Quotes of the Day

Ten years ago, on April 6, 1994 , a plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, the ethnic Hutu President of Rwanda, was shot down over Kigali , the capital. Habyarimana and nine others perished; no one claimed responsibility. But the killings started the next day and continued for 100 more, as government-backed death squads from the majority Hutu tribe slaughtered minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In all, more than 800,000 were murdered, many of them hacked to death with machetes. A decade later, four Rwandans remember the genocide and ponder what it will take to heal their country's wounds.

THE KILLER
Kamanda Emmanuel, 49,
Rukara, eastern Rwanda
"I have admitted to my crimes and asked for forgiveness. That is why I was released from prison after seven years. Since I was freed last year, I have visited 14 homes to apologize for killing members of their families. I took part in the genocide from April 8, when we murdered many people in a hospital. I threw hand grenades and I used a rifle. It is not easy to talk to the survivors because they are very traumatized. I helped one widow build a kitchen as a kind of compensation. I noticed that working together makes it easier for both sides. I've changed in prison. I realize how wrong I was. The leaders of those days ordered us, and I did what I was told. Now I would refuse to follow such an order and prefer to get killed instead.
"I believe that all Rwandans will live together one day without fear, without hatred. But we should not hasten it. It is a process that will take time and we should allow as much time as needed. Time is something I have plenty of. It is just impossible to find a job. My future focuses on my eight children. I need money to get them a good education. Their life has not been easy. They were beaten up by survivors for what I did.

"My family is very happy that I was released. In my village I would say half the people are pleased for me, while the others are not happy. Those are the people whose family members are still in jail. When I admitted to my crimes I told the whole truth, and the families of killers do not like that. After 6 p.m. , when it starts to get dark, I stay inside. I'm afraid of many of my neighbors."

THE SURVIVOR
Francine Mukaruzima, 46,
Kigali
"my family were hunted like animals during the genocide and most of them were killed. My husband is dead and, of my 16 children, only three survived. I was raped by several men. After the war I was often sick, and I tested hiv positive. I am a member of avega agahozo, an organization for widows and orphans of the genocide. Since last year avega has given me antiretroviral drugs for free. I could never pay for them myself. I understand that avega only has sufficient funds to give the antiretrovirals to 28 women like me in the province of Kigali . But hundreds of others must be infected. So I might be called lucky, but I still think I will not live very long.

"It is hard for me to think about the future. I am poor and hardly educated. I have no house of my own because it was destroyed during the genocide. The place where I am living is not good. Besides avega, nobody seems to care for the widows of the genocide. Most of us are very poor. The government cannot help because it hardly has money and there are so many of us. Rich foreign countries should help. It's now 10 years after the genocide. There is security in the country, and I can see many new buildings being built. Things seem to be getting better. But my life has not improved. I am still poor. I am sicker than a few years ago and will never get better. For me, the war is not over."

THE POLITICIAN
Laurent Nkusi, 54,
Rwanda 's Minister of Information, Kigali
"ten years on, the government is very involved in building up a new society and helping the survivors with housing, education and health. We do as much as we can but we have limited resources. Take medicines, which are very expensive. Helping the group of women who were raped during the genocide and infected with hiv goes beyond our budget capacity. Antiretroviral drugs are very costly. The international community should do more for us in this regard.

"It may be 10 years after the genocide but the pain is still very much present. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha , Tanzania , does not comfort the survivors. Justice moves too slowly there. And I am not happy about the way some Rwandan women who were raped during the genocide were treated when they testified. There was no respect for the culture of the women, and they were asked questions in a very painful and disrespectful way.

"We have to build a new society. We are using a traditional village justice system called gacaca in which survivors talk about the crimes face-to-face with perpetrators. It is especially traumatizing but it is a necessity, and as a government we do all that we can to help with counseling. I am sure a peaceful coexistence is close."

THE ACTIVIST
Monique Mujawamariya, 48,
human-rights activist, Montreal , Canada
"In 1990, I founded a human-rights group in Rwanda . It was a dangerous time. Ethnic tensions between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis had begun boiling again. But as the daughter of a Hutu father and a Tutsi mother, I wanted to show that Rwandans could ignore the ethnic hatred of our leaders and get along. It nearly cost me my life. The regime and its vicious militia groups harassed me constantly, at one point stoning my car and smashing its windows. My face still bears the scars of the attack. When the genocide began, I stayed in Rwanda , reporting on the slaughter; friends later helped smuggle me to safety.

"When the genocide ended, I wanted to help rebuild my home. The old regime was gone and the country had a chance to start again. But the new Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) government, hailed in the West as the soldiers who had ended the genocide, was also divisive. In September 1994, just months after the fpr came to power, I published a report detailing its human-rights violations. There were later abuses. I do not know if people still remember the human hordes on the roads from Congo, the piles of corpses and the FPR decreeing that every man coming back in good health was most likely a militiaman and thus should be eliminated. Nobody knows how many people died and nobody ever will. Because of the apathy of the international community, the government, led by Paul Kagame, felt it could continue its conquests and invaded Congo , spreading our desolation.

"Many people will commemorate April 7 as the beginning of the genocide in which Hutus killed Tutsis. But I will commemorate the drama of my nation, independent of any ethnic connotation. For Rwanda to find true peace we must move beyond labels. I dream of the day when we recognize the suffering of all Rwandans and are no longer obsessed with apportioning blame. There is no point in trying to have one group's suffering recognized as more important than another's. To recognize and respect each other's pain is our only hope to be able to rebuild our nation."

• A decade on, Rwanda struggles to come to terms with the genocide