09.04.09 - RWANDA/GENOCIDE - GENOCIDE VICTIMS OF NYABARONGO RIVER TO BE HONOURED FRIDAY

Kigali, 9 April 2009 (FH) - The City Hall of Kigali and the organization of genocide survivors (IBUKA) on Friday will hold a solemn ceremony in remembrance of victims who were thrown and died in Nyabarongo River during the 1994 genocide.

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The ceremony was part of the on-going commemoration of 15th genocide anniversary, reports Hirondelle Agency. 

"The ceremony will be marked by the laying of wreath on one of the banks where these victims were killed", according to an official of IBUKA, Eugene Murangwa.

At the beginning of the massacres in the capital, many Tutsis had hoped to save their lives by taking in deep forests on the banks of the Nyabarongo.

This river, which crosses Rwanda from West to East, is one of the largest rivers which pours into the Kagera River and which dumps into Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world and the second widest fresh water lake in the world.

It is estimated that over 10,000 bodies were thrown into the river and floated some 100 miles away on the shores of Lake Victoria on the side Uganda.

Rwanda has bought a land near the Lake Victoria shores in Uganda to give a decent burial to the victims during the 15th genocide anniversary. The Rwandan government will finance the burial.

The Rwandan genocide began on April 6, 1994, after a plane carrying the central African nation's president - a member of the Hutu ethnic majority - was shot down.

In a span of about three months, an estimated 800,000 people were killed - many hacked to death with machetes and hoes. Women were systematically raped and tortured, their limbs chopped off. In some cases, pregnant women died as their fetuses were ripped from their wombs.

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 © Hirondelle News Agency