In this text prepared for the seminar: Racism – the Road to Genocide, held in Geneva in conjunction with the Durban Review Conference on Racism, Milly Nsekalije described her own experiences during the genocide and issued a warning about the ease with which neighbours can be turned into killers.

Kigali, April 1994

While the world’s eyes were turned to Rwanda, my husband, the children and I could not see beyond the four walls of the room where we were crouching in the dark. Our ears were buzzing, and our hearts pounding louder than the hellish din of the exploding bombs, grenades and machine-gun fire outside. All hopes of coming out of this massacre alive dwindled with each passing minute.

When at last we were able to go outside, our European neighbours were leaving their house, like so many others at that time. This mass departure of expatriates was the sign that the world was abandoning the country to its tragedy. At first, my husband and I hesitated to leave our home … until the first stray bullets landed in our garden. We grabbed the children – then aged three-and-a-half and two years – who were trembling with fear, jumped into the car without any luggage, and set off with a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs.

There had been a war on between the Government forces and the rebels since 1990. The government was predominantly Hutu and the Rebels Tutsi. The Tutsis were the former dominant tribe in the country and had held power throughout history until the 1959 coup d’etat. Between 1959 and 1962 many of the Tutsi elites, including the King, left the country. At that time Rwanda was still a Belgian colony, but the Belgians left in 1962 handing over power to the Hutus.

The descendants of the Tutsis who had left in 1959 had regrouped, had formed an army (the FPR) and invaded Rwanda from Uganda where they had been aided by the government and some other foreign powers. Fighting continued, even after the UN intervened in 1991 with UNAMIR, until 1994 when a peace deal was concluded in Arusha in Tanzania. The deal was that the president would step down and hand over power to a new “transitional” government.

Before I come to the genocide itself, I should mention that trouble had started in neighbouring Burundi in 1993 when their president had been assassinated by Tutsis. In the fear of invasion, domination or being deprived of power, Hutu extremists in Rwanda allied with the “Hutu Power” wing of the MDR joined in demonstrations, adopting racist, anti-Tutsi slogans and splitting the party. The extremists with their own independent radio station Mille Collines managed to rally all of the extremist Hutu groups to their side hoping to attract attention of listeners who were interested in Radio Muhabura a pro-Tutsi radio station created in1991, broadcastinjg from Uganda. Such was its influence of Mille Collines that even the national Radio Rwanda found itself obliged to adopt a hard-line anti-Tutsi slant in order not to lose too many listeners. It is Radio Television Mille Collines that is reckoned to be largely responsible for the genocide.

On 6 April 1994, the plane returning President Habyarimana from Arusha was shot down as it approached Kigali airport, and crashed on the presidential palace. Who was responsible has never been proven but there was a strong feeling among the Hutus that the peace deal concluded by the president had been a sell-out. When the president’s plane was shot down the Hutu extremists first blamed the Hutu opposition, then the Belgians charged with defending the airport, and finally the Tutsis. It unleashed the genocide.

We drove in the midst of dead bodies trying our best to escape the militia and military. Things went worse and worse day after day. Finally we had to leave the country, this time leaving the car and the little basic things that that we had managed to take from home. I left with only fear for luggage. I walked for two days with my little boy, carrying the baby. At the border we were robbed by the border guards of everything except our clothes, which was just as well because I had hidden some money down the back of the baby’s nappy. From Goma in the Congo we were able with this money to take a plane to Nairobi.

What was so appalling about what happened was that, in just a few months, neighbours who had been friends just shortly before – mild, hard working, ordinary people – were turned into blood-thirsty killers by the influence of radio stations spreading fear and hate.

Please never underestimate the power of propaganda, and the media, to turn nice people into mass murderers.

Milly Nsekalije is from Rwanda. She worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross for several years, first in Nairobi, then later in Geneva, tracing genocide survivors and reuniting families.