The Bloodbath of Rwandan Refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Benoît Rugumaho

Description

In 1994, April 6th, after the assassination of President Habyarimana, which started the Tutsi genocide and the massacres of the Hutu opponents in Rwanda, a large part of the population moved to neighbouring countries .In 1996, the ruling RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) in Kigali sent the Rwandan Patriotic Army to «sweep away» refugee camps they likened to genocidaires. Here the author tells his own story as a survivor. He has the merit to reveal to the world what the great media as well as the international institutions of wit and will have neglected: a slaughter planned and carnage programmed and executed by the Tutsi military regime in Kigali.

Sujets

• Harmattan Littérature
• Autobiographie
• Témoin
• Récit
• Témoignage

Informations

• Publié par: L'Harmattan
• Date de parution: 20 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9782140138515
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

T(E BLOODBAT( OF RWANDAN REFUGEES )N T(E DEMOCRAT)C REPUBL)C OF CONGO

Testimonies from a survivor

Mémoires africaines L’histoire se construit à partir des acteurs, petits ou grands. Cette collection reçoit les témoignages ou les récits de tous ceux qui ont contribué à façonner notre présent. Déjà parus RUGUMAHO Benoît,La hecatombe de los refugiados ruandeses en el Antiguo Zaire. Testamiento de un sperviviente, 2018. BARRY Aminata,Le tourbillon. III : Vers la sortie, 2014. BARRY Aminata,Le tourbillon. II : Le combat, 2013. BARRY Aminata,Le tourbillon. La dérive autoritaire, 2012. TETE ADJALOGO Têtêvi Godwin,Omer Adoté. Un martyr politique du Togo, 2004. MATALA MUKADI Tshiakatumba,Dans la tourmente de la dictature, 2001. OSTROWSKI L. Zygmunt,Soudan, coulisses d’une guerre oubliée, 2001. BAUDIN Marcel,Les derniers Méharistes, 1999. DUPAGNE Yannick,de l'éducation en Afrique ou Coopérant l'expérience camerounaise d'un directeur de collège, 1994. NYONDA Vincent de Paul,Autobiographie d'un Gabonais, du villageois au ministre, 1994. BAKARY Djibo, «» ItinéraireSilence, on décolonise ! politique et syndical d'un militant africain, 1993. NDEGEYA Vénérand,au Burundi, Journal d'un Répression prisonnier vainqueur, 1993. N'GANGBET Kosnaye Michel,Tribulations d'un jeune Tchadien de l'école coloniale à la prison de l'indépendance, 1993. BASSOM Nouk,Le Quartier Spécial - Détenu sans procès au Cameroun, 1992.

Benoît Rugumaho

T(E BLOODBAT( OF RWANDAN REFUGEES )N T(E DEMOCRAT)C REPUBL)C OF CONGO

Testimonies from a survivor

Foreword by Stefaan Marysse

Du même auteur dans la même collection La hecatombe de los refugiados ruandeses en el Antiguo Zaire. Testamiento de un sperviviente, 2018. Blodbadet på rwandiska flyktingar i Zaire: vittnesmålen från den överlevande,2010. L’hécatombe des réfugiés rwandais dans l’ex-Zaïre. Témoignage d’un survivant, 2004. On the cover 1. A long walk through the Zairian rainforest: a dog’s life lined with the daily death period. When the tents were burned and attacked by the military of the RPF, these refugees entered the equatorial jungle of the DRC. Walking, they were very tight against each other and they moved slowly. The refugees were killed by their persecutors, absorbed by the Zairean jungle or eliminated by fatigue, hunger, thirst, illness and other physical and mental disorders. Most of the refugees were savagely massacred by the military of RPF and very few survived. I’m part of the group of survivors. 31 janvier 2018, http://www.jambonews.net/actualites ©Jambo asbl. © L’Harmattan, 2019 5-7, rue de l’Ecole-Polytechnique, 75005 Paris http://www.editions-harmattan.fr ISBN : 978-2-343-19165-2 EAN : 9782343191652

Whenever there’s a looser, the winner always writes his history Paul Rusesabagina In Documentary FilmVictims of Impunity

Author Benoît Rugumaho was born on July 11, 1966 in Gikongoro County, Rwanda. After his upper secondary education at Collège du Christ-Roi in Nyanza (Butare) where he studied Latin and Modern Languages on the Humanities Program, he began higher education at National University of Rwanda at Ruhengeri in Nyakinama in 1989. He studied at the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and African Literature. He should get a master's degree in June 1994 but he could not complete it because of the unrest that began throughout the country. The unrest was caused by the terrorist attack on the aircraft with President Habyarimana Juvénal on board, which took place on April 6, 1994.

