Rwanda, The First Visit, April 1994

In April 1994 when the genocide in Rwanda began, I was undergoing medical treatment. This prevented me from traveling to Kigali to witness firsthand the initial stages of the violence. On April 27th, the day after my doctor cleared me for travel, I flew via UN cargo transport into Kigali airport. I found the fighting was still going on between Rwandan government forces and rebels and that efforts by the United Nations to promote a ceasefire had no visible success.

How bad is the situation in Rwanda? Here is the view of one Canadian officer attached to the United Nations mission in the central African nation, an officer who recently transferred to Rwanda from Somalia.

“It is worse than Somalia, definitely worse than Somalia...this is very, very bad."

Stories of atrocities abound in Rwanda -- both in the capital, Kigali, and in cities, towns and villages in the surrounding countryside. They include stories of mass executions, of mutilations, of deprivations and threats.

The UN commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, calls the country's descent into anarchy a great disappointment following the hopes for reconciliation spawned by last year's peace and power-sharing agreement between the government and the rebel movement.

That accord collapsed following the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana when his plane was shot down in early April. His death reignited the civil war and launched a new round of ethnic and political blood-letting.

General Dallaire says: “The self-destruction of the country human-wise is beyond what people could expect people to do to each other."

General Dallaire and his scaled-down force of about 450 mainly military personnel can do little these days but try to promote a ceasefire -- one that might allow the United Nations to resume its efforts to help implement a lasting peace agreement and to begin the task of rendering humanitarian assistance throughout the country.

But ongoing shelling and shooting incidents, as well as the continued slaughter of civilians, make that task all but impossible for the moment.

Peter Mcdermott works for the UN childrens relief program, UNICEF. During a tour through the UN supply storehouse at Kigali airport, he listed some of the materials waiting to be distributed.

“We've got chlorine pre-positioned around the city. Now what we've got to do is start getting it into some of the wells. Obviously the dead bodies have contaminated a lot of the problems in the city."

No one can really say just how many casualties there have been so far in Rwanda. Estimates put the number at 100-thousand or more. But General Dallaire says every day more dead are uncovered -- even outside his headquarters where UN soldiers, investigating an unpleasant odor, found 82 bodies within 300 meters of the front gate.

“Mostly men but some women and a couple of children and that's just right here so there's a lot of death around that just hasn't even all been seen."

It is not clear where Rwanda is heading -- if there will be even more bloodshed or if, somehow, authorities will be able to halt the violence. General Dallaire, during an interview at his headquarters, expressed some hope for a truce. But he acknowledged there is definitely the possibility of more fighting.

(As we now know, there was much more bloodshed. I began this blog with reports from a visit a short time after this Kigali trip to a massacre site in the southeast of the country. It can be seen at: http://reporterregrets.blogspot.com/2007/04/it-is-october-1997.html)

Actually I filed two reports from that brief visit in late April to Kigali. This was the other one, which also included sounds of mortar explosions and small arms fire:

Scattered mortar explosions and bursts of small arms fire can still be heard in Kigali, despite cease-fire declarations by both the rebel and government sides.

UN officials are also attempting to broker a truce, but General Romeo Dallaire, the UN force commander in Rwanda, says he is still waiting for the rebels and the government to formally react to the UN proposal.

In the meantime, the killing goes on. At a Kigali stadium, where more than one thousand refugees are sheltered under UN protection, reporters saw the body of a woman being removed. A health worker says she was the victim of a stray bullet. The stadium, which is in rebel held territory, has also been hit by mortar fire, as has the nearby airport controlled by government forces.

Overnight, a shell blasted a hole in the roof of a hangar used by the United Nations to store relief supplies. UN military officials say they believe rebel forces were to blame for the airport attack. They say it was probably in response to what the rebels considered a provocative movement of government military equipment.

Despite the ongoing exchanges, General Dallaire believes there is a will on both the government and rebel sides for a cease-fire. He says he hopes there will be a truce, but the General also says there is a possibility of further military action as the country continues to engage in what he describes as terrible self destruction.

The horrors of this war begin right outside the doorsteps of the UN compound. In recent days, UN troops -- responding to an unpleasant odor -- discovered 82 bodies within 300 meters of their headquarters.

Estimates say tens of thousands of Rwandans have been killed since the latest wave of violence erupted early this month when the country's president was killed in a suspicious plane crash. But General Dallaire says there is a lot of death that has not been seen and reported.

I intend to stay with stories from Rwanda from that period in the summer of 1994, so please check in regularly. Upcoming stories deal with the Presidential plane crash, a close-up look at the killers and a report about the real drama of life in the Hotel Mille Collines.