Rwandan Dead Must Be Honoured By Ending Genocide

Rwandan Dead Must Be Honoured By Ending Genocide - Ban

New York, Apr 7 2009 9:10AM Marking the 15th anniversary of the 1994 mass killings in Rwanda today, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asserted that preventing genocide was the most important collective response to the tragedy.

“Only by meeting this challenge can we match the resolve of the survivors and truly honour the memory of those who died in Rwanda 15 years ago,” he said in a statement.

April 1994 saw the beginning of a slaughter in the tiny East African country in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and Hutu moderates died, mostly by machete, during a period of less than 100 days.

The UN is observing the anniversary with a mid-day reading of the testimonies of survivors of the genocide, coinciding with similar events taking place in Congo, Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom, Mexico and Japan.

Two photography exhibits on Rwandan survivors will also be launched in the visitor’s lobby of UN Headquarters in New York.

One exhibit, entitled “Visions of Rwanda: Images of Survival, Reconciliation, Forgiveness and Hope,” documents the 2007 coming together of 12 survivors, including orphans, widows, rape and assault victims, a judge and perpetrators, some of whom were responsible for the killing of family members of other participants.

The other – “Intended Consequences: Photographs and Interviews by Jonathan Torgovnik” –portrays the ordeals of several Rwandan women who bore children conceived by rape during the massacres.

“The resounding voices of survivors touch us in ways that no other words could,” Mr. Ban commented in his statement, adding that they also depict a country moving toward reconciliation.

“Yet the silence of the more than 800,000 innocent victims still haunts our collective conscience,” he said.

ENDS

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