USA: A dark, horrific story of survival in Rwanda

Memories of homeland violence linger over the new lives of one Amherst family

By Dan Herbeck
The Buffalo News
STAFF REPORTER
August 04, 2009

Photo:
Benoit Kabayiza of Amherst is a refugee from Rwanda accused by his goverment of a 1994 genocide. He is seen with his pastor, Monsignor David Gallivan, at Holy Cross Church on Seventh Street in Buffalo.Bill Wippert / Buffalo News.

Day after day, they huddled together in a field of tall weeds, desperately trying to be silent, wondering whether they would ever escape alive.

Victor Habinshuti and his brother, Eric Dushime, were scared to death, and they had every reason to be.

Targeted for murder in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that left 800,000 Tutsis and sympathizers slain, they were caught in a situation that would terrify the bravest and strongest adult.

But they were just two little boys, ages 8 and 11, when they spent two weeks hiding out in an overgrown field in their hometown of Gatsyata. Their parents, sister and grandparents were already slaughtered. All day long, the boys heard the sounds of mob violence all around them.
"We knew they were killing people with guns and machetes. They were torturing people. We could hear it and see the bodies," Habinshuti said. "We knew they were looking for us. We just didn't know why."

Fueled by government propaganda and racial hatred, the Rwanda genocide has been called one of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind. At least 800,000 people were murdered in 100 days. An average of six people were slain every minute, and over the same period, and at least a quarter-million women were raped.

Habinshuti and Dushime are thankful and amazed that they were not killed with so many others. They had managed to slip past roadblocks and roaming killer mobs and made their way to a city miles away. There, they found safety with their aunt, Thamar Kabayiza, and her husband, Benoit Kabayiza.

Fast forward to June 2009. The Kabayiza family -- now including the two nephews -- resides in Amherst, where they enjoy the American Dream of comfort and prosperity.

They live in an immaculate home that is big enough to have a basketball court in the backyard.

Kabayiza is a successful accountant; his wife is a nurse. They have three children in the Williamsville School District. Habinshuti, now 23, lives with them and is in the engineering program at the University at Buffalo. Dushime, 27, is a UB graduate working in information technology in Chicago.

"At some point, you just come to realize, you're in America. This is your life now," Dushime said. "You move ahead."

But behind all the contentment and success is a deep, dark, horrific story.

The terror of what they witnessed and escaped in Rwanda has not left this family.

And an allegation from Benoit Kabayiza's past -- one he swears is untrue -- threatens to destroy the good life they have made in America.

The genocide began on April 7, 1994, the day after Rwanda's president was killed when rebels shot down his plane.

Most people in Rwanda belong to one of two tribes, Hutus and Tutsis. Hutus are by far the largest group. There has been conflict between the two groups for many decades.

The slain president was a Hutu, the majority tribe in Rwanda. After his death, government militias and mobs of angry Hutus began an all-out campaign to exterminate members of the Tutsi, the minority tribe, and any Hutu who showed any sympathy toward the Tutsis.

The Kabayizas said they were able to escape the bloodshed essentially because Kabayiza's father, Dominique Ntawukulilyayo, had some influential connections. Kabayiza and his wife said they spent most of the 100 days hiding inside an apartment in the city of Butare. The building was owned by another high-ranking government official, and therefore, protected from militia and mob attacks.

But their friends -- and most of Thamar Kabayiza's Tutsi family -- were not so fortunate. Thamar said most of her family -- including her parents, two sisters, a brother and most of her nieces and nephews -- were slaughtered.

Dushime and Habinshuti were among the few family members who survived.

When the killing began, they were staying with another of their aunts -- Thamar's sister, Tabea Mukeshimana -- in the town of Gatsyata.

"We were playing outside with some other kids. A man came running up to us. He said, "They're coming, they're coming for you! Hide!" Habinshuti recalled. "About 35 minutes later, we heard the first gunfire. People were saying on the news that the president was dead."

The next day, Habinshuti said, he and his brother stayed in the house with their aunt, listening to gunfire that intensified through the day and seemed to get closer and closer to them.

"We have to leave," his aunt said.

They hid in the homes of sympathetic Hutu neighbors for the next two days, and now they heard grenades, rockets, gunfire and the shouts of mobs, searching door-to-door for Tutsis.

Worried about putting her neighbors in danger, Mukeshimana tried to leave town with her two nephews. But a mob took her, and she told the two boys to run. The last moment they saw their aunt, she was crying and screaming as a group of men with machetes dragged her down a path.
The boys slipped off into the field of weeds where they would hide for two weeks, using cloth rice sacks as sleeping bags. All around them, they heard the sounds of Tutsis being hunted down and massacred.

"Once a day, our neighbor would come by and throw a little food and bottles of water into the place where we were hiding," Habinshuti said. "This man was a Hutu and was risking his life to do this for us."

When the two exhausted boys finally were able to leave their hiding place, they found bodies everywhere.

"There was a waterfall close to the place where we were hiding. They were killing people with the machetes there, and then dropping their bodies down into the water," Habinshuti said. "We found all kinds of bodies there. Then we started walking, and there were bodies on both sides of the road."

One of the worst aspects of it all was that they had no idea why some people in their country were killing other people. And they had no idea why they and their family were targets.
"We didn't even know whether we were Hutus or Tutsis at that time, because it was something our parents never talked about," Dushime said.

Dushime estimates that he and his brother had been hiding in the weeds for about two weeks before a lull came in the killing and they were able to leave their village. The neighbor who had already risked his life to feed them put them in his car and sneaked them past mob-controlled roadblocks to the city of Butare, more than 50 miles from their village.

"This man, our neighbor, he saved our lives," Habinshuti said. "He would have been killed if [the mobs] caught us with him."

The boys knew of only two surviving family members who could protect them -- their aunt Thamar and her husband, Benoit Kabayiza. By luck, the boys stumbled into a woman who knew the couple, and she directed them to their home.

The boys arrived with no shoes, torn clothes, and hadn't showered in a month.

"Our faces had changed from all that we had seen," Habinshuti said. "My auntie didn't even recognize us at first."

The boys stayed in hiding with their aunt and uncle for a month, never once venturing outside the house.

When the killing in Butare became too intense, Kabayiza took his wife and nephews and fled Rwanda. They spent years in squalid refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Togo before getting into a Catholic Charities rescue program.
In 1999, Catholic Charities found a home for them in Buffalo, where the family's fortunes finally began to improve.

Kabayiza, his wife and their nephews didn't know a word of English when they arrived in Buffalo, but worked hard to learn the language. Kabayiza, while working factory jobs, graduated from Erie County Community College and UB and became an accountant. Thamar became a nurse. Dushime and Habinshuti did well in college.

They never forgot the nightmare of Rwanda, but felt they had achieved happiness beyond their wildest dreams until one day last December.

That was the day when Kabayiza learned that the Rwandan government was trying to track him down and take him back to his homeland to face trial. The government had obtained an indictment accusing him of being an agent of the genocide.

Federal prosecutors and a special unit of U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, which investigates human rights crimes, are trying to determine whether Kabayiza is a murderer and should be turned over to the Rwandan government. Authorities said the U.S. investigation could take months, even years.

Kabayiza claims that he was targeted by the current regime for political reasons. Rwanda's government denies that claim.

"This charge is not true," Kabayiza said, "but it hangs over our heads, every day."

Contact the author at "dherbeck@buffnews.com"

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