On the trail of a genocide

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By Tommi Nieminen
     
     Officials in Porvoo had quite an Easter weekend this year. On Maundy Thursday the police arrested a Rwandan man on suspicion of involvement in the Rwanda genocide in 1994.
     When the police came to detain the man, his wife was at work and his 12-year-old son was at school. His apartment in the centre of Porvoo was searched, and a computer and address books were among the items seized.
     "He was taken on Maundy Thursday, just like Jesus. It is very unfortunate", says the Rwandan man's friend, retired clergyman Holger Nystedt.
      On Good Friday the man was remanded in custody by Porvoo District Court, behind closed doors.
     
Now he has been held for more than a week in a police jail in Vantaa. Only his close relatives and his lawyer are allowed to visit him. The lawyer does not want to make any public statements on the situation.
     Others are also keeping a low profile.
     "This is very difficult for his wife and son. The wife said on the telephone that it is very difficult for her to walk around in the city", says a family friend - Maj-Britt Vehkaoja, a minister at the Swedish language Baptist congregation in Vaasa.
     The Rwandan man is in police custody largely on the basis of a report on the Rwanda genocide published by the Human Rights Watch organisation in 1999. The detailed report is based on eyewitness interviews and documents from the time of the killings.
     
The Rwandan government issued a warrant for the man's arrest on the basis of the HRW report. Helsingin Sanomat also gained access to a so far unpublished report by the African Rights organisation.
     So what does the HRW report reveal about the man? Quite a bit, in fact - part of it by name, and even more indirectly.
     The man's identity is known by officials and the media, but it is not being disclosed, because the preliminary investigation is incomplete, and no charges have been filed.
     That is why he is referred to here as the "Porvoo man" - in spite of the fact that he is originally from Burundi, where he was born in 1951.
     The man is a member of the Hutu tribe.
     The genocide in Rwanda went on for about 100 days, from April 6th to mid-July in 1994. Hutu extremist Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi death squads as well as other Hutu armed groups killed an estimated 800,000 people - moderate Hutus in addition to Tutsis.
     There has been tension between the two ethnic groups since the 15th century. During the Belgian colonial period local power was given to the Tutsis. After Rwanda became independent, Hutus, who were in the majority, were able to assume leading positions, until 1990, when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame took over the country.
     On April 6th, 1994 a plane carrying the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda, both of whom were Hutus, was shot down.
     A few hours after the crash of the plane, death squads of the extremist Hutu Interahamwe movement were on the streets of the capital Kigali putting up road blocks. Lists of Tutsis to be killed were read out over the radio.
     Five days later nearly all foreigners were evacuated from the country.
     Rwanda was virtually in a state of total war. Anarchy spread in a week from the capital to the countryside. On April 13th, 1994 the killing began in Nyakizu in the south of Rwanda near the border with Burundi.
     It is there that the Porvoo man was living at the time.
     
Of the 61,366 residents of the Nyakizu region, about 18 per cent were Tutsis. The rest were Hutus. Now investigations are underway as far away as Finland on what happened during the ten days that followed.
     The Mayor of Nyakizu in April 1994 was the ruthless Ladislas Ntaganzwa, a hard-line Hutu, who has since been wanted for genocide.
     That Ntaganzwa is a criminal is not in doubt: he led the slaughter of Nyakizu. HRW's report for 1999 says that the mayor sought out trustworthy "intellectuals" to join his inner circle. These included religious and business leaders. Villagers say that the Porvoo man was among the most influential in this group.
     The Porvoo man is claimed to have had many roles. He worked as the leader of the youth centre of the Maranba Baptist Church. There are many Hutu refugees from Burundi in South Rwanda, and he worked as the commander of their refugee camp. In addition, he ran a "successful" bar in Nyakizu.
     He was certainly an industrious man - or then his CV has been embellished somewhat in retrospect.
     
When the genocide began in Nyakizu, the HRW report claims that those close to the mayor, a circle to which the Porvoo man is alleged to have belonged, acquired weaponry: rifles, grenades, spears, and clubs. Spears came from blacksmiths in the nearby village of Gishamvu. Some fashioned their own weapons out of nails and pieces of wood.
     Those close to the mayor distributed the weapons to paramilitary patrols that they had set up themselves, some of them in the bar owned by the Porvoo man.
      Augustin Karambizi, a guard hired by the man in Porvoo, who was interviewed by the African Rights human rights organisation, said later that he was told to carry "many boxes with a picture of a gun", to the house of the suspect.
     Karambizi said that the Porvoo man was helped in the acquisition of the weapons by his acquaintance, Pastor Eleazar Ziherambere.
     Mayor Ntaganzwa had been making preparations for the genocide for several months: residents were fed a steady diet of extremist Hutu ideology, and paramilitary forces were trained. Everyone was expected to show absolute loyalty to the mayor, and people began looking for Tutsis.
     When the news of the death of President Juvénal Habyarimana reached Nyakizu, houses were seen burning in the nearby town of Gikongoro that same afternoon. Tutsis in Gikongoro began to flee to Nyakizu, whose mayor, - the same Ntaganzwa - promised sanctuary for the refugees in the church of the village of Cyahinda. It was the mayor's cruel trap.
     His real intention was to have the Tutsis in the area killed.
     
