Kigali genocide memorial

Two British brothers who were profoundly moved by Yad Vashem, the genocide memorial in Jerusalem, as I had been in 1964, founded the Aegis Trust, to enable the creation of this memorial on the edge of Kigali. I knew I had to visit. The information is no longer new to me – how the Belgian colonisers fixed the previously fluid categories of Hutu and Tutsi; how having ruled through the Tutsi minority they started promoting Hutu in the last years before independence; how violence kept breaking out; how the genocide flared in April 1994 and the international community did nothing to stop it, even withdrawing UN forces after evacuating the white people...

Beginning with the outside part of the memorial, as recommended, after walking around and between the mass graves where new bodies are still being interred, I visited a series of gardens. At first I thought them simplistic but now in retrospect their simplicity creates thoughtfulness without analysis.

Inside I read every word in English, watched every video clip, looked at every photo. I wasn't hassled out into the rain at closing time but given a few extra minutes. The final section presents other genocides throughout the twentieth century in Namibia (the Herero people), Armenia, Germany, Bosnia... What is there to say? 'Never again'? If only!