NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS- HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA KILLERS RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 4:04:04 ........................................................................ KEANE: Ten years ago I drove to a remote church in Rwanda, this was the ?? and these were the victims of genocide. The dead were Tutsis, Rwanda's minority group. FERGAL KEANE Panorama 1994 You do not just see death here, you feel it and smell it. It is as if all the good and life in the atmosphere have been sucked out and replaced with the stench of evil. There are two thoughts then, that of the mortal terror which must have been in the minds of the people who knew they were going to be killed, and the hatred and savagery in the hearts of those who were going to kill them. But the killers were their neighbours. They were from Rwanda's majority group, the Hutus. They'd been sent to kill the Tutsis by their own government. SILAS NGENDAHIMANA: Because the government had given up on them I went to kill without tears. I went to kill feeling well. I went and did what I had come to do, to kill. GITERA RWAMUHIZI: When we moved in, it was as if we were competing over the killing. We entered and each one of us began killing their own. When we were walking into the rooms we were wearing rubber boots because of all the blood. There was so much blood that it was flowing like a river. KEANE: Nyarubuye was a community destroyed by hatred. TUTSI WOMAN: Imagine someone leaving their home and knowing their victim, knowing their names and the names of their children. They all went there and killed their neighbours, their wives and their children. KEANE: In just 100 days well over half a million people were murdered in Rwanda and tens of thousands became killers. [camera roves shocking scene of thousands of decomposed corpses] KEANE: This is the story of how a state turned its people into ruthless killers. People like the villagers around Nyarubuye in South East Rwanda. Here the land was shared between the Hutu majority and the minority Tutsis. They worked and socialised together. There was even some intermarriage between their families. Gitera Rwamuhizi was a Hutu farmer with four children. On the 15th April 1994 he set out with the other Hutu men on a journey to massacre. GITERA RWAMUHIZI On the morning of April 15th each one of us woke up knowing what to do and where to go. We'd made a plan the night before. So, first thing we started walking towards the church. KEANE: They went to kill carrying farming implements. Among the group was Silas Ngendahimana, the father of two young children. SILAS NGENDAHIMANA I had thought about the plan overnight. I woke up, washed my face and left. I felt no pain or sorrow. KEANE: The plan had been made by Rwanda's authoritarian ruler. One of the men who joined Gitera's group was 50 year old Lauren Renzaho, a father of ten children who scraped a living from a small patch of land. LAUREN RENZAHO Of course we hated them. The plan to kill them was ready. It had been finished. The hatred was deeply imbedded so anyone who saw a Tutsi killed them. That is why we left our homes and went from one area to another. NGENDAHIMANA: People were saying that the end of the Tutsis had come. They were saying that Tutsis were going to die. They were saying that the government had handed them over to us to be killed. KEANE: Among the thousands of Tutsis who'd fled to the local church was a neighbour of the three men, Flora Mukampore. FLORA MUKAMPORE We used to go to church with them and they taught us together that committing murder is a sin, and God punishes those who kill. We thought that no one would dare come to attack us at the church because the church is a holy place. KEANE: For more than 30 years Tutsis had been an oppressed minority, but they hadn't imagined their own government would try to exterminate them. This Hutu elite held Rwanda's wealth and power. To keep power it would use the country's history as a weapon. In colonial times Tutsi chiefs were the enforcers for the Belgian rulers. Though just 15% of the population, they demanded total obedience from the Hutu majority. RWAMUHIZI: I heard that Tutsis were regarded as superior to Hutus. For example, a Hutu could only improve himself by serving in a Tutsi household. Other Hutus were regarded as low class. KEANE: Colonial scientists even tried to prove that Hutus were racially inferior. They were barred from university and government jobs. It provoked bitter resentment. RENZAHO: In the past they subjected Hutus to constant beating; they made them farm for them. That is what the Hutus didn't like. KEANE: When Hutus eventually seized power, thousands of Tutsis were massacred. Many more were driven abroad. And Hutu peasants were told that only