Youngsters from Mukagasana Foundation Entertained The Audience During Book Launch
Like all too many Rwandan parents who survived the 1994 Genocide Against Tutsi, Yolande Mukagasana, was left bereft after the murder of her children, then her husband. Her response, exemplified by her latest book, has been to dedicate the rest of her days answering the new Rwanda’s call to build a nation where that is the direct opposite to the one that irreparably broke her heart.
The book’s concise, pithy title, “Umurage W’urubyiruko” or the young people’s inheritance, holds profound meaning.
At the book’s launch, yesterday evening, the author reminded her audience of the role young people have played in Rwanda’s harrowing recent history.
It was, she noted, young people of the Interahamwe who spearheaded the torturous mass murder of over a million men, women and children, during the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, torturing and murdering her own children, and it was the young people of the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Inkotanyi (RPF/Inkotanyi), who ended the genocide and liberated the nation.
The book is her own contribution to addressing a challenge that faces not only young people, but Rwandans in general, the challenge to own the truth about their history. A lot of what is written about us she says, was written by outsiders.
If today’s young people are the inheritors of the sacrifice made by earlier generations of their peers in defeating the genocidal establishment and liberating the nation, how she posited, will they guard that legacy, if all they have are lies and fabrications.
Mukagasana hopes that her book, the first of several volumes, will not only be a tool for young people against genocide denial which is now digitised, but will empower them with the truth about their society, which will serve as a firm foundation for combating the falsehoods.
She had in mind the many young people, whose parents were part of the planning and execution of the Genocide Against Tutsi, who are now attempting to rewrite history, saturating the internet with the kind of propaganda that incredibly, seeks to paint their parents as champions of democratic principles, in what is clearly an attempt at genocide denial.
Among the audience, historian and RPF/Inkotanyi stalwart, Antoine Mugesera, welcomed the book, which he said he had yet to read but hoped it did not shy away from answering the question of who among Rwandans was the perpetrator in the Genocide Against Tutsi, and who the intended victim.
In his remarks, the guest of honour, Minister for National Unity and Civic Engagement (MINUBUMWE) Dr Jean-Damascene Bizimana, confronted that question head on, as he often does. It was indeed Bahutu (Hutu) who were the perpetrators and the Batutsi (Tutsi) who were targeted to be wiped out.
“The genocide Against Tutsi, was perpetrated by those Hutu, who embraced the state sponsored ideology of wiping out Tutsi” he explained, and went on to outline how the genocide ideology was not inherently a Hutu ideology, but a state sponsored adoption of a colonial policy to divide Rwandans along ethnic lines.
The ideology was, he explained not the for the first time, alien to Rwandans, be they Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, but was embraced by the genocidal state, which coopted some Hutu to murder their own.
The minister, a renowned warrior against distortions of the history of the origins of the genocide ideology against Tutsi, has as a result become the target of constant abuse by today’s genocide ideologues, both Rwandan and their foreign, primarily European supporters. He went on to name some among the young Rwandans, including the son of the then head of the genocidal state, Juvenal Habyarimana, whose genocide denial is intended to exonerate their parents, who planned and perpetrated the crime.
Among the young people the author challenges to learn and champion the truth, are vulnerable children she now supports through the Yolande Mukagasana Foundation.
The foundation intervenes to help parents whose lack of means or poor parenting lead to their young children ending up on the street, and in some cases becoming victims to drag abuse.
Praising her humanity, the minister noted that while her own children had been murdered because they were Tutsi, she has gone on to parent others’ children, without ever asking who among her charges were Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, just that they were children who need her support.
