Most Americans cannot fathom the horrific injustices that take place in foreign countries. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide was one the most severe human crimes witnessed in the twentieth century, yet at the time of the event, it went largely unrecognized for its magnitude.
Celine Mutuyemariya a student at the 2009 Governor’s Scholars Program hails from Rwanda. She was born in Gisenyi but moved to Kigali as a very young child. Mutuyemariya remembers very little about Rwanda; what she does remember is after the family escaped and lived in Dakar, Senegal.
During that time she went to the market on weekends, where people would be shouting to each other as they bargained. She lived in an apartment with her family, and she went to a strict Catholic school. As punishment the younger kids had to pull on their ears and do squats. Her life in Senegal was quiet and ordinary, unlike her past.
Relations between the Hutu and Tutsi have always been tense. Long before 1994, the struggle was all about which group had political control. In 1990, Tutsis from Uganda invaded the neighboring Rwanda and revealed to the world the hatred between the two groups. Tensions escalated further when Rwandan President Juvenal Habyalimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were killed in a plane crash after holding peace meetings with the rebels (Rwandan Patriotic Front).
Media accessed by the rebels spread a rumor that the Hutu shot down the presidents’ plane. The event plunged Rwanda into chaos. 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were killed in the 100-day massacre genocide.
“The adults don’t talk about the war in front of the kids; they usually send them awa
y,” said Mutuyemariya .However, Mutuyemariya’s father told her and her older sister, Roseline Twagiramariya, about the genocide once. When the president’s plane was shot down, they were told that the UN was sending troops to help them. Mutuyemariya and her family feared for their lives. They hid in her father’s office at the school where he taught; they were then told that the soldiers were not coming for them, but the family decided to hide anyway - what was happening around them was too terrifying to ignore.
Mutuyemariya’s father and her godfather left the family to see what was happening in the village. What they saw was pure horror, with gruesome image after image.
Mutuyemariya recalls what her father told her and her sister, “He said, “I saw a man whose arm was cut and I ran to hide in the bushes.”
However, when he came out of hiding he saw the corpse of Roseline’s godfather. He also found out that everyone at the school had been massacred. What he didn’t know was that his daughters and the family had escaped with the help of a friend; for three days he thought that his family was dead. His family also thought that he was victim to the massacres. Eventually they found each other and moved from refugee camp to refugee camp until they got to Senegal, where Mutuyemariya lived until she was 6.
Because Mutuyemariya was very young when the tragedy occurred, she is “not too personally traumatized.” She was one of the lucky few children who came out of Rwanda with both parents alive. Mutuyemariya’s family lost two children, those of her aunt. She recalled a friend of hers that was not so lucky; she lost both her parents to the war. Mutuyemariya’s sister remembers the Rwandan genocide vividly but has blocked it out.
Still today there are deep tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi; it is hard to move on even 15 years later. Mutuyemariya, herself does not speak of her own ethnicity.
“That’s one of those things you don’t really (talk about) it can cause tensions,” she said.
When the genocide happened it was as if the world stood back and watched. When asked about lack of UN involvement in the war, Mutuyemariya expressed that it makes her angry because “people knew about it and did nothing,” but she understands that “clearly things have to be done before they get involved.” Mutuyemariya’s father is politically active in spreading awareness of the Rwandan Civil War so that nothing like this happens again. This has prevented him from going back to Rwanda because of the high risk of danger. It is through people like him that others become aware of what is happening around the world; this inspires others to take action and help.