about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, a massacre in which more than a million people lost their life. Jean Butoto, an official in charge of registering the memorials with Unesco at CNLG, told The New Times that a call will soon be out for all historians, engineers, sociologists, story tellers, witnesses, and anyone else who have information about the memorials to share it. “It’s going to require each and everyone’s input. The research we (at CNLG) are doing will require the cooperation of every one and every institution,” he said on Tuesday. Butoto said Unesco needs everything; from written and audio visual records of testimonies from Genocide survivors and photos of some Genocide victims to the demographic, historical, and topographic descriptions of the memorials. “We will have to submit a book of hundreds of pages that describe the memorials in order to allow every citizen of the world to identify what kind of heritage they will be acquiring,” the official said. “Once the sites we have been adopted as a world heritage, anyone anywhere in the world will be able to access the information about each site and know that what it has is a common global heritage.” Sites that are under World Heritage have to be exceptional and entail a universal application. They so far include forests, mountains, lakes, deserts, monuments, buildings, or cities that are listed by Unesco as of special cultural or physical significance. Maitre Laurent Nkongoli, a commissioner at the National Human Rights Commission, said it was imperative to add Genocide memorial sites to the world heritage list. “By definition, genocide is a crime against humanity. That should be enough for Unesco to enlist memorial sites about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi as part of the world heritage if we are to uphold the spirit of international law,” Nkongoli, a laywer, said. “The world made a step forward to admit that a genocide was committed against Tutsis and taking other steps like enlisting memorial sites would also reinforce the meaning that a crime against humanity was committed. Yes, it was committed in Rwanda, but the entire world was offended.” Dr Raphael Nkaka, a historian and lecturer at the University of Rwanda, said: “Genocide deniers are currently writing a lot of things to misinform people that the 1994 Genocide against Tutsis didn’t happen. It will be a boost for our efforts to render Genocide deniers irrelevant if a major cultural and scientific organisations such as Unesco enlists the Genocide memorials to the world heritage.” ‘Never Again’ world heritage Rwandans are preparing to mark the 20th anniversary against the Tutsi in April, with a remembrance flame (the Kwibuka Flame) currently on a national lap of honour and memorial events taking place in various cities across the world. While sites that are successfully listed under Unesco as part of World Heritage receive funds from the World Heritage Fund for their maintenance and conservation under certain conditions, it’s not the search for money that motivates Rwandan officials to enlist the sites, Butoto, from CNLG, said. It would rather be a significant step in the process to prevent Genocide and other serious crimes against humanity from happening again anywhere in the world if the Genocide memorial sites become a world heritage. “It would be a major boost to the culture of peace and ‘never again’. If our sites make it to the world heritage list, it will be a sign that the world has joined Rwanda in ensuring that ‘never again’ will be true because the young generation in the world will learn more about what happened in Rwanda,” Butoto said. In the preliminary submission of the four memorial sites to Unesco, Rwandan officials wrote that the sites will give both Rwandans and the international community a real testimony of what happened in Rwanda and educate people about the desire to peacefully live together again after the atrocities.