Hutu dictatorship could prevent a return of Tutsi rule. RENZAHO: At that time we thought that if the Tutsis came back and captured the country, then the beatings would come back. KEANE: But in 1990 the Hutu dictatorship was challenged. Tutsi guerrillas attacked from abroad. The Rwandan Patriotic Front – the RPF – wanted to overthrow the ruling elite. A shaken Hutu state turned on Tutsi civilians. More than 2000 were killed. Nobody was charged with these crimes. The state was signalling Tutsis could be killed with impunity. The state began recruiting a Hutu militia, the Interahamwe, those who fight together. It was drawn from the vast ranks of the poor and the powerless. CYASA HABIMANA Interahamwe Leader They were taken by soldiers for training, they were given uniforms and some were given military boots, they also started acting as soldiers. KEANE: The state had another powerful weapon, radio. Radio Milles Collines preached hatred. A day would come, it said, when the people wanted no more of the Tutsi. It asked: "Where will you escape to then?" HABIMANA: Ordinary people tend to believe whatever the radio says because the radio is the main source of information. You want to tell lies to the people, just use the radio. NGENDAHIMANA: They kept on saying that the rebels, the cockroaches, are now the RPF, and that they are all Tutsis. That is when the hatred started and when you met a Tutsi you would say it's your relatives who are trying to kill us. KEANE: By early 1994 the state was planning it's final answer to the Tutsi problem – extermination. Weapons were given to the militia groups. Death lists were compiled. Hutus were warned, failure to support the Hutu state was betrayal. At meetings near Nyarubuye orders were relayed to local commanders from the very top of government. CYASA HABIMANA Interahamwe Leader The most important thing discussed in all those meetings was how to create hatred between ordinary people, to get ordinary people to hate the RPF and what they called their accomplices, the Tutsis, inside the country. KEANE: In the hills around Nyarubuye Hutu peasants were formed into Interahamwe gangs. RWAMUHIZI: We were told to carry out night patrols and to set up road blocks. We waited there to see if we could find supporters of the RPF in our area. KEANE: But by this time UN troops had arrived in Rwanda. They came to oversee a peace deal between the Hutu government and the Tutsi dominated RPF. But the Hutu elite had no intention of sharing power. A western aid official remembers meeting the chairman of the ruling party. PHILIPPE GAILLARD Head of International Red Cross, Rwanda One of the points we talked about was the peace agreement, and I will never forget, he told me that: "You know Mr Gaillard, in Africa peace agreements are usually toilet paper". KEANE: By April 1994 Hutu extremists were waiting for an excuse to attack. It came on the 6th April. [News] O:4 hours, Greenwich Mean Time The Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi in Central Africa have been killed in a plane crash. The circumstances are unclear. Rwandan officials say the plane was shot down. KEANE: The government told Hutus their President had been killed by Tutsis of the RPF. Fear would now explode into violence. RWAMUHIZI: We thought that if they had managed to kill the leader of the country, how were ordinary people supposed to survive? RENZAHO: After our President died, Tutsis were hated. We didn't want to go back to the old days, so we had to kill every Tutsi wherever they were. That's the truth. KEANE: The slaughter began in the capital Kigali. The killers hunted down all Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. Road blocks were set up. All Rwandans had their ethnic identity stamped on their ID cards. The word Tutsi spelt death. NGENDAHIMANA: If someone came, they would be asked for ID. If they didn't have it, they would be asked who their parents were. If the parents were known to be Hutu, they would pass. If they told us who their parents were and they were known to be Tutsi we would kill them and bury them. This was genocide, the attempts to wipe out the entire Tutsi ethnic group. The wounded who made it to the Red Cross hospital in Kigali were a lucky few. PHILIPPE GAILLARD Head of International Red Cross, Rwanda From the very beginning we started to go out with our ambulances, evacuating wounded people. When I say wounded, it's wrong, they were not wounded, they were people not finished off, this is a better definition. These were the first people we took to our improvised field hospital, and on the 14th April, the volunteers of the Rwandan Red Cross came to my office and told me that their ambulance had been stopped. They had six 'not finished off' Tutsi people in the ambulance. They were taken out by militaries and just killed on the side