Not even religious songs, usually sung energetically first thing in the morning, will resonate in the churches this Sunday morning. The silence that settles over the country, like a pall of sorrow on this first day of commemorations, will last a week. Seven days during which the music and celebrations will be silent, to commemorate in unison the death of a million Rwandans members of the Tutsi minority (out of a total population of approximately 8 million), hunted down and then killed between April 7 and on July 17, 1994 by the extremist Hutu power.
From bars to restaurants, to churches, places of usually sonorous praise, any melody other than memorial music will be banned across the country during this first week of “Kwibuka”, “to remember” in Kinyarwanda.
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