Celebrating Rwanda’s Young Heroes

The Nyange School attack victims have been honoured as national heroes

There are several memorable events in the annals of post-genocide Rwanda but one that took place twenty-seven years ago in Western Rwanda stands out as unique by all standards. One of them is the commemoration last week of the killing of Nyange students which happened 24 years ago, in March 1997.

Rwanda had just emerged from a genocide which had claimed over one million Tutsi, but the threat from the genocidal forces was far from over. After their defeat, members of what used to be Rwanda government forces; Interahamwe militias who had just committed genocide with their weaponry had crossed the border and set up refugee camps in the former Zaire, close to the border with Rwanda.

With the help of foreign countries, notably France, these negative forces did not waste time. They immediately began re-organising, re-arming and planned to go back to Rwanda to finish off the genocide. They changed their names from Forces Armees Rwandaises (FAR) to the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (|ALIR) and started launching deadly incursions inside Rwanda, and killing several local authorities and civilians, as well damaging infrastructure.

ALIR is the precursor of today’s Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) which has been terrorizing parts of Eastern DRC and is considered as an international terrorist group by the UN. In a span of a short period, Rwanda registered over two hundred such incidents, mainly in the western and south-western parts of Rwanda, in former Cyangugu, Kibuye, prefectures.

The Nyange School attack occurred on March 18, 1997 when a group of armed rebels of ALIR stormed Nyange Secondary School, in former Kibuye Prefecture, in the early hours of the night. Heavily armed thugs entered the classrooms where the students who had just finished their evening meal, were doing their night study shortly before going to bed. It was reported that the rebels entered the school shooting indiscriminately. The totemic staff at the school, and students cowered under the desks hoping to survive this attack.It was at that moment that some two armed men entered one of the classrooms and asked the students to separate along ethnic lines: the Tutsi on one side, and the Hutu on the other. This was a mixed school. The students were in their late teenage or early twenty years.

It was common practice under previous Hutu regimes to register students along their ethnicity which often resulted in the stigmatizing of the Tutsi. It is the same ostracization and discrimination that led to the genocide in 1994. Much to the annoyance of the militiamen, the students refused to follow the order. They threatened to kill everyone, but Hutu students who were not targeted decided to stand with their Tutsi classmates.

One brave girl, Marie Chantal Mujawamahoro, defied the militiamen, stood in front of everyone and told them: “we are all Rwandans”. At that moment, the militiaman retorted: “you will learn who we are,” and shot her on the spot. She died instantly. The other militiaman closed the door of the classrooms and joined other rebels who started tossing grenades inside the classroom. They also started firing through the windows. By the time they stopped, at least six students laid dead in addition to Mujawamariya, and many more were severely injured.

The attackers withdrew when the forces of the then Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) intervened. This act which occurred only three years after the genocide against the Tutsi has been hailed as heroic given the entrenched ethnic divide that successive Hutu regimes had cultivated amongst Rwandans.

Today, those victims have been elevated to the category of National Heroes and are remembered on February 1^st of each year alongside King Charles Mutara III Rudahigwa, and former Rwandan Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana who was assassinated on April 7^th, 1994 at the beginning of the genocide.

We all should salute the selfless actions of these young girls and boys who shunned divisive politics and rather preferred to lose their own lives. This was a great lesson of patriotism and sacrifice by the young Rwandans for the good of the country that had been torn apart by ethnic discrimination. They stood to be counted as Rwandans rather than Hutus or Tutsis regardless of the threat to end their lives. They died for a noble cause.

The youth who are the hope for the future of Rwanda should embrace the culture of unity and patriotism as the Heroes of Nyange.  Some Rwanda youths in diaspora like those in Belgium under an organization known as Jambo asbl, who are engaged in acts of genocide denial and revisionism, are taking a wrong turn and without reforming, history will judge them as villains. It’s not too late for them to borrow a leaf from the heroes of Nyange, and work towards national cohesion and abstain from engaging in activities which can take Rwanda back to its dark past.