Two Years Late and Mired in Controversy: the British Memorial to Rwanda's Past

In the classrooms of the Murambi school are the horrifying reminders of one of the worst acts of genocide in modern times. It was here in 1994, on a hilltop in southern Rwanda, that 50,000 Tutsis took refuge for two weeks without food and water before being massacred by Hutu militias who used guns, grenades and machetes to carry out the slaughter.

At the request of the survivors and the families of the dead, the bodies of thousands of the victims have been preserved in lime and placed where they were killed. One classroom is filled with hundreds of skulls and piles of bones, while another contains the children, some with their petrified arms raised up to fend off the blows that killed them.

This sacred place for relatives and survivors' groups should, by now, also house a genocide memorial centre, created by a British charity and partly funded by the UK government as a monument of international significance.

But the project, which was supposed to have opened two years ago, has remained closed amid criticism from Rwandans that it has completely failed to provide a culturally sensitive memorial to the slaughter of one million people. The British charity, the Aegis Trust, is now attempting to satisfy demands for substantial changes.

The Nottingham-based holocaust education charity has been presented with a confidential report by a commission of leading Rwandans who are highly critical of the project. In the report, the commission said the aim of leaving a memorial of the genocide, and of showing how it unfolded, "has not been achieved".

The report went on: "There are writings that have nothing to do with reality, which do not reflect the truth about history, politics or Rwandese culture. There is no diversity in the messages which are broadcast and those which are given by audiovisual films. It is constantly monotonous."

The opening of the centre, which was partly funded by a donation of £150,000 from the British government, is not likely to take place now for several months.

Other problems include "grammatical errors" and the use of "photographs which do not make any sense and bear no relationship to how the site is to be used".

The conclusion of the commission states: "The writing and the photos do not represent a logic which coincides with the objectives assigned to this site, namely the policy of memory, an education in the history of the genocide and in its prevention."

The new memorial centre, built in front of the Murambi classrooms, lacks any sense of place or history, according to the commission.

"It does not have features which present it as a national, let alone an international, monument," the report said.

The authors wrote: "The Ad Hoc Commission concluded that it is, in the first place, necessary to come up with new inventions for this site; this calls for money, for a sufficient delay and for adequate human resources, people who would bring their own suggestions and help to implement them."

James Smith, chief executive of the Aegis Trust, defended the work the charity had done and said Aegis had encouraged the setting up of the commission to oversee the project in order to fulfil the need to consult with Rwandans. He criticised the report, saying it contained general remarks and no detailed suggestions of the way forward.

"What we were hoping for was the textual changes or inclusions that they felt were necessary," he said.

"But in terms of the whole process we are engaged in I am not particularly sensitive about this. This is a normal process. There have been particular problems at Murambi which are specific to the site. What we are engaged in is trying to create a lasting memorial and to preserve what is there."

He said the issue of the bodies in the classrooms was one which all parties accepted needed to be addressed, because left alone they would disintegrate into dust. But he insisted that the trust would not dictate any solution.

"The history of African nations has been written by foreigners for far too long; that is why we have been sensitive to take on board criticism," he said.

Mr Smith said suggestions that the centre would open early next year were "optimistic".

Backstory

The death of President Juvenal
Habyarimana, a Hutu, whose plane was hit by a missile on April 6 1994, sparked the Rwandan genocide. Within hours violence had spread through a country riven by ethnic tensions between Hutus, the majority group, and Tutsis, the minority who nevertheless dominated. Up to 800,000 people died in what many viewed as a systematic attempt to wipe out the Tutsi population.

About 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighbouring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and the former Zaire. Most have since returned to Rwanda.