Rwandans in Tanzania give a thumbs up to reconciliation efforts

By Kizito Makoye

NGARA, Tanzania (AA) - Haunted by the horror of the 1994 genocide, Rwandan citizens who live in Tanzania have commended efforts by the government of Rwanda to reconcile the war-torn nation and persuade thousands of people who fled the bloodbath 28 years ago to return home and co-exist with their neighbors.

“I think our leaders are doing a noble job to bring people together. I cannot imagine all the hatred has dissipated,” said 67-year-old Rita Bartazari, who lives in Tanzania’s northwestern village of Ngara.

With memories of the genocide still fresh in her mind, Bartazari, who is now a permanent resident in Tanzania, recalled how she was forced to walk days and nights with her family for safety toward the Tanzanian border.

- Traumatic experience

“The genocide was the most traumatic experience of my life. I don’t want to remember it. It was only by the grace of God that my family and I are alive today,” she told Anadolu Agency

On the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which is commemorated on April 7, Bartazari said the slaughter which started shortly after President Juvenal Habyarimana died in a plane crash on April 6, 1994 will forever be remembered in history and serve as a lesson for the human race.

“What happened in my country should not happen to any country,” she said. “Today brothers and sisters have to learn to live together in harmony.”

Bartazari, who engages in farming, said she is planning to visit her relatives in June, just to see them after 28 years.

“Rwanda is my home. It will forever be, so I am very excited to see my relatives,” she said.

Bartazari, a Hutu, whose brother was killed by the Interahamwe militia, said the genocide happened because of hatred between the two ethnic groups -- the Tutsis and Hutus.

Bartazari said she is impressed by the sustained efforts by Rwandans to reconcile.

“Reconciliation is a big thing today. Even in school, I am told children are taught about it,” she said.

- Healing the wounds

Bartazari hailed Rwanda’s judicial system, locally known as gacaca, and the role it has played to heal deep wounds as victims have been given the opportunity to express their disgust and encourage the victims to engage in dialogue with people from other ethnic group they previously perceived as enemies.

As one of the world’s most generous refugee-hosting countries, Tanzania is home to about 335,000 refugees from neighboring Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo who fled to the country due to widespread insecurity in their war-ravaged nations.

Bartazari, who initially came to Tanzania as a refugee before securing a permanent resident permit, feels welcomed in the country.

“I very much feel at home here. But I am emotionally attached to my relatives in Rwanda,” she said.

Recalling his ordeal, Nesphory Sakubu, a Rwandan who lives in Ngara, said the genocide, in which over 800,000 people were killed, devastated his family.

“I was separated from my family, and until today, I don’t know what happened to my two sons,” Sakubu told Anadolu Agency

Sakubu was living with his wife and four children in the southwestern town of Kibungo when the violence erupted in April 1994.

“There was terrible fighting during the night. Our home was hit,” he said, recalling the fear and horror.

“We had left everything except for some money and food,” he said.

Sakubu and his family crossed the Rusumo border into the northwestern village of Ngara.

Weaving through a column of people jostling to flee the rampage, Sakubu lost contact with his two children.

According to Sakubu, walking all the way to Tanzania was an uphill struggle. He joined a slow-moving column of fellow refugees from Rwanda who trekked on 26 kilometers (16 miles) of paved road, hills and dew-laden terrain to reach the Ngara town.

For days, the Rwandan Army had deterred their passing. But when the troops fled as rebel forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front advanced, a quarter of a million Rwandans moved across a bridge to Ngara.

“The militias were very brutal. They were killing people like chickens,” recalled 71-year-old Eliya Munyarabihizi, a former resident of Kibungo.

Munyarabihizi said he and his family had walked for days to reach Tanzania.

“We had to leave everything behind. Life was never the same again,” he told Anadolu Agency.

According to Munyarabihizi, some villagers walked for as long as two weeks, carrying personal effects including mattresses and cooking pots on their heads and cans full of water.

“The good thing is that our nation has now reconciled and everything has remained as history,” he said.