July 1, 2007
Rwandan Genocide Survivor Recalls Horror
Hid In Tiny Bathroom For Three Months With Six Other Women
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Play CBS Video Video Surviving Genocide Bob Simon tells the story of Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Tutsi woman who survived Rwanda's genocide by the Hutus in 1994.
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Video Simon's Reporter's Notebook Only On The Web: Bob Simon discusses the story of Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Tutsi woman who survived Rwanda's genocide by the Hutus in 1994.
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Immaculee Ilibagiza (CBS)
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Evidence of Rwanda's 1994 genocide. It is estimated that at least 800,000 members of the Tutsi tribe were murdered in some 100 days. (AP)
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Fast Facts Rwanda Learn about the people, economy and history.
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The genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago was the most efficient ever carried out. As correspondent Bob Simon reports, 800,000 people were slaughtered in just 100 days.
Rwanda's minority tribe was almost wiped out. Those who managed to survive did so with a combination of courage, cunning and dumb luck. One young, college-educated woman from a remote village told 60 Minutes her incredible and inspiring survivor's tale in 2006
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Immaculee Illibagiza told Simon she was finally speaking out in hopes of preventing further atrocities, not only in Rwanda, but in Darfur and other places where massacres loom on the horizon.
In Rwanda, a green and hilly and tranquil looking land, Immaculee saw something in the distance 12 years ago and realized life would never be the same.
"I remember looking up to the hill across the river. And I saw somebody actually with a machete cutting somebody. And we were all like, 'Wow! Something’s happening here. They’re going to kill us,'" she remembers. "A person like when they’re cutting, cutting. And somebody was screaming."
People were screaming all over the country. The genocide had begun. It was extremely low tech – no gas chambers here – just machetes, spears and knives, wielded by Hutus, the majority tribe as they tried to wipe out the minority Tutsis.
There were no organized roundups as there had been in Nazi Germany; Tutsis were slaughtered in their tracks, wherever they were found. The killing fields were everywhere. And when it was over, three out of every four Tutsis in Rwanda had been killed.
When it began, Immaculee's father told her to run to a minister’s house three miles away, and to beg him to hide her. The minister was a Hutu, a member of the majority tribe that was killing the Tutsis. But he had been a friend of the family’s. And he was a minister.
"And I went to him. I was shaking. I told him 'My father asked me to come here because things are getting really bad in our village,'" she recalls. "And he took me. He said, 'Come, come.'"
He put Immaculee and six other women in a tiny, rarely used bathroom in a remote corner of the house, hidden not only from intruders, but from the minister’s large family.
Immaculee and the other tall women sat with their backs against the wall. They pulled the smaller girls down on top of them; they couldn’t all move at the same time.
"So, when he took us in the bathroom, I was like, 'Oh my God. I will be saved here. This bathroom is so hidden that we’re going to be saved,'” Immaculee explains.
Asked whether she was concerned about the extremely small size of the space, she says, "No. That was another question. I would try to fit in any hole I can just to hide."
Seven women were huddled in a bathroom measuring three feet by four feet, for 91 days. They took turns standing and stretching.
Sometimes, at night, when they couldn’t take it anymore, they retreated into a larger room adjacent to the bathroom. But it was more dangerous there: killers lurked just outside the window, so the women couldn’t stand up or talk.
"They were searching. They were there all the time," Immaculee remembers. "It was constantly intense. Intense, intense."
Several people had seen the Tutsi women arrive at the pastor’s house, but no one had seen them leave, so after a few days, dozens of Hutus stormed the house, hoping to find the women and kill them.
"There’s a little window in the bathroom. I went up and I looked through the curtains. And I saw like people running, running, running … inside the house. And we heard them. I can see the spears," Immaculee explains.
"So they come inside," she recalls. "I never been so scared in my life. I remember it was like, life swept out of your body in a second. I became dry instantly. I couldn’t even find saliva to swallow."
Produced By Robert Anderson
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Please do not call the Hutu tribe 'cavemen with machetes.' If you could understand the background of this grave situation, you may not be so quick to call them cavemen. I do agree with you that Immaculee is a completely marvelous woman and has been stronger than I could ever imagined being. Many have been merciless and inhumane, yes. However, never call a group of people cavemen, especially when you are not aware of their past and their culture.
European powers made Africa's boundaries without relevance to tribal groups and lands. Rwanda's boundaries happened to contain a minority of the Tutsi tribe and a majority of the Hutu tribe. The foreigners made the Tutsi into the elite tribe, and put them in government over the majority Hutu. The Hutu were seen as inferior, and once colonists left, the Hutu majority was put into government and many Tutsi were exiled. They then came back, and started to commit atrocities against the Hutus. The Hutu majority then started to kill the Tutsi, which they hated for their superior attitudes (given them by the Europeans). They were told to kill or they would die.
I am not saying, by any means, that this awful genocide is pardoned because of colonialism, just asking you to look at different sides of the story.
As an aside, I would like to note that this is a complex topic and 60 minutes has done a good job to public and make the American audience more aware of the world outside our country. I hope this comment help further 60 Minutes investigative journalism.
I refer of course, to divide and conquer vis-a-vis exploiting and inflaming ancient enmities between groups in order to control both groups, one through co-option and the other through subjugation. The colonial class system thus sets the stage for festering strife within arbitrarily created nation-states cobbled up by departing colonizers leaving the population to fight over national resources, which the colonizers and their surrogates socialized for themselves all the while!
Thus, in place of Rwanda we can substitute Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq, to name a few. Such personal pathos of loss, courage, and survival is endemic to such places.
Alas, the story while compellingly emotive, whitewashes the historical context and thus leaves the audience wondering: "just why can't those savages get along?" as we smugly absolve ourselves of complicity.
Have no fear! In the end, the great %u201Cwhite knight in shining armor%u201D embodied in French UN troops saves the day, both complicit.
We of the Boomer Generation have been conditioned to believe that genocide will never happen again in our lifetimes. Our Daddies bragged about saving the world from Hitler; we grew up thinking that our brave fathers had done away with human slaughter. BUT GUESS WHAT?! GENOCIDE IS COMING BACK IN STYLE! I'm telling you all now, pay attention! This could be you!
That's what can happen right here in the USA .. I saw a UTube clip that has some seemingly well educated man speaking on CSPAN about how the white people need to be exterminated .. and there was some clapping! Think about what THAT could mean ..