Genocide memorial inaugurated

The Rwandan government and a private organisation, Fest Africa 2000, have inaugurated a genocide memorial, the "garden of memory", at Nyaza hill, in the suburbs of the capital Kigali. The Rwanda News Agency quoted Bruce Clarke, one of the initiators of the memorial, as saying "the presence of the garden as a memory will mark the refusal to allow the genocide to take root". The executive secretary of the unity and reconciliation commission, Aloysia Inyumba, underscored the need for a memorial garden as a strategy towards reconciliation. "Remembering makes people appreciate their history," she said. The garden of memory will contain one million stones, each bearing the name or distinctive sign of a victim, on a site of one square kilometre.