of the road. KEANE: Tens of thousands were dying but the world did nothing. How could countries like America and Britain fear being sucked into an African quagmire. UN peacekeepers were forbidden from intervening. Foreign troops came to fly out white expats, but the Tutsis were abandoned. At this hospital in the capital 2000 Tutsis begged for help. But just 2 hours after the Belgian troops left, the Tutsis were murdered. GAILLARD: Some people, the so-called international community in Europe decided not to give a shit about this, not what's happening in Rwanda, I think so. I mean Rwanda doesn't exist, look at the map. Who cares? Who cares? KEANE: When news of the killings reached Nyarubuye Tutsis began fleeing to the Catholic church. The local mayor had made a promise. GODENCE MUHONGERWA The mayor came and addressed a meeting at the church on about Wednesday, 13th April. He asked the people still in the villages not to flee, and he told those of us who were already at the church that he would send soldiers to protect us. KEANE: Mayor Sylvestre Gacumbitsi was handpicked by the President. Through mayors like him the state exercised an iron grip on its people. PENDO UWIMANA He was so powerful. Everything he ordered would be done immediately. You could see he was very powerful. KEANE: But like most Rwandan mayors, Gacumbitsi was a dedicated extremist. He lured the Tutsis into a trap. On the morning of April 15th 1994 Gacumbitsi set out for Nyarubuye, he brought with him soldiers and police. Along the way his guards captured some Tutsis. JONATHAN BERAKUMENYO Police Bodyguard To Sylvestre Gacumbitsi We took them in front of the mayor. He said: "Why did you bring them? Did I send for them? Take them away and kill them straightaway." I shot them. Gacumbitsi personally said to the people: "Look at this, I'm giving you an example." KEANE: Several thousand Tutsis were now gathered in and around the church, unaware they'd been lured there deliberately. Gacumbitsi had also given orders for local Hutus to advance on the church. Among the thousands now converging were the peasant farmers, Lauren Renzaho, Silas Ngendahimana and Gitera Rwamuhizi. GITERA RWAMUHIZI After selecting the people who could use guns and grenades they armed them. They said we should surround the church. They said one group should go north and another group should go south. There were so many of us we were treading on each others heels. KEANE: The peasants were controlled by soldiers and village councillors. Then the government's man arrived, Sylvestre Gacumbitsi. He would now give the orders. PENDO: When I saw him, he had changed. He used to hold meetings in Nyarubuye and you would see him as someone nice. But when I saw him at the church, he looked like an animal, like a real animal. He arrived and started handing out weapons to the soldiers and policemen. They started shooting immediately after that. RWAMUHIZI: People who had grenades detonated them. Tutsis started screaming for help. As they were screaming, those with guns started to shoot. KEANE: Tutsi men threw stones at their attackers. It was no defence. FLORA MUKAMPORE The men were ready to fight, even though they didn't have any weapons, so they died standing. You would not think they were all going to get killed because they were very many. We did not think they would get killed. KEANE: The shooting stopped. Then the Hutu peasants were given the order to attack. RWAMUHIZI: I went in, and when I met a man, I hit him with club and he died. You would say why not two, three or four, but I couldn't kill two or three because those that entered outnumbered those inside. Some people didn't even find someone to kill because there were more killers than victims. KEANE: The attackers used their farm tools, machetes, hoes and axes. GODENCE: We were on the floor. They started hacking people to death. They would step on us as they were doing it. They killed the young men first and after killing them they started shouting that the dead should be removed, so they could see those hiding underneath. They would get children and throw them. You would see them smashed. KEANE: As the killers closed in, the Tutsis realised that many of them were neighbours. FLORA: Gitera was there. Imagine someone leaving their home and knowing their victim, knowing their names and the names of their children. They all went there and killed their neighbours, their wives and their children. GITERA RWAMUHIZI Each person we cut looked traumatised. They looked like their hearts had been taken away. No one was asking for mercy. They looked like they were already dead. The way I saw people, people whose hands had been amputated, those with no legs, and others with no heads. I saw everything. People rolling around and screaming in agony with no arms and no legs. KEANE: The father