In Bigogwe, killings began much earlier

Nyabihu – The terrible notion that Genocide against the Tutsi would solve all problems and root out the ‘enemy’ , especially in the early 1990s, was spread in a series of secret meetings, and that marked the beginning of massacres in Bigogwe, Nyabihu District.Survivors of the 1994 Genocide from Bigogwe, narrate that torture, murder, abuse and eminent danger escalated after the invasion of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1990, and all Tutsi were labelled enemies who would be killed and eliminated.“We never imagined that the government would order the killing of innocent citizens, all Tutsi who were educated or in the civil service were arrested, tortured and detained in Ruhengeri 1935 prison. The arrest warrant indicated that we were Tutsi enemies,’’ said Javan Sebasore, who survived the Genocide.Sebasore, 47, is the only survivor out of the 500 people who sought refuge in the Nkeshi Adventist Church in Mukamira, Nyabihu District, where fellow Christians and youth militia participated in the killings It is reported that the initial training of Interahamwe youth militia began at the Bigogwe military camp. While there, they were taught how to handle weapons, use explosives, and then later how to kill, with emphasis on speed.“By 1994, all able bodied Tutsi, youth and men, were finished off, it is only the elderly people, women and children who were left. Genocide was tested here, Bigogwe was largely dominated by the Tutsi, and it became a target,’’ Sebasore, who lost his entire family including his wife and children recalls.RPF Invasion of Ruhengeri Prison On January 23, 1991, a five-hour military engagement between RPF and the eventual defeat of the genocidal Rwanda Armed Forces (FAR), helped set free over 700 people who had been incarcerated, and tortured, including several army officers.Elie Nduwayezu, one of the rescued prisoners, recalls that hundreds had been killed, one at a time, during their incarceration. “When I demanded to know my crime and my fate, I was told, ‘‘you’re a Tutsi, you will die.” They starved us, they regularly showed us a huge deep hole where they said our bodies would be thrown for dogs to eat,” Nduwayezu recalls.Some of the Tutsi fled through the Virunga forest and many died there due to the cold. Those who made it to Kisoro in Uganda and Rutsuru in DR Congo were rescued.“By all accounts, plans were being laid for mass murder on a countrywide scale, 1994 was a period of ‘cleaning up’, many had been killed way before, many families were set alight in their homes,’’ Nduwayezu said.The survivors testify that the French troops participated in training and arming the militias. “Nobody knows what is good for us better than we do, we have to decide to reconcile and unite, we have seen the seeds sowed by the colonialists,” Nduwayezu said.

National

In Bigogwe, killings began much earlier