A sparkle in the darkness of Rwanda
25 years later, a day of commemoration is capped by a candlelight vigil
By Allan Thompson
KIGALI, Rwanda — The candles held by thousands of survivors of Rwanda’s genocide sparkled in the darkness. In a nod to the modern Rwanda, among the candles there were also phones, held aloft with their flashlights on.
In the soccer stadium in Rwanda’s capital, where thousands took refugee a quarter century ago during the genocide, nearly 30,000 gathered for an evening vigil marking the 25th anniversary of the beginning of 100 days of slaughter.
The light of the twinkling candles made its way around the stadium like the wave, as a choir sang a choral arrangement about the genocide.
As if that wave of emotion wasn’t enough, the songs were punctuated by the sounds of screaming, first in one corner of the stadium, then another, as survivors relapsed into trauma, wailing and crying as if reliving those horrific moments of 25 years ago.
The vigil capped a remarkable and emotional day, a personal journey back for me to the scene of the crime, joining in the commemoration of the genocide in tandem with the release of my new book from CIGI Press: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond.
Carol Bonnett, the head of the Centre for International Governance Innovation’s publishing arm, has joined me on this voyage, her first trip to Africa. It has been an honour to share with Carol my passion for Rwanda.
As much as possible, I am trying to retrace the steps of those events from 25 years ago. We began today at the Belgian memorial, the former Camp Kigali military compound where 10 Belgian soldiers were brutally murdered in the first hours of the genocide. They had been dispatched in the early morning hours to protect Rwanda’s prime minister designate, a Hutu moderate who had been targeted by death squads. The Belgian paratroopers were taken at gunpoint and over the course of the morning, killed by mobs at Camp Kigali.
Years ago I stopped in Belgium on the way to Rwanda and interviewed the parents of one of the slain Belgians. Unfairly, in my view, the families of some of the Belgian paratroopers criticize Romeo Dallaire for failing to do enough to rescue their family members that ady.
The guardhouse where several of the Belgians barricaded themselves before they were finally killed has been left virtually untouched in 25 years. The building is still riddled with bullet holes and in one corner of the room, there is a pock marked crater where a grenade lobbed into the building took the lives of the surviving Belgians. Later that night, Romeo Dallaire had to identify the bodies of the dead Belgians at the morgue. He would later recount that it was difficult to discern how many bodies were piled up ‘like sacks of potatoes’ outside the overcrowded morgue.
In the afternoon, we joined the throng of Rwandans gathered on Kigali’s Parliament hill take part in a Walk of Remembrance to the stadium, where the vigil would take place. President Paul Kagame joined the crowd and let the procession, joined by other visiting heads of state, including Canada’s Governor-General, Julie Payette.
I had a chance to briefly say hello to Kagame, who I had met a couple of times when I was in Rwanda some years back, managing the Rwanda Initiative media development project, and releasing my first book, The Media and the Rwanda Genocide.
When we entered the stadium at the end of the walk, virtually all of the stands were already full, with the exception of one section that had been reserved for those who joined the march.
Genocide survivors provided testimonials about the horrors they endured 25 years ago. Young people — too young to actually remember the events — took centre stage on the floor of the stadium. At one point, they read out the names of entire families that had been wiped out during the killing. It was a powerful ending to a simply remarkable day.
Back at the hotel, I posted a Facebook Live video about the event, then conducted an interview with CTV News Channel before compiling this post and calling it a night.
