KIBEHO, Rwanda In a macabre attempt to show that a massacre at arefugee camp was not as bad as first reported, Rwanda's presidentThursday ordered the bodies of victims exhumed as part of aninternational inquiry.
"We're going to dig them up - all of them," President PasteurBizimungu told foreign diplomats and aid workers who toured theKibeho camp at the government's invitation.
Within minutes, workers began unearthing corpses from gravesdug into the debris-strewn hills, where thousands of people tried toflee the bloody melee last weekend.
The violence erupted while the army was trying to close theKibeho camp, which the new Tutsi-dominated government considered acenter for extremist Hutu militias. The United Nations estimatedthat at least 2,000 people were killed by army gunfire or trampled ina stampede.
The government, which insisted that the death toll has beengrossly exaggerated, claimed that soldiers fired in self-defense whenmilitants in the camp fired at them.
A government spokesman said 338 bodies had been found in about30 graves.
Bizimungu invited the visitors to view the newly opened gravesto show the death count was lower than many claim.
UN special envoy Shaharyar Khan said the inquiry should includeforensics experts.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий