Regional

Agathe Uwilingiyimana: Rwandan Premier who opposed Genocide, costing her life

2023-04-24 04:41:00

Agathe Uwilingiyima, who served as the Prime Minister during Juvénal Habayarimana’s regime, was assassinated on April 7, 1994, few hours after the president’s plane was shot down.

She was a prominent opponent of the genocidal plan and, as alleged by Hutu extremists, an ‘accomplice’ of the RPF rebels.

Friends and relatives advised the first and only female PM in Rwanda’s history to change her political stance. But she ignored their ill advices.

“She died about a week after I visited her in Kiyovu, next to the Hôtel des Mille Collines. I told her ‘I guess these political affairs will risk your life,’ she replied that if it is written so, then it shall be,” Uwiringiyimana’s elder brother, Gaspard Hangimana, said.

Jean Marie Vianney Uwihanganye, a former close political ally to Uwilingiyimana, said that her political prowess was drawn from her fearlessness in expressing herself, even when speaking out could get her killed.

“She was a very eloquent public speaker and had a unique way of getting her point across, which endeared her to the masses,” Uwihanganye said.

Uwilingiyimana and her spouse, Ignace Barahira, were among the first politicians killed after the death of Habyarimana because they did not support the Genocidal plot.

Her five children fled to Switzerland with facilitation of Capt Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese who served in United Nations force in Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

The national heroine belonging to the ‘Imena’ category of Rwandan heroes was born in 1953 to Juvénal Ntibashirakandi and Xaverine Nyirantibangwe from then Nyaruhengeri Commune, now in Gisagara District. She was one of their two daughters in eight children.

Uwiringiyimana excelled in primary leaving examinations and was sent to Lycée Notre Dame de Citeaux, a Catholic girls’ school in Kigali, where she majored Mathematics and Chemistry. After high school, she taught in Kibuye prefecture before she proceeded to the then National University of Rwanda, majoring in Chemistry.

She graduated in 1975 while already married to her fellow student, Barahira. The couple was later retained by the university as lecturers.

Uwilingiyimana joined MDR political party which opposed Habyarimana’s rule in 1991. She quickly gained popularity, and all teams going for mobilization in the countryside sought her help.

When MDR organized elections for the party leadership in then strategic Butare prefecture, she beat Jean Kambanda, who would later become PM of the interim government that executed the Genocide.

In 1992, she was appointed Minister for Primary and Secondary Education. She used the tenure to stop the ethnic quota system in public schools. The move worsened the enmity by Hutu extremists towards her.

One day, assailants tried to kill her at home with a grenade. They stormed her living room but she escaped through a window, injuring her leg.

Uwiringiyimana became PM in July 1993.

In early April, MDR approached senior army officers for support, after it became clear that the broad-based government that was scheduled to swear in by March 1994 would never take oath. On April 2, 17 officers met in Uwiringiyimana’s home in Kiyovu and pledged cooperation but a conclusive course of action was yet to be hammered out.

When Habyarimana’s plane crashed in the night of April 6, Uwilingiyimana didn’t know at first because she was no longer listening to radios. The regime's officials were widely using the media to insult and dehumanize her, calling her ‘rat’.

His political allies told her about the plane crash and advised her to leave. But she declined, saying she was not better off than the innocent people being killed across Kigali.

She then started to find out how she could reach Radio Rwanda to call for restraint as head of government. The UN force asked her not to go there for her safety.

Sources say Uwiringiyimana and her husband managed to reach a UN compound on April 7, 1994, but after scuffles between the presidential guard and her security detail, she came out to avoid bloodshed.

She was killed, together with her husband and the 10 Belgian peacekeepers assigned to her security.