March 18th, 1997. Nyange, Rwanda. Have you heard the story of what happened? Dare you read on? Six high school students were killed that day. Their names: Sylvestre, Chantal, Beatrice, Seraphine, Helene, and Valens. Their crime: they refused to follow the most basic rule of civilization falsely so-called. They refused to go by the rule: live and let die. Instead, they chose to die, together. I am grateful that Paola, Anna, and I I will share dinner tonight with the Knoll family, and their honored guest from Rwanda, John Rutsindintwarane. Pastor John, a Lutheran, is a pioneer in the work of reconciliation in Rwanda. The PICO community development model he applies, developed by John Baumann, a Jesuit priest, is creating tears of hope in Rwanda as it is in El Salvador, Guatamela, and Haiti. What happened on March 18th, 1997? Phanuel Sindayiheba is a survivor – and a national hero. He will never forget what happened, the scars remain etched on his body and in his mind. This is what happened - in his own words: The shock is still there, flashbacks, when I go back to that event. In 1995, after the genocide there were bodies everywhere, you could see people’s wounds and trauma, many of the perpetrators were still living in the rural areas and not yet in jail. In 1996-97, the rebels were still fighting against the new government and in this area you could hear the bullets and bombs. At school, we were from different backgrounds — children from Hutu families, where in those years many felt that a Hutu was equal to a genocide perpetrator so children from those families were ashamed of being Hutu; children from Tutsi families who were traumatized; and children who were from Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, who had never lived in Rwanda and grew up in refugee camps with stories about a bad Hutu who kicked them out of Rwanda. So you take all these children from different backgrounds and put them in one school, let them eat together, fetch water together, sleep in the same dorm, sit on same bench. At first, we stayed within our small groups – Burundi with Burundi, genocide survivor with genocide survivor, those with fathers in jail. But after three years, we had become one. On March 18, 1997, it was around 8 pm, the main gates were locked, we had finished dinner and some of us were back in our classrooms reviewing our notes. I was in Class 6. We started to hear gunshots, but thought it was nothing big, that it was just rebels fighting soldiers. But after 15 minutes, the noise kept increasing instead of reducing, and we wondered what was going on. Then we saw fires outside and bullets started to hit the windows. I told everyone to lie down on the floor so bullets wouldn’t hit us. The bullets kept increasing and all the windows were broken. After a few minutes, it stopped and then three young men with machine guns burst in. They tried to disguise who they were, wearing both military and civilian clothes, and hid their face and eyes. “Do you know me?” asked one of them in a crazy, crazy kind of French accent. He looked like the leader. One of us said, “We don’t know you.” Then he said, “You will see me, but before you see me, I want you to help me, to facilitate me with my job. Hutus on the right side, and I know here we have Tutsis, so Tutsis go to the left side.” We all heard him clearly and we knew what he wanted. Everybody kept quiet. So he repeated his command a second time. “We do not have Hutus or Tutsis here, we are Rwandans,” said one girl, Chantal. Thinking that she was confused, they went outside and threw two grenades inside, into a small room like that. Some students were blinded, others had their legs cut off, others were crying. The first grenade actually created a big hole in the floor. The second grenade fell on my back. They wanted to intimidate us, to show us that the situation is serious, that the one who was Hutu or Tutsi should decide immediately whether to separate. Then they came back inside the room and gave the same order. “Hutus aside, Tutsis aside.” There was a young man who always sat in front of me. He had survived the genocide, just he alone with his brother, while the rest of the family was destroyed. We used to call him the philosopher, and he said to the rebels, “We have already told you, we are not Hutus or Tutsis, we are Rwandans.” So they shot both him and Chantal immediately, in that same moment. When he replied that way, even after they had thrown in grenades, they realized that nothing would change our minds and they started shooting us, row after row. One of the rebels guarded the door so no one could escape. I was in the third row. A grenade is the worst thing, if you see how they prepare brochettes, my back was like that, and I had this thought to just raise my head from under the desk so they shoot me and I die. But then I had another thought. Something else inside my mind that said that this would be suicide, please, don’t stick your head up. Five bullets hit my arm. Some details from this night I’m not going to say here, but when they shot us, a girl asked me to pray because we are going to die. We prayed and I asked them to remember the word we read in Hebrews 12:14, to be at peace with everybody. Another group of rebels went to Class 5. When they got the same answer as the one we gave, the answer was given by Helen, a girl whose dad was in jail suspected of genocide crimes, they got mad immediately. As one of the rebels grabbed her she said, “Are you going to kill me, and yet I know you.” Realizing that she could identify him, he shot her. Another student, Valence, who had actually lived with soldiers as a child solider, but was back at school, tried to stand up and take the rebel from the back, to save Seraphine, another girl who the rebels recognized. They killed him, too. Students in the other classes ran and hid down in the bush. So the night passed like that. Six students died, many others were badly injured. Once soldiers in the area realized that rebels had attacked our school, they came to help us. All night they and other students and people from the community took care of us. In the morning we were loaded into local taxis and taken to hospitals. Because of the extent of my injuries, I was in hospital after hospital, for a whole year. Some students returned to school after two weeks, but others were too traumatized to come back. Later on the Government recognized what we did and made us national heroes. Many of my classmates still suffer today from their wounds, crippled in their body or psychologically wounded. In 2002, we started an association called KOMEZUBUTWARI, Continue Being a Hero. We’re trying to do our best to promote peace and to help youth become the peace makers. We also do advocacy for those who are blind or crippled, but would like to continue to study. myriamabdelaziz/image-portfolios/portrait-of-a-genocide/portraitofagenocide17
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 23:13:47 +0000