Even 30 years after the 1994 genocide, mass graves are being discovered in Rwanda. And well over a thousand perpetrators are still on the run worldwide.
As soon as the men dig up the earth with their spades, there is a smell of decay. “There’s something here again,” someone shouts, pointing to a lump with black earth stuck to it. Another man comes running with a plastic bag. He carefully places the lump on a tarp under a tent roof. He carefully removes the earth with brush strokes: it is the skull of a child.
“Ngoma Rugero Street No. 95” is emblazoned on a sign on the wall of the house right next door to where the men are digging. The house stands on a sloping hillside next to a freshly paved country road in southwest Rwanda. “These people are living in a mass grave,” Theodat Siboyintore shakes his head.
The 44-year-old, tall man is the local representative of the organization IBUKA, a self-help association for survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in the southwestern province of Huye, where the house is located. He was just 14 years old at the time of the genocide and lost his parents in a scuffle at a roadblock, where they were probably murdered. To this day he doesn’t know where their bodies were buried. Every time another mass grave is dug in the area, he fears that the bones of his relatives will be found.
This April 7th marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The terrible past is still present. New mass graves are still being discovered in the small, hilly country in the heart of Africa, and over a thousand suspected perpetrators are still on the run. And with every newly discovered mass grave, like this one in Ngoma township in the southwestern province of Huye, where more than a thousand bodies are suspected, the number of victims of the most horrific human rights crime in recent history continues to rise.
The smell of decay hung over the land for years
According to official Rwandan figures, over a million people were murdered in just around 100 days in Rwanda in 1994, most of them from the Tutsi ethnic group, but also moderate Hutu. Most of the victims were killed with simple garden tools: pickaxes, spades, machetes – a bloodbath like no other. Survivors like Siboyintore report that the sweet smell of decay hung over the small country for months and years after 1994.
Thirty years later, the first convicted genocidal murderers are released from prison. Many are old and frail and their life sentences are now officially ending after thirty years. The government wants to release over 20,000 perpetrators this year alone to make room in the completely overcrowded prisons.
But with the return home of these convicted perpetrators, local conflicts in the communities are heating up again. This is also the case with the newly discovered mass grave in Ngoma. The owner of the house next to the mass grave at number 95 is Jean Baptiste Hishamunda, now 86 years old. He was in prison from 1994. In 1994, on the orders of soldiers from the then Hutu army, he set up a roadblock along the road directly in front of his house to prevent the Tutsis from escaping, according to the verdict at his trial at the time. What did not come to light during the negotiations: Apparently the refugees were slaughtered here and buried in a mass grave on Hishamunda’s property.
This was only discovered by chance. Back in Ngoma, Hishamunda bequeathed part of his property to his daughter and her husband. They began to build a house where the banana grove once was. “When they dug up the earth, they found bodies, but filled the hole back up,” says Siboyintore. “The neighbors became aware and called the police.” They arrested the old father, the daughter and her husband – for concealing information about the genocide, according to the criminal offense.
Over a thousand fugitive perpetrators worldwide
Some perpetrators are still on the run today. After the mass slaughter of 1994, when the Tutsi guerrillas under current President Paul Kagame took over the country, they fled into the dense jungle of the neighboring country, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, where many have holed up to this day. In the forests there they later founded the Hutu militia FDLR, the “Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda”, with the aim of retaking Rwanda and wiping out the Tutsis once and for all. So did the military officers who ordered Hishamunda to set up the roadblock in 1994. To this day, the FDLR is the main reason why Rwanda repeatedly invades the Congo with soldiers and why this country has not found peace to this day.
Some fugitive perpetrators managed to hide in exile in Europe, the USA, Canada or Australia to this day. Rwanda’s prosecutors are still looking for the perpetrators. But time is of the essence, because the perpetrators and witnesses are getting old and their memories are weak.
The survivors mostly owe the fact that many of the hastily filled mass graves were found after 1994 to the confessions of the perpetrators. From 2002 onwards, the cruel crimes of genocide were tried across the country in the so-called Gacaca courts – where communities traditionally came together to discuss disputes – because the justice system had collapsed.
A million perpetrators were convicted
By 2012, these village courts with their lay judges had heard over two million cases and convicted over a million perpetrators. They could obtain relief from prison if they voluntarily admitted where they had dug mass graves and dumped bodies in the country’s numerous swamps. But not everyone confessed, as the example of Hishamunda in Ngoma shows.
“Fortunately,” said Jean Bosco Siboyintore, top prosecutor in Rwanda’s genocide investigation unit, “serious crimes such as genocide do not expire.” He points to a list that he has in front of him on the desk in the public prosecutor’s office in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. There are over a thousand Rwandan names there: names of fugitive, suspected genocidal people. They are sorted by countries in which the people you are looking for are likely to be staying in, including France, Belgium and Germany.
“We are still looking for over a thousand perpetrators – worldwide,” explains Siboyintore. After all, he proudly emphasizes: “We can demonstrate success.” Since founding his department in 2007, Siboyintore has helped bring a total of 1,149 prosecutions in a total of 33 countries worldwide, primarily in Europe, North America and various African countries.
A total of 30 defendants have been extradited to Rwanda in recent years to face trial in their homeland, primarily from the Netherlands, the USA and Sweden. 29 other suspected perpetrators were brought to justice in other countries, in Belgium, France, Finland, Sweden and Germany. After all: “All the so-called big fish who helped plan the genocide are now behind bars,” says the public prosecutor with satisfaction.