By John Leschak
Immaculee Ilibagzia told University students her harrowing tale of how she survived the Rwandan genocide on Tuesday.
Ilibagzia was born in Rwanda and studied at the National University of Rwanda. In 1994, at the age of 22, she returned home from university to spend Easter with her family. A week later, on April 6, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated when his plane was shot down by a missile. His killing was the catalyst of the three months of systematic massacres, which resulted in the murder of nearly one million ethnic Tutsis in the country.
Ilibagzia’s family was Tutsi, and during the genocide all of her family was killed, except for one of her brothers, who was out of the country at the time.
The genocide was a culmination of ethnic tension between the two main ethnic groups-the Tutsis and the Hutus. Ilibagzia traced the origin of this ethnic division to Belgian colonialism.
“The Belgian rulers considered the Hutus and Tutsis different ethnic races based on physical differences such as height,” she said. “And the colonial government required all Rwandans to carry ethnic identification cards.” This social system continued after the end of Belgian rule in 1962, and ethnic hatred exacerbated under the independent Rwandan state.
The assassinated president, Habyarimana, was Hutu, and the missile that killed him was allegedly fired by Tutsi militias located in the neighboring country of Uganda, according to Ilibagzia. At the time of the assassination, Rwanda was under the control of a Hutu-run dictatorship. In response to the president’s assassination, Rwandan government officials ordered genocide.
“On April 7, a government minister came on the radio and he said, ‘Kill all the Tutsis, including the babies. The child of a snake is a snake too,'” Ilibagzia said. Within hours of the broadcast, she said she heard BBC reports that Hutus were murdering entire Tutsi families.
Ilibagzia’s father sent her to a Hutu neighbor’s house to hide. She survived by hiding in her neighbor’s tiny bathroom with seven other women for 91 days. At night, the Hutu man secretly gave them food and water.
While Ilibagzia was in hiding, her entire family -except for one brother-was murdered.
The genocide was ended by the invasion of Ugandan Tutsi militias, led by Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s current president.
“We must never generalize,” Ilibagzia said. “Although some Hutu people did terrible things to the Tutsis, not all Hutu are bad. Some were good people, like the man who hid me.”
Ilibagzia, a devout Catholic, claimed that her survival was a miracle from God. “I was allowed to live so that I could spread God’s word, and that word is love,” she said. “Hutu, Tutsi, what is the difference? We are all flowers in God’s garden. Why hate each other?”
Minnelli Hassan, a first-year graduate student studying education, said Ilibagzia’s words were “very powerful and insightful.”
“It took a lot of strength for her to forgive the people who murdered her family,” said Hassan.
Rossanna Meyer-Mejía, a sophomore entrepreneurship major and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) public relations officer, said that the NAACP organized the event as part of Genocide Awareness Month, which is every April.
“I was very happy with Immaculee’s message of peace and tolerance. As members of the NAACP, these are the values we hope to instill in our community,” Meyer-Mejía said.