JEAN-BAPTISTE: At
first killing was obligatory; afterward we got used to it.
We became naturally cruel. We no longer needed encouragement
or fines to kill, or even orders or advice. Discipline was
relaxed because it wasn’t necessary anymore. I don’t know
anyone who was struck because he refused to kill. I know of
one case of punishment by death, a special case, a woman.
Some young people cut her to punish her husband, who had
refused to kill. But she was in fact Tutsi. Afterward the
husband took part without whining—in fact, he was one of the
busiest in the marshes. If one morning you felt worn out,
you would offer to contribute with drink and then you went
along the next day. You could also replace killing with
other useful tasks, like preparing meals for the visiting interahamwe,
or rounding up cows scattered in the bush, so they could be
eaten. And when your bravery returned, you would take up the
tool again and return to the swamps.
PIO:Anyone who had
the idea of not killing for a day could get out of it, no
problem. But anyone with the idea of not killing at all
could not let on, or he himself would be killed while others
watched. Voicing disagreement out loud was fatal on the
spot. So we don’t know if people had that idea. Of course
you could pretend, dawdle, make excuses, pay—but above all
you could not object in words. It would be fatal if you
refused outright, even hush-hush with your neighbor. Your
position and your fortune could not save you from death if
you showed a kindness to a Tutsi before unfamiliar eyes. For
us, kind words for Tutsis were more fatal than evil deeds.
ADALBERT: There were two kinds of rapists. Some took the girls and used them as wives until the end, even on the flight to Congo; they took advantage of the situation to sleep with prettified Tutsis and in exchange showed them a little bit of consideration. Others caught them just to fool around with, for having sex and drinking; they raped for a little while and then handed them over to be killed right afterward. There were no orders from the authorities. The two kinds were free to do as they pleased.
VALÉRIE: They surrounded the maternity hospital. They ripped down the gates, they simply shot up the locks. They wore very handsome cartridge belts of highly polished leather, but they wanted to avoid wasting bullets. They killed the women with machetes and clubs. Whenever one of the more agile girls managed to escape in the commotion and get out a window, she was caught in the gardens. When a mama had hidden a child underneath her, they picked her up first, then cut the child, then cut its mother last. They didn’t bother to cut the nursing infants properly. They slammed them against the walls to save time, or hurled them alive on the heaps of corpses.” Her faltering voice has almost faded away. “That morning, we were more than three hundred women and children. That evening in the garden, there were only five women left, spared because they were lucky to be born Hutu. And one child: his name is Honnête, and he was taken to Kenya to live with his aunt.
MARIE-CHANTAL: When my husband came home in the evenings, I knew the disturbing gossip, I knew he was a boss, but I asked him nothing. He left the blades outside. He no longer showed the slightest temper anymore in the house, he spoke of the Good Lord. He was cheerful with the children, he brought back little presents and words of encouragement, and that pleased me. I don’t know of any wife who whispered against her husband during the massacres. Jealous wives, mocking wives, dangerous wives—even if they did not kill directly, they fanned the burning zeal of their husbands. They weighed the loot, they compared the spoils. Desire fired them up in those circumstances. There were also men who proved more charitable toward the Tutsis than their wives, even with their machetes in hand. A person’s wickedness depends on the heart, not the sex.IGNACE: The white
priests took off at the first skirmishes. The black priests
joined the killers or the killed. God kept silent, and the
churches stank from abandoned bodies. Religion could not
find its place in our activities. For a little while, we
were no longer ordinary Christians, we had to forget our
duties learned in catechism class. We had first of all to
obey our leaders—and God only afterward, very long
afterward, to make confession and penance. When the job was
done.
PANCRACE: In the
marshes, pious Christians became ferocious killers. In
prison, very ferocious killers became very pious Christians.
But there are also pious Christians who became timid killers
and timid killers who became quite pious Christians. It
happened for no clear reason. Each person satisfied his
faith in his own way without any particular instructions,
since the priests were gone or were up to their necks in it.
In any case, religion adapted to these changes in belief.
LÉOPORD: We no
longer considered the Tutsis as humans or even as creatures
of God. We had stopped seeing the world as it is, I mean as
an expression of God’s will. That is why it was easy for us
to wipe them out. And why those of us who prayed in secret
did so for themselves, never for their victims. They prayed
to ask for their crimes to be a bit forgotten, or to get
just a little forgiveness—and they returned to the marshes
in the morning. Anyway, it was more than forbidden to speak
kindly of the Tutsis to God or anyone else. Even after their
deaths, even of a newborn. Even a priest was not to profit
from his favor with God to pray for the soul of a Tutsi. He
risked too much if someone overheard.
