Eighth genocide commemoration held

Rwandans on Sunday commemorated the 1994 genocide in different parts of the country and reburied the remains of some 3,000 victims in a mass grave in the southern town of Nyakibanda in Butare Prefecture, news organisations said.

On the eve of the commemoration, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told journalists that Rwandans should not be held hostage by history, Rwandan radio reported. "I think central to what one intends to say on such occasion is, well, the rebuilding of the country, but keeping very much in mind the underlying causes of what happened in 1994," Kagame stated.

"I think you have to deal with reconciliation, you have to deal with human rights issues, you have to ask people to participate in rebuilding a new nation, and not to be held hostage by our history, but rather to learn from it and be able to move forward," he said.

At least 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed during the 100-day genocide triggered when a plane carrying Rwanda's Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart, Cyprien Ntayamira, was shot down on 6 April 1994 as it approached Kigali airport, AP noted.

The massacres were stopped when the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front ousted the extremist Hutu government on 4 July 1994. After the genocide, the dead were often hastily buried in mass graves to avoid the spread of disease, AP said. A reburial ceremony had taken place each year on the anniversary of the genocide in a different part of the country, it added.

Kagame said his government supported in principle the establishment of a consolidated fund for genocide survivors, a fund which would draw resources from different sources, including the property of those convicted by courts of having participated in the genocide.

Meanwhile, Kagame also told journalists, when asked whether he was happy with the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), that the tribunal "has got a lot of problems which should be ironed out to make sure it does not lose credibility".

"I think there are various problems in terms of resources," Kagame said. "On one hand, some people think it is consuming a lot of resources. On the other, some people think it is not actually doing enough with those resources in terms of the number of people it brings to justice, the number that it is able to indict, of these suspects of the genocide."

He mentioned allegations that some involved in the trial process were suspects of genocide, and lack of protection for witnesses as other factors that had led to dissatisfaction with the Tribunal.

"If the allegations are true, then there is need to address them seriously. If they are not true, then the public opinion needs to be convinced that that is not the case, and facts should come out, so that the ICTR does not lose its credibility," he added.