Dying to Live • A Rwandan Family`s Five

Le Devoir, Montreal
PIERRE-CLAVER NDACYAYISENGA
“The interest and power of his testimony resides
in the story of an exodus, on foot, over thousands
of kilometers, of wretchedly abandoned refugees, denied water and food, robbed, bombed,
raped, exploited by so-called liberators, reduced
to slavery, and forced to cross dangerous rivers
by their own means, hide in the snake and
animal-infested jungle, with their faith as their
only source of shelter and comfort.”
Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga was a history
teacher in Rwanda in 1994 when he was forced
to flee to the neighbouring Congo (Zaïre) with
his wife and three children. Thus began a harrowing five-year journey during which they and
more than three hundred thousand other refugees were pursued and bombed by shadowy
Rwandan-backed soldiers with sophisticated
weapons and aerial surveillance information.
Most did not live to tell their story. Dying To Live
is an ode to the human will to survive.
Phil Taylor hosts the Taylor Report at CIUT,
Toronto. For ten years he was investigator
for human rights lawyers including former
US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the late
Charles Roach.
DYING TO LIVE
Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga was born in
Rwanda in 1962. He has a history degree from
the Université nationale du Rwanda and taught
at the Lycée de Kigali until forced to flee in 1994.
Father of four children, he now lives in Montreal.
Pierre-Claver
NDACYAYISENGA
DYING
TO
LIVE
A Rwandan Family’s Five-Year Flight Across the Congo
Translated by Casey Roberts
Casey Roberts is an award-winning Montreal
translator.
$19.95
isbn 978-1-926824-78-9
www.barakabooks.com
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DYING
TO
LIVE
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Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga
DYING
TO
LIVE
A Rwandan Family’s
Five-Year Flight Across the Congo
Preface by Phil Taylor
Translated by Casey Roberts
Montréal
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Originally published as Voyage à travers la mort, Le témoignage d’un exilé Hutu
du Rwanda
© 2012 by Le Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature
Publié avec l’autorisation du Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature, Montréal, Québec
Translation Copyright © Baraka Books 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
isbn 978-1-926824-78-9 pbk; 978-1-926824-83-3 epub; 978-1-926824-84-0 pdf;
978-1-926824-85-7 mobi/kindle
Cover photos : Mathieu Breton UNCHR/R. Chalasani; back cover: Jacques Godon
Cover by Folio infographie
Book design by Folioinfographie
Translated by Casey Roberts
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations and Maps
8
Preface by Phil Taylor 9
Acronyms13
Prologue15
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Rwanda Put to Fire and the Sword
17
Refugee Life in the Camps of South Kivu
25
The Rout of the Kivu Refugees
41
Tingi-Tingi or Misery Row
71
Destruction of Tingi-Tingi
85
The Massacres in the Eastern and Equatorial
Provinces99
7. Changing Sexual Sensibilities and Mores in the
Refugee Camps
119
8. Congo-Brazzaville: Another Country,
Another War
127
9. From Cameroon to Canada: The Slow
and Difficult Return to Normal Life
153
Epilogue165
Chronology167
Additional Reading
171
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List of Illustrations and Maps
Map of Flight across Central Africa
26-27
Map: From Kigali to Tingi Tingi
40
Forced Return of Refugees, November 1996
44
52
Refugee Camp near Goma, November 1996
Forced Return at Zaïre-Rwanda Border,
November 1996
59
Amisi, 60 km East of Tingi tingi, February 1997
70
Tingi Tingi Refugee Camp, February 1997
73
Kalima Camp, South of Tingi Tingi, February 1997
78
84
Map: From Tingi Tingi to Boende 95
Kasese Camp, Near Kisangani, April 1997
101
Biaro Camp, South of Kisangani, April 1997
Refugees Arrive at Kasese Camp, April 1997
105
Map: From Boende to Congo-Brazzaville
to Cameroon
118
The Author Producing Charcoal, Pokola, Congo
150
The Author and His Daughters at the Yaoundé Zoo 161
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Preface
In a time of war,
God help the non-combatants!
