{{Ban Ki Moon, the United Nations chief told a packed stadium of sombre and weeping Rwandans on Monday the world would “never again” let genocide tear their nation apart, at a ceremony marking 20 years since a million people were butchered.}}
A host of leaders and donors attended the commemoration, but France – an ally of the Rwandan government that ruled before the genocide – did not take part after president Paul Kagame, renewed charges of Paris’ “direct role” in the killings.
France has acknowledged mistakes in its dealings with Rwanda. But it has repeatedly dismissed accusations it trained militias to take part in the massacres and Kagame’s comments triggered fresh outrage in Paris on Monday.
Some in the crowd in Kigali were overcome with emotion on hearing a survivor’s account and stewards had to lead them out of the stadium. Many Rwandans lost entire families to killers armed with guns, grenades, machetes and cans of petrol.
A minute’s silence was punctuated by screams of dozens of survivors.
“We must not be left to utter the words ‘never again’, again and again,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the crowd.
“Many United Nations personnel and others showed remarkable bravery. But we could have done much more. We should have done much more,” he added, while citing new challenges in the region.
Conflicts rumble on in South Sudan and Central African Republic, while eastern Democratic Republic of Congo next door remains in turmoil.
Rwanda long complained that Western and other nations – with a few exceptions praised at the memorial – stood idle when massacres that erupted in April 1994 killed the ethnic Tutsi minority.
“Behind the words ‘never again’ there is a story whose truth must be told in full,” the president told attendees, who watched performers dressed in grey symbolically re-enacting some of the horrors.
Rwandans carried out the genocide, “but the history and root causes go beyond this beautiful country,” he said.
“No country is powerful enough, even when they think they are, to change the facts,” he said in an apparent swipe at France. In a speech in English and the Kinyarwanda language, he added in French: “Facts are stubborn,” drawing applause.
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