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A survivor looks at pictures of the genocide (AFP)
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KIGALI,
April 6 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Commemorating
Wednesday, April 7, the 10th anniversary of one of the most horrific
genocides ever committed, Rwandans who survived the killings, many
living in extreme poverty, are still waiting for reparations.
President
Paul Kagame has on several occasions promised to address the issue of
reparations but compensating some 300,000 people who escaped the
killings is no easy task in one of the poorest countries in the world,
reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"The
government has a responsibility regarding reparations, but this is an
issue that has serious financial consequences," Culture Minister
Robert Bayigamba said.
"The
time will come when a decision will be made," he added.
However,
Bayigamba’s vagueness only reinforced survivors' convictions that
they are not a priority.
"Instead
of organizing songs and poems, they should give us damages, interest
and compensation," complained one survivor from Kigali who asked
not to be named.
"Why
doesn't the government do it? It should be the priority," he
added.
The
main associations of survivors, which are close to the government,
blame the delays on the international community.
"It
didn't help us before and during the massacres. Worse, it let people
die. At least now it could help us in a visible way," said Benoit
Kaboyi, executive secretary of the largest such organization, called
Ibuka.
"We
have been calling for a compensation fund to be set up for a
decade," said recalled, lamenting "it seems that efforts in
this area have been lackluster".
It
was the missile attack on then Rwandan president Juvenal
Habyarimana’s aircraft on April 6, 1994, over Kigali that triggered
100 days of slaughter of minority Tutsis and politically moderate
Hutus by Hutu soldiers and extremist militias.
According
to U.N. figures, some 800,000 people, mostly members of the Tutsi
ethnic minority, were killed.
Kagame's
government puts the figure at about a million.
On
April 21, the U.N. scaled down the peacekeeping mission from 5,500 men
to less than 300.
The
genocide -- the word was deliberately avoided by the world's powers at
the time -- was finally halted in mid-July when Tutsi rebels led by
Kagame took power.
‘Criminally
Responsible’
Romeo
Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force
deployed in Rwanda in 1994, which was unable to halt the slaughter,
told a conference on the genocide that the international community was
"criminally responsible" for having abandoned the tiny
central African state.
"There
is no country today, 10 years later, which can wash its hands of
Rwandan blood just by saying sorry," said the retired general.
Dallaire
accused the United Nations, the United States, France and Britain of
failing to give his peacekeeping mission the muscle to intervene.
Danish
Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller called Tuesday on the international
community to work together to ensure that a genocide like Rwanda’s
never occurs again.
"Strong
international commitment and cooperation is essential and is the best
way of making sure that the world never again witnesses a
genocide" like that in the central African country, he said.
Controversy
still surrounds the fate of the remains of the victims and whether
they should now be given a decent burial or left on display lest the
horrors of the genocide be forgotten.
But
the most devastating legacy of genocides and wars is the sheer number
of children left on their own.
According
to official figures there are about 400,000 orphans in Rwanda today,
or 10 percent of the youth population.
Many
of them have been forced to take on the duties of breadwinners, while
others are exploited by unscrupulous adults as servants in adopted
families.
