A second Rwanda genocide is revealed in CongoU.N. report ties Tutsi soldiers to deaths of thousands of HutusThe Associated Press
MUSEKERA, Congo — The mass graves are hidden in the darkening shade of a hard-to-reach banana plantation, high up a mountain above the cloud line, at the end of a treacherous dirt track slippery with mud and animal dung. Those who survived say they did not go to the meeting called by Rwandan soldiers.
The Congolese Hutu peasants who did were brought out of the thatched-roof meeting house two by two, to be bludgeoned to death with their own hoes, picks and axes. Some 300 villagers died that morning of Oct. 20, 1996, according to the local Observation Center for Human Rights and Social Assistance. The story of the 1994 genocide of more than a half million Tutsis slaughtered by Hutus in Rwanda has been told in the world's press, in books and in movies such as "Hotel Rwanda." But the subsequent slaughter of Hutus in neighboring Congo is little known, and its perpetrators never have been brought to justice. The discovery of mass graves prompted investigations that led to a controversial U.N. report published on Oct. 1, which accuses invading Rwandan troops of killing tens of thousands of Hutus in 1996 and 1997. "There are many, many such mass graves. We've identified 30 just in this Rutshuru district, but our research indicates that this was the first massacre committed by Rwandan troops," the center's coordinator, Herve Nsabimana, said beside the banana trees. Many victims told their wives to take the youngest children and hide in the fields. Today, Musekera is a village of widows. The only man over 50 was at a nearby health center during the massacre. Matata Ihigihugo has relatives in three mass graves: her husband and two sons in the one reserved for males, a sister in the women's grave, and her 8-year-old daughter in the one where children's small bodies were buried. |
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