ADALBERT: There were some who brutalized a lot because they killed overmuch. Their killings were delicious to them. They needed intoxication, like someone who calls louder and louder for a bottle.
Animal death no longer gave them satisfaction, they felt frustrated when they simply struck down a Tutsi. They wanted seething excitement. They felt cheated when a Tutsi died without a word. Which is why they no longer struck at the mortal parts, wishing to savor the blows and relish the screams.
FULGENCE: The suffering brought to light each person’s natural kindness or wickedness. There were fierce people who urged us to cause pain. But they were the very few. Most appeared uneasy with the awful suffering.
We always finished our jobs properly. Except with runaways who had made us sweat too much running in the swamps, of course. I did notice that those carrying guns never aimed at fugitives when they wanted to scatter them; they shot into the air to avoid sending them toward too swift a death.
PANCRACE: Torture was a supplementary activity, resulting from an individual decision or a small meeting. It was just a distraction, like a recreational break in a long work day. The orders were simply to kill.
Some killed slowly because they were afraid, others because they were weaklings, others because it was all the same to them, others from ferocity. Me, I struck quickly without worrying about it. I did not think about such fiendishness, I was hurrying to get through the day’s schedule.
ALPHONSE: Some amused themselves with their machetes on the Tutsis, to show off their skill to everyone. They would swagger around boasting later in the evening. Some slowed down their machetes just for punishment. If a Tutsi had worn out a pursuer in a running chase, he could be teased with the point of a machete—it could be nasty for him. It was like demonstrating the bad example, except no one was left alive to notice.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: Extreme agonies were worked on important people, well-known businessmen. It was to punish them for past misdeeds or make them cough up their hidden savings. Also torments were done to people with whom there had been a stubborn grievance—a bargain that had not been settled or bad blood over some trampling by cows, for example. But not often. No orders were given about this. The bosses would say, “Kill, and fast, that’s all. There’s no point in taking your time.”
In Congo, on the way back, I knew some perpetrators who were driven by madness into Lake Kivu. Fright plunged them into an engulfing grave. They thought death would welcome them more mercifully in the waters than on the hills. Horrible threats were flying in all directions as the return drew close. Terror gave them detailed promises of a wretched death, since they had themselves cut a great many in a vicious way. But they were the exceptions.
PIO: There was voluntary suffering and involuntary suffering, so to speak. Because numerous Tutsis ended screaming from cuttings simply because of poor technique. They were the wounded left writhing, through haste, carelessness, or disgust with what had just been done more than through cruelty. Those were sufferings through sloppiness.
LÉOPORD: I saw colleagues linger over their catch to make the agony last. But often they left before polishing someone off because they were too eager to go looting. For example, they gave the first machete blow and then spotted a bike, and—hop, they’d rather jump on the bike than finish the job. Same for a roof with good sheets of corrugated metal. It was greed more than wickedness. I trusted that there was time for each of those occupations. I struck fast and true, I struck just to get it done.
ÉLIE: Making someone suffer was up to each person, as long as he did his job. The intimidators gave no particular order to encourage or discourage it. They repeated, “Just kill, that is the main thing.” We didn’t care. If a colleague had to play around with a victim, we kept going. But I have to say that the coups de grâce were not well done. Even if it was not from meanness, it was not done nicely.
ALPHONSE: Saving the babies, that was not practical. They were whacked against walls and trees or they were cut right away. But they were killed more quickly, because of their small size and because their suffering was of no use. They say that at the church in Nyamata they burned children with gasoline. Maybe it’s true, but that was just a few in the first-day turmoil. Afterward that did not last. In any case I noticed nothing more. The babies could not
understand the why of the suffering, it was not worth lingering over them.
FULGENCE: When we saw Tutsis wriggling like snakes in the marshes, it made the guys laugh. Some let them crawl awhile longer for more fun. But that was not the case for everybody. Some didn’t care one way or the other and didn’t bother with that mockery. If it was easier to catch them crawling, that was better, and that was all.
ADALBERT: When we spotted a small group of runaways trying to escape by creeping through the mud, we called them snakes. Before the killings, we usually called them cockroaches. But during, it was more suitable to call them snakes, because of their attitude, or zeros, or dogs, because in our country we don’t like dogs; in any case, they were less-than-nothings.
For some of us, those taunts were just minor diversions. The important thing was not to let them get away. For others, the insults were invigorating, made the job easier. The perpetrators felt more comfortable insulting and hitting crawlers in rags rather than properly upright people. Because they seemed less like us in that position.
CLÉMENTINE: “Sometimes the men returned from an expedition pushing a fugitive in front of them. They would stop him in the marketplace. They would take off his watch and shoes. Occasionally they would take off his clothes as well—at least at the beginning of the killings, because afterward the runaways were so tattered, there was nothing left worth taking off.
“These doomed victims were usually acquaintances who had tried to cheat—to pass for Hutu, for example. Or people who
had been rich and important before. Or acquaintances disliked because of old quarrels.
“The killers would call everyone to watch. All the women and children would gather to see the show. There were people still carrying drinks, or nurslings on their backs. The killers would cut off the victims’ limbs, they would crush their bones with a club, but without killing them. They wanted them to last. They wanted the audience to learn from these torments. Shouts would rise up from all sides. These were raucous village jamborees, quite rare and quite popular.”
JEAN: “During the killings there was no more school, no more leisure activities, no more ballgames and the like. When there was a cutting session in public, in the church or in the center of town, all the children came running. You weren’t obliged one way or the other. Anyone who had not heard about it was attracted by the cries. We studied all the details of the blood. You could squeeze up close or hang back, depending on your curiosity. Those were our only group pursuits.”
SYLVIE: “All the little children saw public killings. Even if they refuse to talk about it today, they sometimes let slip words that prove they saw those torture shows. They had to watch them, for the lesson and the diversion. The oldest, over twelve or thirteen, could even participate sometimes. Even if they did not kill with their own hands, they went off with the dogs to nose out the fugitives in their bush hideouts. That was what they did during all those weeks with no school, no games, no church. Along with looting.
“It is impossible to give a number, but many children killed. Some say they were sickened by it, scared of it, but were forced to cut by their mamas or papas. Most are completely silent when they hear talk of the killings, even from years ago. Keeping silent blocks both judgment and change.”
LÉOPORD: One day an official declared, “A woman on her back has no ethnic group.” After those words, men would capture girls and take them to their fields for sex. Many others feared their wives’ reproaches and raped the girls right in the middle of the killing in the marshes, without even hiding from their comrades behind the papyrus.
There are girls who saved their lives that way, sometimes for a long while that is still going on. Especially if they were caught by soldiers, who had no one at home. Falling into the hands of farmers, obviously that couldn’t last.
CLÉMENTINE: “My Tutsi husband had fled into the marshes. The first week of the killings, I had given birth in an abandoned house because they had set our home on fire. Passersby would squawk about the newborn. They jabbered at the door: ‘She’s one of ours all right, but her son is Tutsi. He has lost his place among the living.’ When the men became too threatening, I had to lie down beneath them to save the little one’s life. Since they spoke of it among themselves, it happened often.”
PANCRACE: Often in the talk of evenings and even in the old days, people would say, “Look at those Tutsis, how they seem so tall. That’s why they show themselves so proud and consider us inferior people. That’s why their daughters are so prized.” So when the killings came, if a killer with a jaundiced eye caught a tall girl in the reeds, he might well strike her in the legs, at the ankles for example, and the arms likewise, and leave her cut shorter without the fatal blow. Even if she was not that tall, as long as she was a woman.