of ten children, Lauren Renzaho attacked a neighbour whose home he'd often visited. LAUREN RENZAHO I'd never killed anyone before. All of this came like madness. I'd never had any mental problems before. We planned to kill Tutsis and it was in our mind to kill Tutsis. After all that killing at the church, it felt like we'd done something terrible. I wondered how it got into my mind. RWAMUHIZI: It was as if we were taken over by Satan. When Satan is using you, you lose your mind. We were not ourselves. Starting with me, I don’t think I was normal. You couldn't be normal and start butchering people for no reason. We'd been attacked by the devil. FLORA: All the people they were cutting fell on me because I was near the door. My hair was all washed with blood. My body was drenched in blood and it was starting to dry on me, so the killers thought I'd been cut all over, they thought I was dead. I lay down on one side with only one eye open. I could hear a man come towards me and I guess he saw me breathe. He hit me on my head saying: "Is this thing still alive?" Immediately I heard my entire body say whaaagh. Something in my head changed forever. Everything stopped. KEANE: The Tutsis now tried to find shelter in church offices. In one room a few children tried to escape through a window. JACQUELINE MUKARUTABANA My mother tried to stop me. She took hold of my clothing and pulled it so I would come back. But I kept going and she was left with the cloth alone in her hands. She told me not to go and die outside but stay with her so we would die together. One child that survived told me that as soon as I left she was killed. KEANE: Some killers had motives besides hatred. All were desperately poor. They stood to gain their neighbour's property. When Silas Ngendahimana went to loot, he found a woman on her own. SILAS NGENDAHIMANA When I entered the building I saw a sack of milk powder, and then I looked under the bed and I saw someone. I asked her to get out and she said: "Please have mercy on me." "Why should I?" I replied, and took her to the door. I continued hitting her, and she begged me for mercy. Mercy wasn't part of the deal. So I hit her and she died. KEANE: Why would you not show mercy? NGENDAHIMANA: Personally I would have had mercy on her but these people were handed over by the government. The government was responsible for their death. KEANE: But you were the one who saw this woman under the bed. You could have let her stay there, instead you killed her. That was not the government's fault. NGENDAHIMANA: But I thought that if I let her live, I was very scared that she would testify against me for breaking into the building. That is why I took her outside and killed her. KEANE: As Gitera and Silas and the others prepared to leave, some paused to stare at the ground, it had been transformed. NGENDAHIMANA: There was a tap running. The water flowed out mixing with the blood. It was all over the place. We could only step in the small places that hadn't been stained, to leave that place. KEANE: A handful of survivors hid among the bodies. One had been badly beaten on the head and lost her memory. Flora Mukampore was delirious. FLORA: When the wind blew and the cold passed through my body I woke up and went into the building but I didn't realise that there were bodies around me. I didn't remember what had happened. I just thought they were normal people and so I just slept among them like we had slept together before the killers came. Can you imagine living with the dead. At some point god helped me and made me unconscious because if I hadn't been I think I would have killed myself. But I was unconscious, and anyway killing yourself needs energy. KEANE: Flora was found by some children who'd also survived. FLORA: They sat me up and I realised there were maggots and I started taking them off myself. Can you imagine people died on the 15th of April and I lived among the bodies until the 15th of May. KEANE: By the end of April nearly half a million people were reported dead in Rwanda. The rate of killing was almost five times faster than the Nazi death camps. Still the world wouldn't act. In fact, the UN force had been scaled down from two and a half thousand to just two hundred and fifty men. This after ten soldiers had been killed by extremists. Panorama travelled with the now reduced UN force into territory controlled by the Interahamwe. At the Red Cross hospital doctors fought to save thousands of lives. KEANE: Could you just outline for me the scale of the humanitarian crisis which is being faced. Panorama, 1994 PHILIPPE GAILLARD Head of International Red Cross, Rwanda Well, I don’t know. People say there were half a million dead, maybe less, maybe more. I don’t count anymore because I cannot do that. Millions of displaced persons, at least 2 millions at