SURVIVORS RETRACE RWANDA’S ‘DEATH MARCH’ 31 YEARS AFTER UN WITHDRAWAL

Each April, survivors of the 1994 genocide return to the site where UN peacekeepers withdrew, leaving thousands to be massacred. They walk the same path, carrying memories and grief. The stands at the old École Technique Officielle (ETO) soccer field are packed. As they do every April 11, Rwandans gather here to take part in a commemorative march retracing the “death march” taken by more than 2,000 Tutsis to Nyanza, a suburb of Kigali just over two miles away. It was April 1994. The day after Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, the capital erupted in violence. Thousands of Tutsis—and some moderate Hutus—fled in search of safety. Many ended up at ETO, a Catholic school where about 100 Belgian peacekeepers from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) were stationed.By Vivien Latour

(Illustration photo) Kigali Memorial Center, Rwanda. (Photo by Adam Jones, Ph.D./https://creativeco

“We hid in the fields before coming here,” said Pascal Niyonsenga, a survivor who was just 9 years old at the time. Yvonne Mukanubaha, who was 20, arrived at ETO on the morning of April 9, sent by a Belgian priest from the Kicukiro parish who thought she’d be safe there. Both Pascal and Yvonne clung to the hope that the UN troops would protect them. That hope crumbled fast.

Further reading : ‘There are no devils left in hell – they are all in Rwanda’ – Missionary 1994

“The UN was preparing to leave. The Interahamwe militia had surrounded the place. We could see them outside the gates, shouting slogans, whistling, sharpening their machetes,” Pascal said.

’We saw them loading their dogs’

On April 11, around 2 p.m., after French troops evacuated foreign nationals, the Belgian UN peacekeepers packed up. “We lay on the ground to try to block their vehicles, but they fired into the air and we had to move,” Pascal recalled. “We watched them load their dogs, their cats, their things.” The gates closed behind them, leaving more than 2,000 people trapped.

Within minutes, the Interahamwe and soldiers from the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) stormed the compound. Survivors were rounded up. “A senior officer said, ‘Take these cockroaches to Nyanza,’” Pascal said.

That’s when the “death march” began : four kilometers through pouring rain, marked by insults, beatings, and killings. When the group reached an old landfill in Nyanza, the violence escalated into slaughter.

Further reading : Rwandan cardinal assesses the 1994 genocide “I remember feeling warm blood running down my back and over my head when they threw grenades,” Pascal said. Yvonne was hit in the back and leg, then fell and was buried under the bodies. The Interahamwe finished off the wounded with machetes.

Pascal watched his mother die. “I saw them gut her with a machete and rip out the baby she was carrying,” he said. He managed to escape. Yvonne, lying under corpses, saw a militiaman grab her 2-year-old son Gustave and slash his arm.

On the morning of April 12, the killers returned to “finish the job,” executing the injured and looting the dead—until they were interrupted by gunfire from soldiers with the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the rebel force of Tutsi exiles that had reached Kigali. The RPF rescued Pascal, Yvonne, and her son.

’The world abandoned Rwanda’

“What happened at ETO and in Nyanza is undeniable proof that the international community abandoned Rwanda,” said Blaise Ndizihiwe, vice president of Ibuka, a survivors’ group that helps organize the annual vigil.

Belgian and UN reports have since acknowledged the “disgraceful” nature of the withdrawal and the mission’s fatal shortcomings.

“It’s not easy to come back here, but we have to remember the path we walked,” Pascal said, his voice barely audible over the crowd of young Rwandans reading aloud the names of some of the 2,000 people massacred that day.

“It doesn’t feel like 31 years,” Yvonne said. “It feels like yesterday. Every April, I’m 20 again.”