Twenty-five years since Ugandan soldiers of Rwandan descent invaded Rwanda, former New Vision journalist SHEILA KAWAMARA MISHAMBI recalls coming face to face with murders most foul.
The horror of the Rwanda genocide began unfolding before us with the first encounter of the shameless killings at a Catholic church in Nyarubuye, in the diocese of Kibungo, where over 1,500 women, men and children were mercilessly massacred on April 15, 1994. According to a survivor we interviewed, several people had run to the church for refuge from the neighbouring communities.
The local people were allegedly encouraged by the Catholic nuns and priests to gather at the church for protection and since the area was seen as "sacred grounds" the people expected to be safe from the marauding Interahamwe.
Unknown to the people that gathered at the church, some of the nuns and priests were accomplices of the Interahamwe, using the sanctuary of the church as a concentration camp. Once their victims had gathered, they alerted the killers to attack the unarmed civilians with machetes, blunt objects, hoes, guns and grenades.
Evidence of the gruesome massacre welcomed us at the church, with a huge stench of decomposing human bodies polluting the atmosphere. Bodies and belongings of those killed littered the entire church. The consecrated altar, where Holy Mass must have been celebrated a few days earlier, had been defiled. Mothers lay holding onto their young ones as if trying to protect them from the ugly hand of death.
We were told that when the Interahamwe arrived, they ordered the Hutu to separate themselves from the Tutsi. They started hacking to death and shooting all those that were identified as Tutsi and spared the Hutus. The priests and nuns who were in charge of the Nyarubuye church and convent ran away, leaving the Interahamwe to carry out the horrific murders. After the killings in the church they attacked a nearby convent and also killed the nuns who were identifies as Tutsi.
According to our RPF guides, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Tutsis that sought refuge at the churches were spared and these people were made to believe that they were safe in the church premises. Unfortunately this time round, the Hutu militia men were determined to annihilate all Tutsis arguing that the uprising of the RPF was a result of the Tutsi that were spared.
We were told that the Interahamwe were recruited and trained to carry out the killings much earlier. As soon as the president's plane was shot down, organised gangs of government soldiers and Interahamwe militia were dispatched, with machetes, guns, and grenades to attack and exterminate all Tutsi and Hutus that were sympathetic to them.
In some cases, Hutu civilians were forced to murder their Tutsi neighbours by military personnel and even some murdered their own families. I came across a Hutu woman who had no remorse, who confessed to killing her six children and a Tutsi husband, claiming that they had "contaminated blood".
Later, as we moved towards the Rwandan capital Kigali, we came across a huge warehouse of brand new machetes that were alleged to have been imported in preparation for the genocide. This fact could, however, not be verified, since Rwanda's economy is based on agriculture and the machetes could have been stacked up for that purpose, but conveniently used for the genocide.
After Nyarubuye, having obtained what I regarded as a journalist 'the scoop of a lifetime', I requested the RPF to drive me back to the Ugandan border to relay an eyewitness report of what was actually going on in Rwanda. They complied and once in Katuna, I took the 25km bicycle ride to Kabale town, typed my story and immediately faxed it to the New Vision in Kampala.
The following day, when my story was not published, I called the editor to inquire why. I was told that the editors felt I had exaggerated the killings and unless I had photographic evidence, my story would not run. Being in an era where photographs were only developed in the darkroom, I took a taxi and made the over 400km trip back to Kampala.
The evidence I carried was so overwhelming. My story was published the next day with a pictorial of the killings I had witnessed in Rwanda and I immediately became a hot item for journalists, both foreign and local. I spent a few days in Kampala, where I was asked to write a feature article of what I had witnessed.
Returning to Rwanda was no longer a hassle and this time round Pike sanctioned his best photographer, Jimmy Adriko, to accompany me. We travelled with two television journalists from the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) who had come to make a documentary about the genocide.
Having been in Rwanda, I acted as a tour guide and conveniently used their hired transport and generosity to get more access and stories. At the time, several bodies of murdered Rwandans were being washed down stream into Uganda. Thousands of the genocide victims had been thrown into rivers Kagera and Nyabarongo, which pour into Lake Victoria.
Given the fact that this was an unfolding story, we decided to begin our tour at Kasensero landing site, in Rakai district. The bodies of killed Rwandan were arriving in droves and the district had taken it upon itself to fish out the bodies before they contaminated the entire water body. Locals had been mobilized and, using fishnets and bare hands, they pulled the bodies out of the water and, using a grader truck, instantly buried them in a mass grave.
To witness this sad event, some Rwandan refugees were gathered and silently mourned their countrymen and women, possibly some of whom were their relatives, being indecently buried in a foreign land. After Kasensero, we proceeded to Kabale, where we spent a night and then once again entered Rwanda. Again we went via Mulindi for clearance and then we were taken to where there was action.
By this time the RPF was on the outskirts of Kigali and had secured the entire eastern side of the country. Literally all areas of Rwanda were killing fields. There were bodies in the houses, compounds, banana plantations, but churches remained the main scenes of the mass killings.
In some churches, the Interahamwe tried to cover up their atrocities. We came across one such incident, where thousands of people had evidently been killed but there were no bodies. So, we followed the blood trails which led us to a disused deep well where the bodies had been disposed of. As we were leaving the scene, we heard screams from this 'grave', which sent all of us, the journalists and our RPF escorts, scampering for dear life.
We later gathered guts and went back to the well. The RPF soldiers began communicating with the faint voices underground as we looked for ropes to rescue those that were still alive. We managed to pull out about nine people, who were faint-looking, smelling like death and some badly injured.
They narrated their ordeal, telling us that once the Interahamwe had carried out the mass killings in the church where they had sought refuge, they ordered them to get rid of the bodies into the unused well. When all the bodies were done, those carrying the dead were also shot or hacked with machetes and pushed down as well.
These survivors, however, tactfully jumped into the well, remaining underground with the dead for days until we rescued them. The killings by the Interahamwe were so horrendous.
One needed to be mentally deranged or drugged in order to carry out those murders. At one church, we met a young girl about 11 years old, with a deep cut at the back of her head, who had witnessed the killing of her entire family.
She had been presumed dead as she lay bleeding among the dead bodies. When there was total silence, she ran and hid in the bushes. Body parts of a little baby lay scattered on a log where it had been chopped up in the presence of both parents, who were later killed as well. The horror in the eyes of that 11-year-old is so vivid for me, even up to now.
Ms Kawamara is now a civil society activist
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