Aidan Hartley Aidan Hartley

Before you talk about ‘Lessons from Rwanda’, read this

I saw what happened. I will never forget the smell of death. And I don't trust anyone who says 'never again'

issue 05 April 2014

In Rwanda I was an ant walking over the rough hide of an elephant — this time 20 years ago I had no idea of the scale of what I could see on the ground. Trekking with a column of rebels from the Ugandan frontier south towards Kigali, we came upon the early massacres of Tutsis, hysterical survivors, flames leaping above huts, mortars roaring down misty valleys. But we had seen a lot of this across Africa in the 1990s. We visited a Catholic pastor in his rectory and I suppose at that point I and my Tutsi guides still respected the priesthood and could not imagine their complicity in murder. As we drank tea with him, we failed to ask why he had the body of a woman with her brains bashed out sprawled on the steps of his church.

And then it just went on and on. We quickly learned that churches whereTutsis fled for sanctuary became the abattoirs of mass killing.

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