PANCRACE: Given the way things went after the president’s plane crash, I think the genocide was organized down to the last detail by the intimidators in Kigali. On the hills, though, we were late in getting specific information about the killings. We were heating up, biding time, waiting for instructions, we didn’t know what. Actually, we learned about the genocide after it had already started.
ALPHONSE: The day after the plane crash, the burgomaster of Nyamata came to Kanzenze with some policemen to hold an important meeting. He told us about the crash, he explained the flight of the Tutsis who thought they were under suspicion for our president’s death, and he asked us to maintain order and security. But while he was speaking, some policemen and interahamwe were dragging their thumbs across their necks, as if cutting throats.
After the burgomaster left, a retired warrant officer announced very clearly, “All right, the burgo is gone, we’ll go on patrol. Grab some clubs and machetes for safety’s sake.” Off we went. We roamed around the Tutsis’ places, trading threats with them and some nasty, bloody blows, but we hardly cut at all because the Tutsis were still strong and staying together, and we were watching out not to get hurt.
That’s how the first ones got started on the job, basically—without the authorities’ permission.
JOSEPH-DÉSIRÉ: The platforms of all the Hutu political parties had been proposing Tutsi killings since 1992. Those agendas were descriptive and meticulous. They were read aloud at meetings and warmly applauded. They were read over the radio, especially after the Arusha accords. Everyone could easily learn about them and understand them, the whites and the Tutsis in particular.
In the town, we had got ready to begin new massacres to counter the inkotanyi attacks. We anticipated just the usual massacres, however, the kind we had known for thirty years. The more the inkotanyi pushed into the country, the more we would massacre their Tutsi brothers on their farms, to deter them and halt the advance: that was how we saw the situation at the municipal level. Regarding the genocide, we never received precise notification before the first day.
I had become involved in politics because of my cousin the burgomaster. We wanted the ideas of the president and the majority of Hutus to prevail. We wanted to wind up winners in every situation—that’s normal practice among people who do politics, in a way. Except that the escalation of the war ran the ordinary routines of power into a ditch, so to speak, and left us disorganized.
The highest authorities corrupted a war based on grudges piled up since the Tutsi kings and turned it into a genocide. We were overwhelmed. We found ourselves faced with a done deal we had to get done, if I may put it that way. When the genocide came from Kigali, taking us by surprise, I never flinched. I thought, If the authorities opted for this choice, there’s no reason to sidestep the issue.
Let us say that the chaotic situation had come to seem too natural to me. The things that went without saying, the obligations—it all happened so fast there was no room left for any kind
of hesitation. You were either pushed into flight by cowardice or drawn to your machete by obedience.
INNOCENT: “Joseph-Désiré weaves his way through many lies, for he has never been a fool. I’ve known him since our school days, and we later became colleagues and friends since we were both teachers. When he was made president of the interahamwe, much feared and much renowned, we were in opposing camps, but that did not prevent us from sharing a Primus and some laughs.
“Still, as I said before, his character changed completely after January. If I came into our neighborhood cabaret, he’d stop talking until I left. If our paths crossed, he would change direction and look away; suddenly he began avoiding conversation with me, refusing all contact. We hadn’t quarreled about anything, or fallen out over a hurtful word, but he had already expelled me from his circle. He preferred putting in hours at closed meetings with influential people. He was still friendly, but only to his Hutu compatriots.
“What I think now is that he didn’t know the tiny details of the genocide, such as the day and the exact agenda. But he certainly knew three months in advance that he was going to kill me, and my wife and my child, with whom he had shared pleasant times. He was in on the secret of the genocide without knowing how it would operate.
“After his arrest, we ran into each other in court and I burst out at him: ‘You, you knew everything for a long time and you never gave the slightest warning to save at least my wife! Maybe you even killed her with your own hands in the church.’ He mouthed conciliatory words in response, but he dodged the answer.”
ÉLIE: In 1991, after the first attacks from the rebels in Uganda, army newspapers singled out the Tutsi as the Hutu’s natural enemy
who had to be definitively destroyed. It was written in big fat letters on page one.
Afterward the targeting slowly spread by radio. At political meetings they instructed us to stop sharing land or goods with Tutsis, to stop intermarrying, or helping each other with farm work, or forgiving even a single thing in daily affairs. Because one day we’d set out to kill them, and these arrangements would hinder us. But as to the date and the means, we received no information.
Actually, the soldiers and civil servants thought the intimidators had decided to kill the Tutsis gradually, so as to discourage the advance of the inkotanyi. We had in mind sweeping massacres that would chase them away into Burundi and the neighboring countries for good. Nothing more serious than that.
