Aide Memoire

I was a man, a woman, a child, a foetus. You know I was killed. 
I was killed by the militia because I am a Tutsi.I was killed by the army because I was Hutu and a member of an opposition party.I was killed by my neighbours because I would not go with them to kill others.I was killed because I sought to protect my neighbour's child.I was killed by my priest because it was the price he had to pay to keep others alive.I was killed by my wife, my husband, my children, my parents because they had to kill me or be killed.They killed many like me, women, children, men who happened to be here. I know why, but I don't know why.

I was buried here by my family.I was buried here in this mass grave and no one knows whether I am dead.I died here in my grave after they forced me to dig it and put me and others inside it and shot us.I have never been buried. I am in my house. I am in the woods. I was thrown in a river.I have been left here as a testament to what happened, for you and for the world to see.

The inhumanity we have known is human.It is in our human differences that we have found reasons to dehumanise one another.That is what I want to tell you.We have died; we have killed because we are like you.I am like you.Now, I am dead.

(Rob Shropshire in Hugh McCullum: The Angels have left us: The Rwanda Tragedy and the Churches, WCC, Geneva, n.d.)

"And the Lord said, "What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!" Genesis 4: 10