least. Most of them… KEANE: The Red Cross director used interviews like this to try and shake the world into action. GAILLARD: They cannot tell us or tell me that they didn't know. They were told every day what was happening there. So then don’t come back to me and tell me sorry, we didn't know. Oh no. Everybody knew, every day, every minute. KEANE: By now Tutsi guerrillas of the RPF were fighting the extremists for control of the country but they couldn't move quickly enough to save thousands of Tutsis. Hate radio urged the destruction of the remaining Tutsis. Radio Milles Collines All Tutsis will perish. They will disappear from the earth. Slowly, slowly, slowly. We will kill them like rats. KEANE: The few Tutsis, including some children, who'd survived the attack at Nyarubuye were now being hunted. EVARISTE MAHIRANE Each area had leaders and at the end of the day they would count those killed and see who was still alive. They would say, so and so is still around. Go and search for him or her. Believe me, it was always a thorough search. We chased the boy through the banana plantation. After we caught him, he looked frightened. We held him and he started begging us for mercy. Then we asked him, do you know how long we've been looking for you? It had been one week of searching after the killing had started. I hit him with a club on the head holding his neck. That is how he died. My friends put him in a hole and we covered him and left. The child was dressed in shorts and a khaki shirt. He must have been 10 years old. The death of that child we put in the hole was terrible. There are all sorts of deaths but that death was the worst. KEANE: Was the boy actually dead when you buried him in the ditch? MAHIRANE: He was still kicking. KEANE: You yourself had a child of 10 years old at the time and yet you murdered a 10 year old. I think a great many people will wonder how you possibly could have done that. MAHIRANE: It was a time of hatred. Our heads were hot. We were animals. We didn't respect any human rights. KEANE: In the climate of hatred tens of thousands of Tutsi women were raped. Sexual violence was a weapon of ethnic hatred directed by men like the mayor, Sylvestre Gacumbitsi. Pendo Uwimana knew Mayor Gacumbitsi, he was a friend of her father's. PENDO UWIMANA When I saw him, I felt happy. Considering the way he used to know my family, I thought he was going to save me. KEANE: But to the mayor, old friendships counted for nothing now. Pendo was dragged away. PENDO: I entered the room and he told me, we aren't going to waste our bullets on you, we are just going to rape you, that is what will kill you. Gacumbitsi told me to lie down and then he raped me. After he finished, he called the policemen in and they also raped me. After that they raped me with their truncheons. KEANE: Gacumbitsi left Pendo to die. PENDO: I was saying to myself that I wish someone would kill me because I felt like I was already dead. KEANE: Then Pendo saw another Hutu leader, Sylvestre Gacumbitsi's deputy. He told her to follow him. PENDO: I went to his home thinking he is going to kill me quickly. But when I reached there, they gave me water to wash. They fed me and treated me very well. KEANE: There was a minority of Hutu leaders who resisted the call of hatred, political moderates who risked their lives. MATTHEW FASHINGABO Deputy to Mayor Sylvestre Gacumbitsi I was scared the Interahamwe would follow her and take her away. I went to the local leader of the area and told him there was someone in my house, and if anyone comes to touch that person it will be blood for blood. KEANE: Why do you think you behaved like a human being and Gacumbitsi who was your superior behaved as a killer? FASHINGABO: I think it's just within the heart of the individual to realise that people are all the same. It's not right to wish the death of one group of people. KEANE: Soon afterwards Gacumbitsi fled but the Tutsi guerrillas of the RPF were getting close to Nyarubuye . In a single day a quarter of a million Hutus escaped to Tanzania where they and their leaders would be fed by the international community. It was here, ten years ago, in a vast refugee camp, that Panorama tracked down the mayor Sylvestre Gacumbitsi. This was the Nacho Camp near the border with Rwanda and here working alongside national aid officials we found the man accused of such brutal crimes at Nyarubuye. KEANE: Mr Gacumbitsi. We're from the BBC. Several witnesses have told us that they saw you at the scene of the massacre, that you were the person who organised it. Is that true? SYLVESTRE GACUMBITSI Panorama 1994 No, no, no. It's a mistake. I was never involved in that. KEANE: We have been told by people who are absolutely adamant, they are sure that they saw you there. Are you calling those people liars? GACUMBITSI: They