On April 13th events began, which - if the eyewitness accounts are to be believed - provide grounds for serious charges against the Porvoo man.
     According to farmer Apollinaire Rugimbana, an armed patrol arrived at the home of the Porvoo man on the slopes of Mount Nyakizu at eight in the evening. The patrol was led by the Porvoo man, and a man by the name of Jeanson.
     The HRW report says that they stopped a group of 21 Tutsi refugees, which was probably on its way from Gikongoro to the Burundi border. The patrol told the group to walk up the mountain and sit down next to the bar of the Porvoo man.
     "Jeanson hit four men in the head with a hammer, and they died immediately", Rugimbana told African Rights.
     The HRW report tells a similar story, but according to it, four Tutsi men were butchered with hammers and clubs, the bodies were thrown into an outhouse, and the rest of the refugees were taken away.
     The HRW material concerning the days that followed gets worse - also from the point of view of the Porvoo man.
     Two days later, on April 15th, 1994, the mayor arrives at Cyahinda Church on a flat-bed truck, bringing police officers, a former soldier, a university student, a secondary school teacher, and the Provoo man.
     According to eyewitnesses, they were armed. With them they had about 200 Hutu refugees from Burundi, and a few thousand Hutu activists. They came to kill the Tutsis, whom the mayor had promised a refuge. According to the report, the Porvoo man took part in the killing.
     "Everyone (in Gikongoro) has to go, or you will see what will happen", the Mayor said into a megaphone.
     Then he counted to three. This was followed by indiscriminate shooting and chaos, says a Tutsi man interviewed by HRW, who had been in the church.
     "As they did not have many bullets, they only shot the strongest Tutsi men and killed the others using machetes", says another Tutsi man who survived the massacre to the HRW investigators in June 1995.
     Some of the Tutsis trapped in the church managed to flee up the slopes of the nearby mountain about 2,000 metres high - the same mountain where the Porvoo man's bar is said to have been located. On the 16th of April, Hutu forces attacked the Tutsis who had fled to the mountain. According to witnesses, the attack was led by the Porvoo man.
     A Tutsi survivor of the attack said later: "they killed in the way that people go to work in the field and come back home when they have had enough".
     The attackers had dried banana leaf bands on their chests in the shape of an X and lime powder on their faces. They shouted "Tuzabatsembatsemba!" - "We have come to destroy!"
     
It was exactly 13 years ago. It is quite impossible to visualise the chaos, horror, and insanity of Nyakizu, where 21,015 people were killed in a period of ten days, using rifles, machetes, and wooden clubs with nails in them.
     Women also took part in the killing. Not even children were spared if they were over the age of two.
     Ordinary villagers who had never killed anyone, learned how to do so. Moral standards were set aside for a couple of weeks.
     The mayor's forces stopped the slaughter on April 22nd, 1994. At that time the only Tutsis that were left in Nyakizu were under the age of two, as they had mainly been spared. Also, not all of the Tutsi wives of Hutu men were killed.
     Mayor Ladislas Ntaganzwa - the architect of the slaughter - wanted to change the entire village council after the killing. He wanted reliable supporters of the genocide on the council. One of the most reliable, according to the Human Rights Watch report, was the Porvoo man.
     In the vote on the composition of the village council in May 1994, special importance was placed on the role that the candidates had in the organisation of the killing campaign.
     According to the HRW and African Rights reports, the most serious accusation against the Porvoo man was that he was an organiser of the genocide, and not just a member of the rank and file.
     
The military success of the Hutus reversed in May 1994. Forces of the Tutsi RPF organisation, with reinforcements from Uganda and other places, got the upper hand. As Tutsi forces approached the village in June, the popularity of the mayor of Nyakizu among the villagers was already declining.
     In early July the mayor and those closest to him - apparently including the Porvoo man - fled via the city of Gikongoro to Zaire, which is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo.
     When investigators of HRW and the FIDH network of human rights organisations arrived in Nyakizu in June 1995, mass graves were waiting for them.
     Bones, clothing, and belongings of those who had been killed were lying around on coffee plantations. On the plateau of a hill stood a destroyed house. In front of it there were remains of bodies strewn around, as well as a broken rosary, women's undergarments, a wooden milk bowl, a child's school notebook with material written in beautiful handwriting on an agriculture lesson.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 15.4.2007

More on this subject:
 Plenty of questions remain unanswered

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finland holds Rwandan man suspected of involvement in genocide (10.4.2007)

TOMMI NIEMINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
tommi.nieminen@hs.fi