Tourists can visit genocide memorials in Rwanda

• By JODY KURASH
• Associated Press writer
• Published: Jul 27, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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KIGALI, Rwanda — Visiting places famous for death is nothing new. You can tour the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau in Germany and Auschwitz in Poland. Tourists sought glimpses of the World Trade Center ruins within days of the Sept. 11th attacks.

Rwanda is another destination where visitors can bear witness to the mass slaughter of innocents. Macabre memorial sites scattered throughout the country mark the horrific genocide in 1994 when extremist Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

I toured some of these sites on a trip to the country last year. Churches and schools where thousands of people were murdered have not been sanitized for tourists. They include graphic displays of skulls, bones and even preserved corpses. They were horrifying, yes, and shocking. But they present an accurate depiction of the brutality and inhumanity of war and of genocide.

The most moving site I visited was a genocide memorial at the Murambi school in Gikongoro. A driver picked me up at my hotel in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, at 4 a.m. to begin the three-hour drive from there to the school. His daughter, Foufou Sabati, a university student, accompanied us, serving as an informal translator.

A guide, Rusariganwa Francois, walked me and Foufou through various classrooms. Francois said people flocked to the technical school during the genocide to seek protection from the killers, but ultimately the death squads arrived and murdered them by the thousands.

Tragic sites
In addition to a mass grave outside, tables in each classroom are covered with bodies of the dead preserved in powdered lime.
Some of the twisted, contorted bodies resist death, others appear to be resigned to their fate. Their faces are preserved in a wide range of expression, from fear to shock to sheer horror. Some defend themselves; others clutch each other. Some are adults, some children, some babies. Machete slashes are still visible on the shriveled remains. The tour continues with a room full of the bloodstained clothing worn by the victims, hanging from clotheslines.

Back in Kigali, the Hotel des Milles Collines is another important stop. It’s a working hotel in Kigali, but it was made famous by the movie Hotel Rwanda, which tells the true story of Paul Rusesabagina and the more than 1,000 people he sheltered there during the genocide. The movie was filmed in South Africa, so visitors will not recognize any specific settings, but it’s easy to imagine the scenes playing out.

Elsewhere, many ghastly massacres took place in churches where people had futilely gathered, hoping for refuge. My driver took me to the Ntarama church outside Kigali, where thousands more were killed. Purple satin banners hang on the fence outside the weathered red-brick church with a sign declaring, “Never Again.”

The 12-foot high ceiling is pocked with bullet holes and stained with blood. Many of the church’s 10,000 victims were either hacked to death with machetes or clubbed. A statue of the Virgin Mary remains caked in mud. Another display case commemorates the visit of Pope John Paul II. A third case is filled with skulls of the victims staring out at the visitor. A small room near the altar overflows to the ceiling with the unwashed clothing of victims.

At another site, the Nyamata church, 14 miles south of Kigali, visitors encounter a corridor of shelves, stacked with skulls and bones, inside the entrance. The skulls have holes and gouges from machetes, bullets and clubs. Two massive mounds of leg and arm bones, piled randomly, flank the altar.

These morbid and stark sites may be too shocking for some, but anyone visiting Rwanda should go to the Kigali Memorial Centre, which opened for the 10th anniversary of the genocide in 2004. Organizers built the center on a site containing a mass grave of more than 250,000 victims.

The center provides an excellent historical perspective on Rwandan history and the events leading up to the genocide. Interactive exhibits feature interviews with survivors and discussions of the killings, torture, refugee crisis and recovery. One floor dedicated to child victims features oversized photos of the kids and profiles.

With its walls of family photos, the center serves not only as a memorial to the victims, but also as a place where survivors can come mourn their loved ones. Travel and Leisure magazine reported that when the center opened, many family members came and refused to leave, with some staying and sleeping on the floors for days.