are liars. For me to be involved in a massacre as a mayor, to direct a massacre it's not possible. KEANE: There are an awful lot of people in that community, the Tutsis in particularly, who think that you are a murderer and a criminal. GACUMBITSI: The Tutsis again. Do you think they like me? I'm a Hutu. I told you before, they say whatever they like. What do you expect them to say. Now I understand. KEANE: Will you go to court if people accuse you of crimes against humanity? GACUMBITSI: My conscience tells me I am innocent. KEANE: Gacumbitsi would disappear from the camp. Back in Nyarubuye with the genocide over, the man who represented the conscience of the world came to visit. It was one year after the massacre when UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali came. The UN estimated that 800,000 people had been killed in Rwanda. BOUTROS BOUTRO-GHALI Secretary General of the UN I just want to say how much I am horrified at what I have seen, and how much I'm horrified that after World War Two we have a second genocide, and how much I'm horrified that we have not been able to contain or prevent this genocide. KEANE: But the world now promised to track down men like Gacumbitsi and put them on trial. After 7 years he was eventually arrested in Tanzania, and I would see him again as a witness in his trial for genocide and rape at the International War Crimes Court. Sylvestre Gacumbitsi denied all of the charges against him. In court the former mayor was shown the filmed evidence of human lives destroyed. JONATHAN BERAKUMENYO Police Bodyguard to Sylvestre Gacumbitsi He believed that killing Tutsis would solve all the problems we were faced with. He thought he'd be rewarded at the end. He never thought he would face justice. MATTHEW FASHINGABO Deputy to Mayor Sylvestre Gacumbitsi He could argue many reasons as to why they did it, but they're all tied to power. You know how power is sweet. That is the root of the genocide. KEANE: Sylvestre Gacumbitsi is now awaiting the court's verdict, but ten years after the genocide Rwanda is run by the people who won the war, the Tutsi dominated RPF. Killers like Rwamuhizi, Gitera and Silas are in gaol. But such killers wont spend their lives in gaol if they confess and apologise. The government says this is to promote reconciliation. Gitera will go home to the same village as Flora Mukampore in six years. FLORA: If it were you, wouldn't you get frightened? What kind of justice releases killers, the killers of many people are being told to go home and live with their victims. I thought they would be put away for good. KEANE: The church at Nyarubuye is a place of worship again but also a memorial. Hutu and Tutsi play together here once more. But Nyarubuye is a place haunted by the memory of what neighbour did to neighbour. RENZAHO: The worst thing for me was killing my neighbour. I used to share a drink with him. His cattle used to graze on my land. It was like I killed a relative. KEANE: Ten years ago, soon after the massacre, I met survivors of Nyarubuye, they knew they had been abandoned by the world. They knew that their own government had tried to destroy them, but they knew also that their neighbours had followed the call of hatred. For survivors, that was the harshest truth of genocide. Flora Mukampore and a group of children had only recently emerged from hiding among the bodies. She didn’t yet know that 17 members of her family were dead. FLORA: I used to tell the children that one day we will be freed. Nobody believed me. I told them that if I survive, you will survive, and we will go back to where we once came from. But of course, I had forgotten there was no family left to go back to. I had hoped some might have survived. RWAMUHIZI: There's nothing I can say. Even when I dream, my body changes in a way I cannot explain. These people were my neighbours. The picture of their deaths may never leave me. Everything else I can get out of my head, but that picture never leaves. Dedicated to the memory of the hundreds of thousands of Rwandans murdered in 1994. _________ www.bbc.co.uk/panorama CREDITS Reporter FERGAL KEANE Camera FRED SCOTT Stills Photography NICK DANZIGER VT Editor BOYD NAGLE Dubbing Mixer DAMIAN REYNOLDS Colourist NICK ADAMS Music PLANET X Production Co-ordinators JUSTINE HATCHER EMMA HILL Web Producer ADAM FLINTER Film Research KATE REDMAN Research AMANDA VAUGHAN-BARRATT KATHLYN POSNER Research Rwanda GABRIEL GABIRO LAURENT MAKUZA SHEENAH KALIISA PANORAMA 1994 Producer – DAVID HARRISON Camera – GLENN MIDDLETON Sound – HAMILTON WENDE Post Production Co-ordinator LIBBY HAND Unit Manager LAURA GOVETT Development Producers DAVID HARRISON ELIZABETH C. JONES Film Editor PETER NORREY Assistant Producer LUCY WILLMORE Producer DARREN KEMP Deputy Editors ANDREW BELL SAM COLLYNS Editor MIKE ROBINSON