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These are the non-public objects that Immaculée Songa donated to “Stories of Survival and Remembrance - A name to motion for genocide prevention,” at the moment on present at UN Headquarters, together with a photograph album, exhibiting her daughters, Raissa and Clarisse, laughing and smiling.
“The objects on this exhibition are crucial to me, as a result of they remind us of the lives, the experiences of our people who find themselves gone, who’re not right here. It’s as much as us to speak about them and inform their tales, and the way their lives have been taken away.
Six years in the past, I returned to Rwanda to seek for my household’s stays. In a mass grave, I acknowledged the attire my daughters wore on the final second of their lives. The garments have been caught to their our bodies. They have been all I had left of my youngsters. So, I took them.
I first displayed my daughters’ garments on the Illinois Holocaust Museum within the United States, so as to inform their story. Even although they have been washed, you possibly can see the blood stains, and you’ll think about how they died.
Don’t let my daughters be forgotten
We discuss hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, Tutsis killed throughout the genocide, and we appear to neglect the people. This exhibition is right here in order that we bear in mind the historical past of every particular person.
If I may communicate to my daughters, I might inform them that I’ve not forgotten them, I really like them very a lot and I’ve spoken about them rather a lot, as a result of that they had an atrocious dying that they didn’t deserve.
I’m a mom who didn’t perish, a lady who cries rather a lot. I inform myself that God saved me for a cause, to provide me the energy to speak about my daughters, and to verify they aren’t forgotten.
Garments worn by Immaculée Songa’s daughters, Clarisse and Raissa, are on show on the UN exhibition “Stories of Survival and Remembrance – A Call to Action for Genocide Prevention”
The details don’t lie
We have a accountability to inform the world that injustice exists, that individuals are dying due to injustice, and that the genocide in Rwanda was deliberate and executed by very intelligent individuals who recruited militants and satisfied them to kill. The accountability to stop genocides lies with governments, these in positions of affect, and the United Nations.
On our aspect, we additionally play our half. For instance, we arrange commemorations and training days to elucidate to the general public what can occur if individuals are not cautious. Because genocide might be prevented.
There are a number of phases of genocide, and the final section is denial. Today, all around the world, individuals are denying genocides. They have been given platforms, they write books, and say that genocide didn’t occur.
The details do not lie. So, if individuals see the details, after they see my youngsters’s garments, there is no such thing as a mistake. People mentioned youngsters have been killed, and now they see that it is true.
To be certain that the genocide will not be repeated, we should have interaction everybody. We should go to the faculties, and train peace. When I discuss to college students, I can see them change. It makes a distinction.
Before the genocide, 95 per cent of the inhabitants weren’t educated, and it was very simple to persuade them to kill. I feel that, if individuals have entry to the training they want, they may advocate for peace.”
The exhibition “Stories of Survival and Remembrance – A Call to Action for Genocide Prevention” opens at UN Headquarters in New York.
“Stories of Survival and Remembrance – A Call to Action for Genocide Prevention”, is on show at UN Headquarters till 15 June.
The objects within the exhibition – garments, toys, pictures, letters, recipes and different seemingly extraordinary objects – survived the Holocaust, genocide and different atrocious crimes in Cambodia, Srebrenica (Bosnia Herzegovina) and Rwanda.
The exhibition is being held throughout the yr of the seventy fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
It was inaugurated just a few days earlier than the celebration of the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide towards the Tutsis in Rwanda, within the UN General Assembly Hall on Friday, April 14.
