Citation
** Page 1 **
Anote:by Nicholas Harman,
Fi 91"
communications Consultant, UNAMIR, Kigali 4 597 _
THE MASSACRE. AT NTARAMA
on:Thursday 2 September 1994 Canadian forces escorted a TV crew to
Nyamata church,. in. Ntarama parish, Busegera prefecture, Rwanda.
This .is background infornation to.the scenes recorded in the church
and the surrounding landscape.
The main source-is Mr Evariste Justin Musonera, a Rwandese national
resident in the United States and employed by the UN Environnent
Programme, Nairobi. He says he: is related to many of those who
died;. and recommends. as local contacts Kalisa Rukumbeli and Alefa
Kaninba,. traceable through the oasis Bar, Nyamata.
qutsi-Hutu tension: in Ntarama parish has been intense since 1961,
when:a large number of Tutsi people:vere resettled there as part of
the "ethnic cleansing" that followed :the 1959 massacres of Tutsis.
Tension rose in.1993 after the return of local Hutus from exile in
Burundi, where they had. thenselves filed in fear of massacre by
Tutsis..
on:6.April 1994:the president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habiyarimane, died
in:a mysterious air crash at Kigali airport. The following day, the
Hutus of Ntarama began systematically killing their Tutsi
neighbours. The Tutsis, vutnumbered, fled and hid in the marshes
and. banana: groves. The: burgomaster, a Hutu, advised the Tutsis to
take refuge’ in the chufch, where they were joined by friendly
Hutus, and defended thenselves with machetes and home-made weapons.
On 16. April 1994 soldiers of the national army, the RGF, arrived
with machine-quns, rifles and: RPGs. They fired on the church,
entered.it and shot those inside, conpleting their work by hacking
up the-dead-ané the few survivors with machetes.
Sone of those: inside the church:tried to run away. They vere shot
as: they left, then. hacked up. Soldiers with dogs searched the
marshes. and killed those they found hiding there.
Ten people may have survived the massacre: three have been
positively identified. À few corpses have been buried. Some 350
largely. disnembered: bodies were left in the church as evidence of
what happened:. Uncounted bodies lie-in the surrounding countryside.
4 September 1994
WM011124