O
n April 6, 1994 a peace agreement in Rwanda, called
the Arusha Accords, was slowly being finalized with
elections in the offing, a multi-party interim government in
place and a UN peacekeeping presence monitoring the process. History teacher Pierre-Claver Ndacyaysenga and his
family could look to the future with some hope.
But on April 7 the President of Rwanda was dead, the victim of a well-planned assassination which was the prelude to
renewed warfare and widespread massacres of civilians.
The teacher and his desperate family would soon be on
the move as refugees. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF),
which had been in an offensive mode when President
Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, as remarked by UN
General Romeo Dallaire, began a drive to seize power.
Various journalists claimed the RPF goal was to end the
killing of Tutsis, an important ethnic minority in Rwanda.
But, again as pointed out by Dallaire, the direction of the
RPF columns indicated a different intention. The Arusha
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dying to live
Accords were shunted aside, political power was the prize
sought by the army that had originally attacked Rwanda
from Uganda on October 1, 1990.
The invasion of Rwanda in 1990 had created hundreds of
thousands of internal refugees by 1994. Refugees were a
major and tragic feature of the Rwanda power struggle,
almost an element of RPF military strategy as they drove
civilians in front of them, never allowing them to congregate
behind their own lines. Administering to fleeing noncombatants became a headache for their opponents.
Housing, and food would have to be provided and care taken
that there were no RPF infiltrators among the thousands
moving away from the front.
In July 1994 a new government was declared in Kigali,
with the strongman, Paul Kagame, clearly in charge. The
United States provided immediate recognition. There were
more than a million Rwandan refugees in camps in Eastern
Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), among them
Pierre-Claver Ndacyaysenga and his family. With the former
government defeated Kagame was now determined to bring
back the refugees to be under his state’s control, by force if
necessary. The refugees had every reason to fear for their
lives, as testified to by many Hutus and Tutsis who served
in Kagame’s regime and later fled Rwanda. Seth Sendashonga,
the RPF’s former Minister of the Interior, urged the United
Nations to investigate crimes against humanity committed
by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and was assassinated in
Nairobi for speaking out.
The greatest ordeal for the Ndacyaysenga family began
when the new Rwandan army directly attacked the UN
administered camps with terrible loss of life. The only hope
of escaping entrapment by a ruthless army was to begin a
long perilous walk into the jungles of Zaire. As misfortune
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preface
11
would have it the Rwandan leadership struck an alliance
with Laurent Kabila and entered Zaire in October 1996 aiming to capture Eastern Zaire and if possible the whole of the
country. At the time Kagame denied his forces were leading
the invasion, but eventually the obvious was acknowledged.
The United States and Britain were seemingly quite pleased
with this extraordinary aggression. The U.S. ambassador
visited “liberated” areas of Zaire.
The 300,000 Rwandans who made the decision to escape
the clutches of Kagame’s forces endured terrible hardship,
walking ragged and hungry, losing contact with loved ones
in the great mass of frightened humanity hurrying along
strange roads, only knowing to head west. They were on
their own. Prominent humanitarian groups observed their
movements and were of little use. Most of their advice was
bad or dangerous.
Vengeance-driven armies have always abused refugees.
The worst in this story occurred at a place called Tingi-Tingi,
Zaire, painfully described by Mr. Ndacyaysenga. Long ago
the 7th U.S. Cavalry massacred Lakota people in South
Dakota and an American poet wrote, “Bury my heart at
Wounded Knee.” We could apply the same sentiment to
Tingi-Tingi.
Mr. Ndacyaysenga is a living articulate witness to a major
human event that is rarely discussed or even acknowledged.
The book provides informative and moving—and gritty—
details that beg the question: Why has the present leadership
of Rwanda been allowed to get away with such brazen conduct for so long?
Phil Taylor
April 28, 2013
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Acronyms
Efforts have been made to avoid overuse of acronyms. However,
the following acronyms do appear occasionally.
AFDLC
CIB FAR
FAZ
HCR
NGO
RPA
RPF
UNHCR
WFP
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Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la liberation
du Congo
Congolaise Industrielle des Bois, a company in CongoBrazzaville
Forces armées rwandaises (The Rwandan armed
forces until the RPF took power in July 1994)
Forces armées zaïroises (The Zairean armed forces
until the AFDLC took power under Kabila in 1997).