ADALBERT:
Basically, Hutus and Tutsis had been playing dirty tricks on
one another since 1959. That was the word from our elders.
In the evenings, Primus in hand, they called the Tutsis
weaklings, too high and mighty. So Hutu children grew up
asking no questions, listening hard to all this nastiness
about Tutsis. After 1959 the oldsters jabbered in the
cabarets about eliminating all the Tutsis and their herds of
trampling cows. That came up often around the bottle: it was
a familiar concern to them, like the crops or other business
matters. We young people made fun of their old-folks
grumbling, but we didn’t mind it. All through his youth, a
Hutu could certainly choose a Tutsi friend, hang out and
drink with him, but he could never trust him. For a Hutu, a
Tutsi might always be a deceiver. He would act nice and seem
obliging, but underneath he was constantly scheming. He had
to be a natural target of suspicion.
LÉOPORD: It is
awkward to talk about hatred between Hutus and Tutsis,
because words changed meaning after the killings. Before, we
could fool around among ourselves and say we were going to
kill them all, and the next moment we would join them to
share some work or a bottle. Jokes and threats were mixed
together. We no longer paid heed to what we said. We could
toss around awful words without awful thoughts. The Tutsis
did not even get very upset. I mean, they didn’t draw apart
because of those unfortunate discussions. Since then we have
seen: those words brought on grave consequences.
PANCRACE: The
radios were yammering at us since 1992 to kill all the
Tutsis; there was anger after the president’s death and a
fear of falling under the rule of the inkotanyi. But
I do not see any hatred in all that. The Hutu always
suspects that some plans are cooking deep in the Tutsi
character, nourished in secret since the passing of the
ancien régime. He sees a threat lurking in even the feeblest
or kindest Tutsi. But it is suspicion, not hatred. The
hatred came over us suddenly after our president’s plane
crashed. The intimidators shouted, “Just look at these
cockroaches—we told you so!” And we yelled, “Right, let’s go
hunting!” We weren’t that angry; more than anything else, we
were relieved.
ADALBERT: There are
people like me who bad-mouthed the Tutsis easily. We
repeated what we had been hearing for a long time. We called
them arrogant, fussy, even spiteful. But we saw no such
arrogance or haughty manners when we were together in the
choir or at the market. Not even in the cabarets or on the
banana plantations if a help-out came up. The oldsters all
had a hand in muddling things between us, but they did it in
good faith, so to speak. Afterward the radios exaggerated to
get us all fired up. “Cockroaches,” “snakes”—it was the
radios that taught us those words. The evil-mindedness of
the radios was too well calculated for us to oppose it.
IGNACE: We called
them “cockroaches,” an insect that chews up clothing and
nests in it, so you have to squash them hard to get rid of
them. We didn’t want any more Tutsis on the land. We
imagined an existence without them. At first, we favored
getting rid of them without actually killing them. If they
had agreed to leave—for Burundi or other likely
destinations—they could have gone and saved their lives. And
we wouldn’t have piled up the fatalities of the massacres.
But they couldn’t imagine living there without their ancient
traditions and their herds of cows. That pushed us toward
the machetes. The Tutsis had accepted so many killings
without ever protesting, they had waited for death or bad
blows so often without raising their voices, that in a
certain way we thought deep down they were fated to die,
here and now, all together. We thought that since this job
was meeting no opposition, it was because it really had to
be done. That idea helped us not to think about the job.
Afterward we learned what it was called. But among us here
in prison, we don’t use that word.
PIO: Killing Tutsis
… I never even thought about it when we lived in neighborly
harmony. Even pushing and shoving or trading harsh words
didn’t seem right to me. But when everyone began getting out
their machetes at the same time, I did so too, without
delay. I had only to do as my colleagues did and think of
the advantages. Especially since we knew they were going to
leave the world of the living for all time. When you receive
firm orders, promises of long-term benefits, and you feel
well backed up by colleagues, the wickedness of killing
until your arm falls off is all one to you. I mean, you
naturally feel pulled along by all those opinions and their
fine words. A genocide—that seems extraordinary to someone
who arrives afterward, like you, but for someone who got
himself muddled up by the intimidators’ big words and the
joyful shouts of his colleagues, it seemed like a normal
activity.