Using their hoes, the diggers scratch the brown earth in search of—and frequently discover—fragments of human bone. The others observe in somber quiet as the women then use their hands to wipe the shards of bone.
In a lush, rural area of southern Rwanda, the scene of ongoing excavation has grown all too familiar. In October, human remains discovered at the site of a house under construction prompted searchers to look for additional mass graves thought to contain victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi people.
In the months that have passed, Rwandan authorities report that at least 1,000 people’s remains have been discovered in this rural village in the Huye district—a startlingly high number considering the government’s three decades of attempts to provide genocide victims with dignified burials.
As Rwanda gets ready to mark the genocide’s 30th anniversary next week, the ongoing finding of mass graves serves as a sobering reminder of the difficulties the nation faces in achieving lasting peace as well as its resolve to come to terms with its terrible past.
According to The Associated Press, the leader of a well-known group of genocide survivors and a number of other Rwandans stated that the findings highlight the necessity for further efforts toward genuine peace.
Withholding information regarding a mass burial that was previously unknown has become illegal in Rwanda. Perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, including those who were sentenced to prison and thereafter freed, have been pushed for years to come forward and share what they know.
Nonetheless, the mass graves are still mostly found by accident, leading to new arrests and traumatizing survivors all over again.
The Rwandan government has been working to bridge ethnic divisions in the country, which has seen an estimated 800,000 Tutsi killed by extremist Hutu in massacres that lasted over 100 days in 1994. The genocide began when President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down in Kigali, and the Tutsi were blamed for downing the plane and killing the president. Enraged, gangs of Hutu extremists began killing Tutsi, backed by the army and police.
The government of President Paul Kagame has tried to bridge ethnic divisions by imposing a tough penal code to punish genocide and outlawing the ideology behind it. Rwandan ID cards no longer identify a person by ethnicity, and lessons about the genocide are part of the curriculum in schools. Hundreds of community projects focus on uniting Rwandans, and every April, the nation joins hands in somber commemorations of the genocide anniversary.
Today, serious crimes fueled by ethnic hatred are rare in Rwanda, but signs persist of what authorities say is a genocidal ideology. As more mass graves are discovered, Tutsi survivors “start to doubt” the good intentions of their Hutu neighbors, and their pleas for information about relatives lost in the killings go unanswered.
In the village of Ngoma, diggers come across decaying shoes and pieces of torn clothing among skulls and bones, traumatizing survivors all over again. Young people are less troubled by the past, and some Rwandans see this as a chance for reconciliation in a country where every other citizen is under the age of 30.
(AP)
