BUJUMBURA September 30th (ABP) – The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) organized a meeting in the compound of the Red Cross at Ngagara on Friday September 27, 2019, for leaders of various zones of Ntahangwa commune, neighborhood leaders and other representatives of the people of that commune, to discuss the management of human remains found at the former Kamenge market.
TRC Chairman Pierre Claver Ndayicariye said the meeting was an opportunity to exchange information about people allegedly buried at the site by their relatives, following the lack of time and security to bury them in the legally known cemeteries, during the difficult period of the civil war.
He said that the exchange that the TRC had just carried out with representatives of the people of Ntahangwa commune resulted in two resolutions, namely the first request to the TRC to proceed as soon as possible to the exhumation of the remains of people who would be buried in the officially known mass graves like those at the former Kamenge market.
The second resolution calls for the exhumation of the remains of people allegedly buried at that site.
The Chair of the TRC promised that his commission will implement what has just been requested and urged those representatives of the people to help the TRC to have a minimum list of people who have been buried at that site, and to note other places that would be subject to mass graves, for the TRC to take them into consideration during the next trip to that commune.
Regarding the question of public or private infrastructures erected knowingly or not on mass graves, the TRC chairman answered that for that case, the TRC has only to collect the information at the statistical level and will make a synthesis that it will communicate to the State authorities to take the final decision in consultation with the people concerned in the interest of the State and social cohesion.
Regarding the monuments, Mr. Ndayicariye informed that the TRC will suggest where to place a single monument at the national level, one monument at the provincial level and another at the communal level, explaining that those three monuments will serve as memory and reconciliation, which will help keep the path of reconciliation.
