PEACE & SECURITY | Creating a more stable world
19 February 2008
President Bush, First Lady Pay Respects to Genocide Victims
Lay wreath and tour memorial for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide
Kigali, Rwanda -- Immediately following their colorful welcoming ceremony at Kigali International Airport -- the third country stop on their five-nation Africa tour -- President Bush and first lady Laura Bush February 19 visited the Kigali Memorial Centre to pay their respects to the more than 800,000 victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and to genocide victims worldwide.
The center houses three permanent exhibitions, the largest of which documents the 1994 genocide. There is also a children’s memorial and an exhibition on genocidal violence throughout the world, including the Holocaust. The center is one of 72 such memorial sites located throughout Rwanda.
The president and first lady, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and a host of others, toured the facility -- which has many interactive exhibits -- for more than 30 minutes before emerging solemn and somber-faced.
One exhibit the president and first lady studied during their tour was a room of six large posters documenting the history of the genocide. They then moved on to a room filled with human skulls and bones of genocide victims. Many of the skulls bear large holes -- an indication of how the victims died: from the blunt force trauma of being beaten and hacked to death with machetes.
The Bushes also watched a short video on the genocide. The president shook his head in disbelief as he saw pictures in one room of more than 1,000 genocide victims hanging from wires. Rooms in the center also display the clothing of genocide victims and pictures of many children who perished in the genocide.
The grounds include a permanent museum, gardens, a wall of names and a documentation center where classes are conducted and films shown. The various exhibits make extensive use of photographs, video, written accounts and artifacts, as well as explanatory displays in Kinyarwanda, English and French.
Most of the guides at the center are genocide survivors.
Following their tour, the Bushes laid a memorial wreath -- with the help of U.S. Marines -- on one of the mass graves on the site, which contains the remains of more than 258,000 genocide victims.
Bush later spoke softly to those gathered. He called the center a “moving place. It can’t help but to shake your emotions to their very foundation,” he said. “It reminds me that we must not allow these kinds of actions to take place [and] that the people of Rwanda need help to reconcile and move forward after a brutal period.”
The president then asked for “God’s blessings on those who still hurt and those who long for help and for the kids whose lives have been deeply affected by the trauma of the moment.”
A somber President Bush told those gathered at the center that such an exhibition is necessary “to remind people that there is evil in the world and that evil must be confronted.”
One Rwandan present at the center to witness the ceremony, Gloria Kalisa, told America.gov: “I am happy to see President Bush come to our country. It shows the relationship we have between the United States and my country.” His presence, she said, “shows how this [genocide] can affect him and his country and his presence can help the full world see the impact and horror of genocide.”
As the press stood outside, standing over the mass graves while the Bushes were touring the facility, uniformed schoolchildren could be heard singing during their recess on a distant hillside -- breaking the silence and solemnity of the moment and reminding that Rwanda is a nation undergoing fundamental renewal and regeneration from the horrors of its past.
Upon arrival at Kigali International Airport, the Bushes were greeted by President Paul Kagame and given the red carpet treatment, complete with an honor guard and traditional dancers.
While in Kigali, Bush held extended talks with Kagame and dedicated a new United States Embassy before moving on later in the day to Ghana and then on to Liberia before returning to Washington. President Bush’s historic February 15-21 trip began in Benin and took him to Tanzania as well.