High Commission for Refugees (see UNHCR)
Non-governmental organization
Rwandan Patriotic Army (Created formally after
the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a political-military
party, took power in July 1994)
Rwandan Patriotic Front (The political-military
party led by Paul Kagame that currently holds
power in Rwanda)
United Nations High Commission for Refugees also
known as the UN Refugee Agency
World Food Programme
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Prologue
O
n the evening of April 6, 1994, the plane bringing
Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and his
Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira from Tanzania
was shot down while preparing to land at the Kigali international airport in Kanombe. Its eight occupants, passengers and crew were killed instantly.
It was in the aftermath of this attack that Rwanda would
descend into a murderous rampage culminating decades of
tensions between Hutus and Tutsis.
It was in the aftermath of this attack that my ordeal would
begin, and that of every single Rwandan, bar none.
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1
Rwanda Put to Fire
and the Sword
I
n the early morning of April 7, 1994, my family and I were
sleeping peacefully in our home in Kigali. We had moved
to the capital a couple of months earlier in search of a better
life than what we had been able to find in our native region,
Cyangugu. I was teaching history at the Lycée de Kigali,
having been hired in September 1993 after completing university. My wife Francoise worked as a social worker at the
Centre Hospitalier de Kigali, where she had been transferred
three months earlier. We shared our life with our three children: Ange-Claude, at eleven, our eldest son, and our daughters Claudine and Emmérence, who were seven and three
years old.
At the break of dawn, the sound of violent explosions
occurring throughout the city shook us from our sleep. I
turned on the radio and we were astonished to hear that the
country’s president had been attacked and killed. The
announcer called for calm and advised people to stay inside.
The explosions intensified throughout the morning; some
of them were very near. We were terrified. The children
asked me questions, which I unfortunately didn’t have the
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answers to. All I could do was to try to reassure them. They
were unable to eat or drink and were all suddenly seized by
bouts of diarrhea!
Around mid-day, I gathered my courage and left the
house to take a look around. On the street, I met a former
neighbour and university colleague. He was returning from
his shift at Radio Rwanda and passed along his version of
what had happened. According to him, the Rwandan
Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel movement founded by
Rwandan Tutsi exiles in Uganda who had taken up arms in
1990, had blown up the president’s plane and launched an
all-out attack on Kigali.
At this point, I couldn’t be sure of anything. All I could
tell was that Interahamwe, a Hutu militia linked to the government, had been unleashed. Armed with guns, machetes
and clubs, they scoured the city in search of Tutsis and moderate Hutus who they then systematically executed. There
were barricades pretty much everywhere and you had to
show your identity card to be allowed through. If the card
designated its holder as Tutsi (ethnicity being required on
the card since its creation by the Belgian colonial administration), that was the end of him.
Everywhere chaos reigned. People ran in every direction,
weighted down with the belongings of victims of the slaughter. The situation was so confused that no one could be sure
that they weren’t on somebody’s list.
After two or three days, the “work,” as the extermination
in process had come to be called, was almost complete. The
streets were littered with corpses that were beginning to
decompose and which no one knew what to do with. They
would later be gathered up by the city.
While all this was going on, the RPF intensified its attacks
against the government forces and established control over
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rwanda put to fire and the sword
19
part of Kigali, in turn killing those Hutus who found themselves behind their lines, in the northern part of the capital.
After two weeks of fighting, the Rwandan Patriotic Front
had almost surrounded the city, there being only one exit
still open to the west: the Nyabugogo pass. This escape route
was not without danger, as it was often shelled by the RPF.
As the days passed, the situation continued to deteriorate
and people, especially women and children, used every means
at their disposal to get to safety. Hoping to put my family out
of harm’s way, I managed to secure them passage on a van
going to Cyangugu with the help of an officer of the Rwandan
Armed Forces (Forces armées rwandaises or FAR) whom I
had known since childhood. They moved back into the same
house we had lived in before we moved to the capital.
Although I no longer had any work, since all the schools were
closed, I decided to stay in Kigali, anxious to defend our home
from looters and hoping that things would improve.
