Espérance Mukashema: "My husband was killed by Hutu militias, my son by the Tutsi rebels"
On April 6, 1994, the plane was shot down in the Rwandan capital of Kigali with the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. It was the start of the Tutsi genocide and the massacres that claimed at least 1 million lives. VRT NWS looks back, 25 years later, and tells people who have experienced everything up close. Today Espérance Mukashema.
Espérance Mukashema now lives in the Netherlands. In 1994 she lived with her husband and four children in Kigali. Only she and three children survived the tragedy. This is her story.
"No, not via mail, only WhatsApp, that is safer. My email address has been hacked several times over the past few years and then threats and suspicions appeared. And I prefer not to come by train. Can we arrange something with someone reliable who comes to me to pick up?"
The fear is still deep inside, almost a quarter of a century after Espérance has seen almost her entire family murdered by the Hutu militia. She is a Tutsi, so was her husband and her children too, victims of the "Tutsi genocide" from April to July 1994 in Rwanda.
Today she lives in the Netherlands, in a small, preferably unknown, village. Because the threats never completely stopped. They now no longer come from the Hutu militias, but … from militants and agents of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi rebel movement who in the spring of 1994 had re-started the war against the murdering Hutu militias and the government army of then and , according to the official version, the genocide on the Tutsis is said to have stopped.
But at the same time they have also committed mass killings, possibly as many as the Hutu killers, at least according to the work of Canadian investigative journalist Judi Rever, who relies, among other things, on investigative reports from the United Nations Rwanda Tribunal.
Espérance has been the victim of both murder gangs: first the so-called Interahamwe had it in mind for her and her entire family, because they were known as Tutsis and "so" supporters of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, then her son was murdered in front of her eyes with more four Rwandan bishops by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and she was barely able to escape.
"My husband was murdered by the Interahamwe militias at the very beginning of the Tutsi genocide. Together with just about the whole family. I myself was able to escape, with our three children. The brothers of Gakurazo, in the Gitarama region, in the center of the country, and our many refugees. "
"They had come there, near the city of Kabgayi, because the Catholic Church had its headquarters there and they felt protected by it. That's how it went. The Interahamwe and the old army passed by and we were left alone, along with the many bishops, priests, nuns and brothers who had sought shelter. "
But what the Hutu militias did not dare, the Rwandan Patriotic Front did a few weeks later, says Espérance 25 years later.
"At the time the Patriotic Front captured Kabgayi, three bishops lived there: those of Kabgayi himself, the archbishop of Kigali, the capital, and the bishop of Byumba, in the north. There were also many members of the higher clergy and leading lay people of the Catholic Church After the attack, all other refugees from the RPF had to go to Gakurazo, in the same region, where I myself was already staying there with my three children: the eldest son who was then eight, our daughter of six and the youngest son of four. "
"On June 5, I will never forget that day, the church leaders were suddenly also transferred to Gakurazo, around noon, under military supervision. There they prayed in the chapel while their rooms were being prepared. That evening they were taken to the cafeteria summed up for what the RPF officers called a "meeting." Like others, I was there too. "
"At that time I brought my sleeping youngest son to bed with our daughter. Our oldest son stayed with the bishops who took care of him. On the way back to the cafeteria we were stopped by RPF soldiers and then we heard violent shooting I heard my son calling for help, calling for his mother. "
"When I entered the cafeteria again, I saw the dead bishops and their assistants lying on the floor and my son in between. I begged to spare him, but a soldier shot him in the back, my eight-year-old child. how the bullets tore him apart. One priest survived the whole massacre. "
That priest now lives under permanent surveillance somewhere in Europe. He, too, is no longer silent about the second wave of murders that swept over Rwanda in the spring of 1994: after those by the Hutu militias, the mass murders by President Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front now in power.
Peter Verlinden
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"Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate. Only Love Can Do That", Dr. Martin Luther King.
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