In order to save his life, the author fled to Zaire in July 1994 together with hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens. He took refuge in Kashusha refugee camp in Bukavu, located in South Kivu. When the refugee camp was destroyed by the soldiers in the Rwandan Patriotic Army ( APR) on November 2, 1996, he fled into Zaire's dense forests where he encountered huge problems. He was persecuted as a savage by the Rwandan army, but he managed to travel on foot to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Zaire), to the Congo Republic (Brazzaville), and to the Central African Republic (Bangui-Bouca).

After surviving the bloodbath of Rwandan refugees in Zaire, he, with the help of the UN Commission on Refugees, settled in Sweden where he has lived from June 5, 1998 together with his wife Cécile and five children, one of whom is adopted. After reading Swedish, he started at Linköping University, Faculty of Philosophy at the French Department of Language and Culture. After

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graduating in French literature and African Languages, he studied Ethnicity, Nationalism and International Migration at the same university at Social Anthropological Department. He studied UN Studies and specialized in the subject of UN and refugee protection. Afterwards, he studied at the same university at the Faculty of Teacher Education Programme and eventually he obtained a teacher's degree- Master of Education. He is in possession of Registration of Teachers called in Swedish “Lärarlegitimation”. At Mid Sweden University, Benoît Rugumaho studied Political Science, English A and Migration Policy in Europe and Sweden.

His book, “The bloodbathof Rwandan Refugees in Democratic Republic of Congo: Testimonies from a survivor”, reconstitutes the various challenges experienced by the author from his native country into exile and pays tribute to the memory of all Rwandan refugees who died in the forests of the Former Zaire.

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Foreword by Stefaan Marysse

Through the contemporary odyssey of a family of Rwandan refugees, all the tragedy of a torn and demonized people is told in filigree. Certainly this story is told by a survivor who can only leave from a particular point of view but who tells the hard reality of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who have been hunted down, persecuted and killed by thousands without the world reacting to this moment with rare exceptions. So this book is also, beyond a story that takes you through the throat of the first to the last page, a shout of bitterness and an act of will to shed light on the silence of the media of this forgotten hecatomb.

Without denying the 1994 genocide in his country and recognizing the immense tragedy, he illuminates it from his lived history. He wants to recognize at the same time the suffering inflicted by the Rwandan Patriotic Army on hundreds of thousands of innocent people from 1995 under the guise of "protecting the borders against the Interahamwe (members of the MRND party) and other people so-called “génocidaires”. His personal story is that of a Hutu intellectual who was able to emerge from a simple peasant family and who from his personal qualities and abilities wants to make a future in his country and for his country but who sees his dream become nightmare.

This testimony therefore wants, above all, to re-situate the Rwandan drama and to complete it from its point of view. Many Hutu intellectuals have the deep conviction that the Rwandan Government has not only wanted to eliminate the genocidaires but has cynically used the "genocide credit" to make a clean sweep of a whole layer

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of the Rwandan population that could endanger the power in place. It is above all the unspoken that one has to read in the Rwandan context to understand the full depth of the tragedy. This story is composed of different scriptures and the truth is complex. Different angles of view or lighting are necessary to complete an international press sometimes ill-informed by those who handle it better. Benoît Rugumaho contributes, with his personal account, to a complementary lighting of the Rwandan tragedy.

1  Stefaan Marysse

1  Professor at the Center for Development Studies (UFSIA) of Antwerp and vice president of the Center for the Study of the Great Lakes Region of Africa, University of Antwerp. Stefaan Marysse is the author of numerous articles on this region.

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