As the weeks passed, the noose gradually tightened
around the city, which was under bombardment from all
sides. The Rwandan Armed Forces pulled back. Food was
scarce. The prevailing insecurity forced people to remain
indoors. Telephone service was nonexistent. Under these
conditions, I decided to leave as soon as I could. Early in the
morning of May 17, I packed some food, a bottle of water
and clothes into a small backpack and headed out. The only
remaining paved road leading out of town was no longer
safe; people on foot were being refused passage through the
narrow corridor. Columns of refugees were moving towards
Mount Kigali, to the west of the city. The high ridge had to
be crossed to reach the bridge over the Nyabarongo and the
road to Gitarama. So I started climbing.
From the outset, I knew that the journey was going to be
long, not only because the road was jam packed with people,
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but also because there were numerous barricades that had
been erected by militiamen armed with machetes, clubs and
occasionally automatic rifles, looking for RPF infiltrators. At
checkpoint after checkpoint, we were thoroughly searched
and asked to show our identity cards. People were systematically abused as they passed through the checkpoints. If you
had any money or valuables, you could easily be accused of
conspiring with the enemy as a pretext to separate you from
your belongings. The most unlucky paid with their lives.
After twelve hours of walking, during which I only covered ten kilometers, I finally crossed the bridge over the
Nyabarongo. At the top of the hill at Ruyenzi, there was a
dense crowd of unhappy people who had just become refugees. People were tired, but they somehow managed to
keep a smile on their faces! They were no doubt relieved
to have escaped the city, which had become a veritable
tinderbox.
At the day’s final checkpoint, exhausted, I prepared to
sleep under the stars when I encountered a young taxi driver
who I knew. His vehicle had been rented by a family who
was also fleeing the capital. He promised to wait for me after
the checkpoint. I was searched for more than a half hour,
after which I piled into the car, already crowded with passengers and luggage. This gift from out of nowhere seemed
like a miracle to me!
The taxi dropped me off at Ruhango where I spent the
night at the home of an old university friend who taught
nearby. There I learned that the government, exiled to the
town of Gitarama in the center of the country, was paying
the capital’s civil servants their salaries for April. I took the
risk of turning around and travelling the twenty kilometers
back to Gitarama to see if I could get paid. The money would
surely be needed! With a little luck, I managed to get my
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America’s Gift, What the World Owes to the Americas
and Their First Inhabitants
Käthe Roth and Denis Vaugeois
Trudeau’s Darkest Hour, War Measures in Time of Peace, October 1970
Guy Bouthillier & Édouard Cloutier, eds.
Inuit and Whalers on Baffin Island through German Eyes,
Wilhelm Weike’s Arctic Journal and Letters
Ludger Müller-Wille & Bernd Gieseking (trans. by William Barr)
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Le Devoir, Montreal
PIERRE-CLAVER NDACYAYISENGA
“The interest and power of his testimony resides
in the story of an exodus, on foot, over thousands
of kilometers, of wretchedly abandoned refugees, denied water and food, robbed, bombed,
raped, exploited by so-called liberators, reduced
to slavery, and forced to cross dangerous rivers
by their own means, hide in the snake and
animal-infested jungle, with their faith as their
only source of shelter and comfort.”
Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga was a history
teacher in Rwanda in 1994 when he was forced
to flee to the neighbouring Congo (Zaïre) with
his wife and three children. Thus began a harrowing five-year journey during which they and
more than three hundred thousand other refugees were pursued and bombed by shadowy
Rwandan-backed soldiers with sophisticated
weapons and aerial surveillance information.
Most did not live to tell their story. Dying To Live
is an ode to the human will to survive.
Phil Taylor hosts the Taylor Report at CIUT,
Toronto. For ten years he was investigator
for human rights lawyers including former
US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and the late
Charles Roach.
Casey Roberts is an award-winning Montreal
translator.
$19.95
isbn 978-1-926824-78-9
Extrait de la publication
www.barakabooks.com
DYING TO LIVE
Pierre-Claver Ndacyayisenga was born in
Rwanda in 1962. He has a history degree from
the Université nationale du Rwanda and taught
at the Lycée de Kigali until forced to flee in 1994.
Father of four children, he now lives in Montreal.
Pierre-Claver
NDACYAYISENGA
DYING
TO
LIVE
A Rwandan Family’s Five-Year Flight Across the Congo
Translated by Casey Roberts