Rwandan Genocide Survivor Recalls Horror

Hid In Tiny Bathroom For Three Months With Six Other Women

(CBS)  Pastor Simeon Nzabahimana showed Simon how he tried to divert the killers away from the women. He showed the angry mob other bedrooms and urged them to search his attic.

"And he was telling them, 'I sent them away. Those girls, I sent them away. They can help themselves. I don’t want to be in trouble,'" Immaculee explains.

"The first time the killers came here to search your house, did you think they were going to find the women and kill everyone, including yourself?" Simon asks Rev. Nzabahimana.

"Yes. Yes. I thought so. I thought that if they had seen them they would have forced me to kill them or they would have killed me and killed them as well," he replies.

"You think they might’ve forced you to kill them?" Simon asks.

"That’s what they did elsewhere," Nzabahimana explains. "Wherever they found somebody hiding people they forced them to kill them. And afterwards they also killed the person."

During the first search, one killer actually put his hand on the door leading to the bathroom, but he never opened it. After that the pastor showed Simon how he moved a bureau in front of the door to hide it from future searchers.

Everything outside the bathroom where Immaculee and the others were huddled, the entire country, had become a killing field. Hutus armed with machetes searched every house, every hill and killed every Tutsi they could find.

What prompted the genocide? There are things you can point to. The Hutus had long-standing resentments against the Tutsis, who formed the nation's elite. They had the better houses, better jobs.

Radio broadcasts called day and night for the Hutus to go out and kill Tutsis and the Hutus were told by their own leaders that if they didn’t join the killers, they would join the dead.

There are things you can point to, but do they explain what happened? What could possible explain what happened?

Here’s one explanation from one killer who had been Immaculee’s neighbor, Alex Ntibirukee, who spent 11 years in prison after admitting he killed six people: "They told me that I would be rewarded with a piece of land and a banana plantation. They told the same to other people, but you see they didn’t give me any banana plantation."

"They told you you would be rewarded with a banana plantation, if you did what?" Simon asks Ntibirukee.

"They told us to kill, and we killed. We just did it," he says.

Asked what exactly he did, Ntibirukee says, "I got my machete and a nail-studded club and started killing." He killed his neighbors, and told Simon he had nothing against any of them; two of the victims were Immaculee’s second cousins.

Asked how he killed them, Ntibirukee says, "I chopped one with a machete, and killed the other one with the nail-studded club."

He had grown up with Immaculee and been her family’s handyman. Asked if he and the others would have killed Immaculee had they discovered her, Ntibirukee says, "Because of the way I was, I would have attacked her definitely."

For days, then weeks, then months, the seven women stayed squeezed into the tiny bathroom, surrounded by evil.

Asked what was going through her mind, sitting in the bathroom hour after hour, Immaculee says, "How are they going to catch us. Where they will start cutting you. If they will rape you."

She says she was terrified the entire time she was cooped up in the tiny space. They all expected to be killed, eventually. One said she just hoped she’d be shot and not tortured; another made the pastor promise to put dirt on her corpse so dogs wouldn’t eat her.

And what did the women have to eat? Not much.

"I remember sometimes we used to eat just like, beans. And there was this little insect that came out of the beans. And he brought it. It was 'Jesus, well how am I going to eat it.'"

But after a while, she managed to eat, by closing her eyes. Still, Immaculee said she lost 40 pounds – one third of herself disappeared during her three months hidden in the bathroom.

"I was completely a skeleton. I remember me myself thinking, looking at my hands. And I was like, 'This is what the biologists used to tell us, you know. We are really—we have a skeleton like this.' It was completely like—I can see every bone," she remembers.

Looking at herself was like a personal anatomy lesson. "It was shocking," she tells Simon.

Also shocking was that to keep their presence secret from others in the house, they couldn’t flush their toilet unless someone else in the house flushed the toilet on the other side of their wall. And they couldn’t bathe.

"We didn’t have any next clothes or any toothbrush to brush our teeth. Nothing. We couldn’t," she explains.

[pawprintparadise]

To jo-gee:
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.

[sumit_lion]

Although this story does explore the tenacity of human behaviour, I would like to set forth that the 60 Minutes should do follow up inquiries on this story. For example, it should explore the history behind the Rwandan Genocide and its link to the Belgians and their act of creating divisions between the Hutus and the Tutis. Secondly, and most relevant, there should be a story connecting the Rwandan Genocide to the Darfur Genocide. This would give viewers the foundation to explore the genocide as it unfurls. My overall point is to inundate 60 minutes audience with the fact that there is a genocide happening in Darfur and that it can be stopped, but the world needs to start acting by becoming aware of human suffering and finding ways to stave this abomination. By connecting Rwanda with Darfur, people can see how interconnected these genocides are.
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.

[label1877-2009]

Great segment on Rwanda. I noticed no mention was directed at President Clinton for not acting to help Rwanda. Can you imagine how many times this would of been mentioned had a Republican been in office at the time?

[sabbali]

While touching, the Rwanda genocide story is devoid of salient historical context for the genesis of the pogrom. The story of Rwanda is no different from that of most societies with a legacy of colonialism, primarily the Western variant. While not excusing the indigenous culprits, the hidden hand and unreported cause of the genocide is the classic modus operandi of western imperialism.

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.

[mkbjon]

It never ceases to amaze me how terribly people can treat each other. And it continues to amaze me how some people, in the face of unspeakable evil, can rise above it and forgive. We could all stand to learn a lesson from this woman about the human spirit and treating each day of your life as exactly what it is--a wonderful gift.

[jo-gee]

This story is pure dynamite. You can't let it fade out, do a follow up on what the village is doing to recover. This woman is like an ANGEL! AWESOME PRESENCE! How can she be considered INFERIOR to some caveman with a machete?
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!

[linfinster]

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 ..

[jodschamber-2009]

I believe Immaculee's story. It is very poignant and happens again & again through out history. I am very happy that she & other's lived to tell their story. I find she has a very big heart & soul to forgive the former yardsman that killed two of her family. This is a tradgedy that needs to not be repeated by any man, woman, child in any land. I worry that the violence in Iraq will spill over to genocide. I hope not, but so often history repeats itself. I am happy that she is a speaker now against Genocide, to try to prevent this from happening again in her country or others.