PHOTOS: Inside Murambi Genocide Memorial, a new UNESCO world heritage site

Murambi Genocide Memorial received a UNESCO World Heritage List inscription certificate on April 6, 2024. The certificate was presented by UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay who visited the memorial to learn and comprehend its history. ALSO READ: UNESCO certifies four Genocide memorials added to World Heritage List The memorial tour was led by Freddy Mutanguha, the Africa Representative for Aegis Trust, an organisation dedicated to preventing genocide globally. Aegis Trust works to prevent genocide, crimes against humanity and mass atrocities worldwide. Murambi, a town in Nyamagabe District, is where approximately 50,000 Tutsi men, women, and children, were killed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. ALSO READ: Murambi Genocide victims remembered Murambi was part of the formerly Gikongoro prefecture, which has a history of massacres targeting the Tutsi since 1959. “Persecution and killings of Tutsi people happened frequently after independence,” Mutanguha explained. On the night of Christmas Eve, 1963, in Gikongoro, a mass slaughter of Tutsi commenced under the leadership of the area’s préfet, Andre Nkeramugaba. According to testimonies, Nkeramugaba was helped by assistants including his brother-in-law Gregoire Munyarubindo, and Gerard Mucumbitsi who led the commune of Kinyamakara, among others. Afterwards, the sector leaders seized the properties, especially land, that belonged to the Tutsi who had been assassinated or had fled. ALSO READ: Murambi: Where the dead can be heard Murambi Genocide Memorial is the site of one of the most unforgettable horrors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Many people had sought safety at the then half-finished technical school, believing it to be a place of refuge. They were wrong. It was a ploy devised by the area leaders who would bring their targets to one place so they could be easily massacred. On April 21, 1994, the genocidal army and Interahamwe militia moved in and killed more than 50,000 Tutsi. Local officials and soldiers established a network of roadblocks to control the Tutsi’s movement. Many were murdered. Many women and girls were raped before they reached the school. “The refugees at the school were denied water and food. The water pipes were disconnected and the people who brought provisions were turned back. Weak from fatigue, hunger, and thirst, the victims still managed to mount a resistance to the attacks from their killers,” explained Mutanguha. “All my relatives were exterminated at Murambi. Parents, relatives, both my grandmother’s families died. My entire mother’s family died. They ran towards the authorities thinking they would help them. Instead of helping them, the authorities brought them to Murambi,” recalled Genocide survivor Claver Nkezabera. Some young children and infants were found sucking on their dead mothers’ breasts before being thrown alive into mass graves, as documented in written testimonies at the memorial. Genocide perpetrators in the former Gikongoro prefecture include Col Aloys Simba, Laurent Bucyibaruta , the then préfet of Gikongoro, a deputy préfet Frodouard Havugimana, a deputy commander gendarmerie in Gikongoro, Capt Faustin Sebuhura, Lt Col Augustin Rwamanywa and Felicien Semwakwvu, the mayor of Nyamagabe commune where Murambi is located. The leaders and staff of Mata Tea Factory were also involved in the massacres. Memorial preservation Some of the remains of Genocide victims have been exhumed and preserved with powdered lime together with victims’ belongings like the clothes they wore when they were killed as proof of the Genocide that took place in the area. The memorial is divided into various sections, including mass graves where over 50,000 victims of the Genocide are laid to rest. ALSO READ: The purpose of Genocide memorials: Condemning ideology, not descendants Some rooms in the former technical schools were also converted into preservation areas. Here, embalmed bodies of the victims are displayed in open spaces for visitors to witness the scale and nature of the death that the victims experienced. There is also a memorial garden at the site, and a section of trenches where the bodies of the victims were thrown after they were killed and a volleyball pitch where a French flag was raised. This area was near a French army base camp for troops who were in Rwanda under the so-called humanitarian mission ‘Operation Turquoise’. Operation Turquoise was a French military intervention in June 1994, an ostensibly humanitarian mission that had the backing of the UN Security Council. “French soldiers created a volleyball court next to a mass grave filled with the bodies of Genocide victims. They had to walk over the mass grave to retrieve lost balls,” reads part of history written inside the memorial site. At the same place, the buildings were used as dormitories for French troops. The French soldiers deployed in Rwanda at the height of the Genocide, instead of saving the Tutsi who were being killed in their thousands every day, worked tirelessly to offer an escape corridor to the génocidaires, while they continued to massacre the Tutsi all the way to their refugee camps in the then Zaïre, now DR Congo. The embalming of the bodies of the Genocide victims was done with support from experts from the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Hamburg in Germany. “Genocide, a crime that will never be erased” “We are also planning to accord a decent burial to bodies of Genocide victims that are still being exhumed in different parts,” Mutanguha said. While handing over a certificate attesting Murambi Genocide Memorial’s inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List, on April 6, Azoulay stated: “Genocide, a crime that will never be erased.” “The purpose of this memorial and inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List is to keep the traces so that people can visit the powerful tool to fight genocide distortion, and genocide denial which started very early after the crimes. Now, Murambi is on the map of the world and what happened here will never be forgotten,” she said. “We are 30 years after, 30 years that have passed, 30 years of the extraordinary journey of the country. Let’s also remember that 30 years before the Genocide, as survivors reminded us, there were already massacres, and hatred including in schools. Genocide is prepared. This is an important lesson to learn for the future.” ALSO READ: Inscription of memorials good ammunition against genocide deniers Azoulay said the four Genocide memorials added to World Heritage List will serve as learning and teaching materials in worldwide education programmes. Besides Murambi Genocide Memorial, other memorials that were certified are Kigali Genocide Memorial, Nyamata Memorial in Bugesera District, and Bisesero Genocide Memorial in Karongi District. “We have to make education a tool of peace, a tool for respect, a tool for protection of others, a tool of empathy. We have to teach about history; what has happened here, transform education so that education can be of value, human dignity and respect of others,” she added. Patrick Sindikubwabo, the head of Ibuka - an umbrella organisation for Genocide survivors’ associations in the country - in Nyamagabe District, commended UNESCO for inscribing Murambi Genocide Memorial, one of the eight Genocide memorials in the district, on the World Heritage List. “This is an important step in fighting genocide denial and educating people, worldwide, about the Genocide against the Tutsi to avoid the occurrence of similar tragedy elsewhere in the world,” said Valerie Mukamana, a Genocide survivor in Murambi. The Minister of State for Education, Claudette Irere, also noted that the memorials are important ‘educational materials’ in educating the youth about Genocide history and, therefore, should be well preserved. “We assure that the Genocide memorial will be well preserved. As part of sustaining its management and preservation, we will engage all stakeholders including the local population,” Irere said.

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PHOTOS: Inside Murambi Genocide Memorial, a new UNESCO world heritage site