President Paul Kagame and his Tanzanian counterpart Dr John Pombe Magufuli have lit the torch of hope as part of commencing 100 days of 22nd commemoration of genocide perpetrated against Tutsi.
The ceremony has been held at Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in Gisozi where more than 250,000 victims of genocide are buried.
This year’s commemoration is organized under the theme ‘Remember the genocide perpetrated against Tutsi, fighting against genocide ideology’.
At the launch of commemoration activities, the executive secretary of the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG), Dr Jean Damascene Bizimana said that genocide ideology was introduced in Rwanda during the colonial rule in 1922 with registration of people under race cards like Hutu, Tutsi and Twa on Rwandans’ identity cards.
He said that genocide ideology continued to grow till the leadership of Juvenile Habyarimana that culminated into genocide which took lives of more than one million Tutsi victims.
Dr Bizimana said that linking the execution of genocide with the shooting of the aircraft of the former president of Rwanda is falsified information spread by genocide perpetrators who are ashamed of being defeated.
A census carried out by the Rwandan ministry of local government in 2002 indicated that a total of 1,074,017 people were killed during the 1994 genocide. This census details names of the dead, dwelling places, age, and how they were killed.
German lauded
Dr Jean Damascene Bizimana has lauded German for having contributed to bring to justice genocide perpetrators citing a recent case where she sentenced Ignace Murwanashyaka and Straton Musoni.
He also blamed France for continued refusal of having participated in genocide perpetrated against Tutsi noting that Rwandans know the truth of what happened in 1994 genocide perpetrated against Tutsi.
“Some countries like France have not yet brought genocide perpetrators to justice. They ought to do it,” he said.
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