Eugene Rwamucyo(L) and his lawyers in Paris Court of Assizes this week
Surviviors of the Rwanda Genocide Against Tutsi, have given harrowing testimonies in a Paris court of assizes, in a case against a medical doctor, accused of having supervised the murders in the country’s southern province, during the 1994 Genocide Against Tutsi.
The survivors from Gishamvu sector, Huye district, gave their testimony in evidence for the prosecution, against Dr Eugene Rwamucyo.
A director of the Department of Public, in the school of medicine, at the University of Rwanda, at the time of the Genocide, Rwamucyo is accused of crimes of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity.
He is alleged to have committed the crimes in several locations, in the Southern province, including Ndora, Kansi, Gishamvu, among others.
Some of the most distressing testimonies were given to journalists who on 4th October, visited the areas where Rwamucyo is alleged to have committed the crimes. The visit organised by NGO Haguruka, which represents the rights of women and children, and Pax Press, a civil society organisation, met survivors who recounted how they witnessed Rwamucyo committing the crimes of which he was accused, in Nyumba parish, and Nyakibanda seminary.
The survivors say they witnessed the accused supervising members of the Interahamwe militias throw their victims into holes that could barely be called graves. Some victims were still alive, when they were thrown into these mass graves.
“He ordered Interahamwe to demolish a school that stood here” said one witness, who was at the Nyumba seminary, “among the Tutsi who had been murdered, were others who were still alive, crying out for help, but Rwamucyo turned a deaf ear.”
“They dug a huge mass grave and with an earth mover, buried parents with their children. The children were still alive, and crying, when they were buried” testified another witness, who was at Nyakibanda seminary.
According to the President of Ibuka, which represents genocide survivors, Rwamucyo tortured his victims, and wanted them to die a slow agonising death. Throwing people who were still alive into a mass grave, was one of way of torturing them before they died.
Rwamucyo is accused of committing almost the exact same crimes in Huye prefecture.
A survivor who was sixteen, at the time of the Genocide Against Tutsi, remembers Rwamucyo ordering people to be buried in a mass grave, some of them still alive.
“One morning, Rwamucyo came and found Tutsi who had been for dead by Interahamwe at the Butare prefecture. ‘What are these useless people doing here, get them rid of them for us.’ They immediately brought a caterpillar, dug a mass grave, and throw in everyone, the dead, and those who were seriously wounded, but still alive.”
The same witness spoke of Rwamucyo also burying people alive in Ngoma cemetry, ignoring their pleas to be spared.
Rwamucyo was originally arrested in France, in 2010, at the funeral of one Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, who himself had been convicted of crimes of genocide. Rwamucyo was later released, and was re-arrested after a long investigation, and delays that have taken sixteen years to come to court.
The trial began on 1st October, and is to be concluded at the end of the month. Sixty witnesses will be called, and some 800 people are seeking compensation for their suffering at the hands of the accused.
