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Reflections on the Rwandan Genocide

Françoise Rudahunga, Rwandan Survivor

Well, he was somebody who -- he was working with my father. They were supposed to be friends. He's the one who planned everything. Now they arrest him after '94, after the genocide, after July '94; and then he got released because they say there was no evidence. So now he's back, and he's with his family. He say for him not even to go back in prison one day. He has to make sure that we die -- I mean, I die or my brother die -- so that there will be no witness anymore to testify against him.

Well, I think it was terrible. Sometimes I wonder if it's gonna happen again. I try to live with it. I try to do my best to kind of live. I live with it. It's with me all the time. I think about it all the time. But I try to manage so that it won't -- I'm okay. You know, kind of shake my life or something.

Well, I mean, justice. I mean, I think only justice. The justice system in Rwanda is working really, really slowly. Like, the guy who managed to kill my family, he is released, and many like him are being released. What is being now -- what is going on now in Rwanda is that survivors like me, they are killing. They are killing somebody like that. And they go back to jail and these are kind of revenge kind of things. So I think the justice system should take that into consideration and try not to let other killings happen. You know? Yeah.

Well, it's -- the message I have is not ever to neglect this kind of thing. Genocide was being on -- people, many people, knew that the genocide was gonna happen, and they didn't do anything about it. They just neglect it. They didn't take that into consideration, and I think that was wrong, from like the international community. So it shouldn't happen anymore. It is enough, and it shouldn't happen anymore.