The witnesses of Nyantanga Part III
By Tommi Nieminen in Kigali and Nyakizu
The road from Cyahinda to Nyatanga is ten kilometres long, and shaded by eucalyptus trees.
It is here in the village of Nyatanga that the Rwandan man who was detained in Porvoo used to live.
The centre of the village is a small, dusty market square. Wares on sale there include tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, washing powder, matches, nails, soap, toothpaste, and batteries for radios.
There is no electric lighting, television, or refrigerators in the village. The only direct link with the outside world is with old battery-powered radios, but even then there is much static
In the middle of the village there is a red freight container, with a sign advertising "car spare parts" in French, even though there is not a single car to be seen in the village.
In April 1994 a total of about 21,000 people were killed over a period of ten days. Interviews with eyewitnesses need to be conducted away from the gazes of curious villagers. The event is arranged in a house made of clay bricks.
A narrow strip of daylight enters from a narrow opening in the wall. Silent men enter the dim room one by one.
Before the massacre, Emmanuel, a former guard at the village health clinic, worked as a guard in the home of the Porvoo man.
"We carried six boxes of weapons [into the house of the Porvoo man], which contained one Kalashnikov each", Emmanuel says. "When the killing began on April 15th, [the Porvoo man] had given the Hutus in the village an entire bul to eat so that they would be strong enough the next day to kill Tutsis."
Next to enter the room was the village's former tailor Augustin. "On the morning of the 15th, Mayor Ntaganzwa sent a young boy, Havugwanayo, to tell [the Porvoo man] that the killing of the Tutsis must begin immediately."
The tailor also says that he saw how a death squad led by the Porvoo man set up a road block in front of a bar owned by the Porvoo man and killed four Tutsis there.
"[The Porvoo man] told the Tutsis ‘do you think that you'll escape to Burundi?' Then they were made to sit next to each other on the road, and with something like a hammer, a man by the name of Jeanson beat the Tutsis in the head, and they all were killed immediately [the Porvoo man] stood there giving orders."
The actions of the Porvoo man has been discussed to a great degree in the village over the years; every Thursday morning a gacaca - a village genocide court - is held in the village.
The local chief of the gacada says that practically every witness mentions the Porvoo man when the events of April 1994 are examined.
Calixte, a Hutu man who has served time in prison for the genocide, says that he had attended the same meeting of Hutu extremists shortly before the genocide began. "[the Porvoo man] said that he and Geoffrey went to the municipal office to ask for weapons, and that they looked for Tutsis, who were coming as refugees from Gikongoro."
An old and frail Hutu man, Martin, says that he saw the Porvoo man leading an attack on the slopes of Mt. Nyakizu. John, a Tutsi shopkeeper, was in his shop when the Porvoo man brought a bull into the shop to be butchered, in order to give the Hutus energy to kill Tutsis.
The men of Nyatanga do not know anything about Finland.
Justin, a Tutsi man who is missing some teeth, is not sure if Finland is in America or Europe. However, he does remember hearing the word on his battery-powered radio.
"Finland? I know that it's a European country, but nothing else", says Emmanuel the guard.
"Some white people who were in Nyatanga were from Finland", adds Augustin the tailor.
In spite of this, some men from Nyatanga have spoken - enthusiastically, of course - about the possibility that they might be flown to Finland as witnesses.
"I might be one of them, because a Finnish policeman took pictures of me last week", says Gustave, a middle-aged Tutsi man, hopefully.
Two very different realities would meet each other there: Nordic law, and a Central African village.
However, there is a deep feeling of mistrust in Nyatanga toward the Finnish system of justice. Ignacio is not comforted much by the prospect that the Porvoo man would be judged somewhere in Finland. On the slopes of Nyakizu, Finland is a bit like Narina, a fantasy land somewhere far, far away, which in a way, does not even exist.
"I want him here to face justice in Nyakizu, so that he might see what he did here", he says.
"In Finland [the Porvoo man] is in conditions that are too good. I do not believe that eyewitnesses will be brought to the court from here", says Augustin the tailor.
Augustin is not necessarily wrong.
It is possible that at least some of the eyewitnesses in Nyantanga will give their evidence on video in their own village under controlled conditions.
And if it happens that nobody from Nyantanga gets to Finland, they have been promised that their greetings will be brought there.
"Show the picture that you took of me to [the Porvoo man]", says John, a Tutsi man.
"He hated me so much in his time. Send my greetings to him: I'm still alive!"
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.5.2007
More on this subject:
 The witnesses of Nyantanga
The witnesses of Nyantanga Part II
TOMMI NIEMINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
tommi.nieminen@hs.fi
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