Rwandan youth living in China have been urged to always stand up against injustice, picking a leaf from the Rwanda Patriotic Army (Inkotanyi) that fought hard to stop the Genocide against the Tutsi. The message was communicated by Rwandan diplomats in China, during an online conference organised to mark Rwanda’s 28th Liberation Anniversary. Speaking to the people that attended, Colonel John Karangwa, Rwanda’s Defence Attaché to China, narrated the critical ethnic injustices that were taking place in Rwanda in 1994 and before, which finally culminated into the bloody Genocide against the Tutsi that claimed more than 1 million people. He particularly took his audience through a detailed account of the daring military operations that the RPA Inkotanyi undertook to counter the genocidal forces that were massacring people mercilessly. “On the morning of April 8, the Chairman of the High Command - who is President Kagame - gave orders that our forces should leave their positions in various parts of the country and go to rescue Rwandans who were being killed, and also render support to the 600 RPA soldiers who were in Kigali,” he narrated. Acting on the orders, the soldiers found it hard to combine fighting and helping out the targeted civilians – some of whom were already injured, but Karangwa says they stood up to the task and did it. “It was not easy especially because we had our own injured casualties, yet we were required to rescue other Rwandans who had been shot, cut or injured in other ways during the Genocide. We had to look for water for them, medicine, and other supplies, yet we also had to continue fighting. This was hard because it was not the way that we had planned for the war. However, the girls and boys (RPA soldiers) stood up and did it well,” he recounted. Telling more stories that characterised the liberation struggle, Karangwa reminded the youth listening, that many RPA soldiers were as young as they are or even younger, but took on the daunting task of rescuing their Rwandan counterparts during the Genocide. “There were experts in the RPA, for example physicians who would treat injured people, engineers who would repair roads and bridges, lawyers, teachers, and more,” he said. “When you look at the majority of them, they were just youngsters who had dropped out of school, offering their lives to come back and claim their country. We should remember there is no one who will ever be respected or valued when they are not in their country. Today we have value as Rwandans because we have our country,” he added. He urged them to never merely look on when injustice is being done, as he also called upon them to never tolerate anyone who wants to divide them as Rwandans. James Kimonyo, Rwanda’s Ambassador to China spoke about the progress that the post-genocide Rwanda has achieved, as he made a call for efforts to protect such gains. Here, among others, he pointed out the unity that the government has fostered among Rwandans, socio-economic development, improved access to services, good governance, security, and so on. “We need to put effort into protecting what we have achieved and fight anyone who wants to take us back into the past. This requires us to not tell our story but also counter anyone who wants to distort our history,” he said.