As for the farmers, they heard rumors here and there; they welcomed the prospect of freeing up new fields, but they were most concerned with their own crops. They got all fired up the morning after the plane crash, not before. But afterward they had no problem understanding that this time it was for good.
IGNACE: The authorities had made lists of the important Tutsis in the commune—teachers and shopkeepers, for example. We already knew these people had to be killed first, though their families would be left alone. We were not to bother with the farmers and Tutsis of lesser interest. But after listing the influential people, the authorities announced the families should die, too, and all their neighbors as well. These detailed killings took us by surprise, if I may say so.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: When Habyarimana’s republic was forced to become a multiparty state, all the different Hutu parties recruited
militias, at first to protect themselves from one another, because things were really hot among the Hutu extremists, and then to focus on the Tutsis.
The interahamwe were the most visible: they sang in the meetings, paraded in the streets, got together for exercise workouts at the cultural center. They received food, drinks, and little gifts of money from shopkeepers.
They were preparing for small massacres of Tutsis, the way we had been doing them since 1959—punishment massacres, caused by envy, or the inkotanyi, or revenge, or greed for Tutsi cows and plots of land. But the removal of all Tutsis—that they thought of only after the plane crash.
Through my job as the municipal census taker, I was well acquainted with the councilor in Ntarama, and I know he did not use the word genocide before it began, not even in his innermost thoughts. The higher-ups in Kigali had planned it all behind blank faces.
INNOCENT: “In Kibungo, we had a very nice councilor named Servilien Kambali, a rich farmer who never wanted any problems on his hill. During the ethnic massacres of 1992, he had behaved quite calmly and had separated groups of troublemakers without even a single dead man on either side. He was a Hutu, of a peaceful disposition.
“On April 10, three days after the crash, he warned his people: ‘All right, it is too hot in the country—but I will not accept commotion or bloodshed in my sector. I am setting out for Nyamata to bring back security reinforcements. Until I return, do not leave your houses, all of you, or it will go badly with you. Anyone who utters a threat will be punished. Anyone who lifts a hand, watch out.’
“In Nyamata he explained about the hotheads and asked for
help. The burgomaster replied, ‘Servilien, you’re an idiot. No more of your screw-ups. Instead of reinforcements, you will return to your hill with strict orders.’
“When Servilien came back, he told the Hutu farmers waiting for him in a circle: ‘Well, it’s already been decided. They have already started. We must kill them all.’ He grabbed a gun, and from then on he was out in front as a prominent organizer, from the first day to the last.
“Could that fellow remain a nice guy in the middle of the genocide? Obviously not, if he wanted to keep his position as councilor. And if he wanted his share of the spoils, he clearly couldn’t sit on his front porch with his arms crossed. Since he was well known, he couldn’t lie low on his hill watching it all, either, without risking the wrath of the Hutu youths.
“But he could certainly have behaved timidly in killing and seeking advantages. He could have lagged behind the advancing line, or gone to Gitarama with his family, if it disgusted him to get out his gun. At his trial, he said it had never occurred to him.”
FULGENCE: While a number of educated people were organizers, others were simple killers, same as the farmers; they worked as we did, without seeming any smarter at the killings. Some of them hid their ambitions; others revealed them. It depended on the authority they wanted to acquire later on, after everything was taken care of. It depended on their future aspirations. All in all, they didn’t behave any worse than we did.
PIO: Some educated people, shopkeepers and so on, spoke with such ferocity that the least the authorities could do was repay their enthusiasm by lending them guns, so they wouldn’t get their clothes bloodied. They shot, they shouted, they toed the line:
they lined up with the leaders for words and with the followers for actions. The killings by these intimidators were more conventional and less messy than ours.
LÉOPORD: The organizers arranged patrols, settled disputes over looting, and laid out the daily itineraries. If these organizers hadn’t shown up, it wouldn’t have occurred to the farmers to begin the work. They would have brandished machetes in anger over the plane crash and then gone back to their fields. Or let’s say they would have sweated it out in the marshes, but not for so many days. They would have bided their time. That all-out decision to kill, that was definitely from the organizers.
ADALBERT: The educated people were certainly the ones who drove the farmers on, out in the marshes. Today they’re the ones who juggle with words or turn close-mouthed. Many sit quietly in their same places as before. Some have become ministers or bishops; they aren’t so much in the public eye, but they still wear their fancy clothes and gold-framed glasses. While suffering keeps us in prison.
IGNACE: The organizers could always leave if they didn’t feel all right about the daily killings. They could sit around discussing schedules or go visit distant relatives—unlike the farmers, who didn’t know how to fend for themselves in town. But the organizers did all stay. Those who didn’t step into the front ranks got along fine at the back. They wanted to make sure they were noticed, or to make sure they got theirs.