One survivor’s testimony

This week, the world joined Rwanda to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. At the national level, the country held the commemoration from Nyanza- kicukiro where more than 5,000 Tutsi were murdered and less than 100 people survived. Venuste Karasira one of the few survivors told what he saw and how he survived that fateful day. In 1994 I was residing in this same area (Kicukiro) where we had lived with our neighbors for a long time. In the early hours of April 7, I heard a huge explosion. We later learnt that it was the plane of the then President Juvenal Habyarimana which had been downed. I did not take it seriously because the previous night there had been so many gunshots in town and I thought it was one of them.. However, the mood in town had general changed. Death was hanging over our heads. That is when I decided to tell my wife to get the children and we fee to safety. “I talked to my neighbours who included Bizuru, Kalisa and Vincent to flee with us to ETO Kicukiro because I thought we would get protection from the UN soldiers who were camped there.” At ETO, we found other people who had sought refuge there earlier. We immediately decided to form a committee to approach the UN troops to ask if they would protect us, or contact the Red Cross and the Rwandese Patriotic Front to provide us with security. To our surprise, the UN troops were not bothered and by this time people were flooding in in large droves. Colonel Bisatira and other leaders from the then government came to where we were and convinced the UN that it was useless to keep us in that place since we would be safe at home with government’s protection. We knew they wanted us out of this place so that they could easily butcher us. On April 11, things took another twist when the UN troops started packing their bags to leave. At this time, we were very weak and hungry. This is when we needed the UN most but they abandoned us. We tried to protest their departure but the UN forces fired in the air to disperse us. We were immediately engulfed by Interahamwe and taken to SONATUBE from where we were led to Nyanza- Kicukiro that would be our slaughter house. At Nyanza, we were ordered to sit down and grenades thrown at us due to our huge numbers. At 5:00pm rudimentary tools such as pangas, axes, and stones were used to finish us off. Because I was covered in dead bodies, the killers saw that I had lost an arm and thought that I was dead and left. The following morning, we (the survivors) were lucky to see the RPF soldiers. However, most of us were left disabled and I lost my family. Ends