Guest post by Jacques Gatutsi, a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda.

When I was a child in elementary school, our religion teacher used to tell us that on Judgment Day, the mountains would drop their massive stones and destroy us. The purpose, he said, was for the righteous to be reborn into a new world free of suffering, while the wicked would be condemned to eternal hell.

Growing up at the base of a mountain littered with large stones, I dreaded that fateful day, unable to fathom where I could possibly hide from such an apocalyptic event. The large rocks that loomed over our home filled me with a deep sense of fear about what would happen when that day of reckoning finally arrived.

Tragically, that apocalyptic day did arrive – not from the heavens, but at the hands of our longtime Hutu neighbors. They surrounded my extended family, massacring them mercilessly from infants to the elderly. Rwanda had become the stage for unprecedented horrors, unlike any the world had ever witnessed. While mass killings of populations have occurred throughout history, never before had we seen neighbors so completely “phagocytize” one another with the intent of total extermination. Such abominable crimes were previously confined to armies annihilating the populations of foreign territories they sought to conquer.

And yet, for 100 days starting on April 7, 1994, the territory of Rwanda transformed into a hunting ground where the prey was the Tutsi people. To have been born a Tutsi was to be “guilty” – even unborn Tutsi fetuses of Hutu women married to Tutsi men were not spared. These scenes of unspeakable horror played out day after day, week after week, on every hillside across Rwanda, while the world turned a blind eye.

The macabre result: more than a million people were atrociously tortured and massacred in a monstrous frenzy by mobs of Hutu killers, during this genocide perpetrated in the indifference of the world. Another odious result: at the end of the genocide, over a million people were suspected of having been involved in the genocide. Because, according to the architects of this genocide, no Tutsi was to remain alive on Rwandan territory.

Thirty years is the time of a generation. But for us, it is as if it happened yesterday, so vivid is the memory in our hearts and in our everyday thoughts. We remember and will always remember our own who were senselessly massacred. We will always remember the genocide that changed our lives so much that nothing is the same for us. There is the before, with all the pleasures of living as a family with our loved ones, and the after, represented by our lives as orphans, widows and widowers, in grief. We are forever marked.

We will never forget. We will never forget that our family members were not swallowed up by mountains that collided on Judgment Day, nor by a tsunami or an earthquake, but rather that they were exterminated by those we believed to be human like them, who had decreed that we no longer had the right to live on this earth.

Today we remember. We remember to pay tribute to our family members victim of the genocide against the Tutsis of Rwanda. But let us also remember those other victims, whether Hutus or foreigners, killed during the genocide against the Tutsis, who they because of their courage refused to dip their hands in the blood of innocents, who they because of their courage took the risk of seeking a hiding place for the Tutsis hunted down like beasts of prey. We also pay tribute to those among these valiant men who were able to survive with or without their protégés. To all these righteous people, we say thank you, and ask God to give them the reward they deserve for their humanity.

Today we remember our family members to honor their memory, but we must also remind the world, starting with Leaders of Rwanda’s neighbouring countries, mainly the Presidents Museveni, Mobutu and Mwinyi, and the Leaders of Great Powers, mainly the Presidents Clinton of US and Mitterrand of France, as well as the Prime Ministers Major of UK and Chretien of Canada, that they shamefully abandoned us, turning away their eyes and plugging their ears when we needed their help. This reproach also goes to the leaders of the RPF, who let this happen, with the clear aim of exploiting this tragedy to their advantage towards their war and political success. Our distress was of no concern to them. Shame on all of them.

Today we also remember, and salute with pride, those among the survivors who were able to overcome pain and grief to arm themselves with resilience and optimism. We salute the bravery of all those among the survivors who were able to bounce back despite all the ups and downs of their lives. We tell them to keep up!

Today we remember, because we must keep intact the memory of our family members so that we can pass on the torch of remembrance to the next generation so that they can do the same with the generations that follow. We have no other choice.

It is our duty as survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda to remember. Not to brood over grudges that feed vengeance, but to remind the world that it happened, that this genocide took place, alas, 30 years ago. We must do so, all the more so as today, genocide deniers of all stripes spare no effort in trying to falsify the history of the genocide against our family members.

We therefore must thwart their despicable plans. We have to bear witness, so that our family members never die, either in our hearts, which are their graves, or in the memory of mankind. Anything less would be a victory for their executioners. Ends.