A man divided: Law student escaped genocide, but can’t turn back on Rwanda
LEOMINSTER — Jean Paul Turayishimye survived the genocide of Rwanda while serving in the opposition forces and escaped, ultimately to the United States.
But as a member of the Rwanda National Congress, he is still a marked man facing trial for terrorism in his homeland.
Turayishimye has found a bit of the American dream in North Central Massachusetts and is studying to be a lawyer 20 years after the genocide.
Last week, for the first time, he was able to hug his 8-year-old twin sons when they joined him in Leominster, where he now lives.
“I had never seen them (in person); it was my first time he said.
Turayishimye is a member of Rwanda’s Tutsi tribe but was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after his family fled its homeland in the face of persecution following the 1959 Hutu tribe revolution.
They farmed and led quiet lives, but opposition to immigrants grew in the Congo, so Turayishimye had to move around. He didn’t finish high school until he was about 20 years old.
That was about the time the Rwanda Patriotic Front was recruiting soldiers, and he enlisted to fight the government.
“They said we could fight for our rights,” Turayishimye said.
He joined out of a sense of patriotism and fear that the Congo would soon evict Rwandan natives.
He left home with about a dozen friends, but it was a hard life and only a couple survived the fighting.
On his way to join the RPF, Turayishimye traveled through Uganda, where he spent nearly a year recovering from malaria before making it to Rwanda for a boot camp run by fellow Tutsis.
“They were rebels so it wasn’t like government training,” Turayishimye said. “It’s cruel and something we never expected.”
Recruits lived in huts they made in a day. There weren’t uniforms, and even his shoes were stolen by senior soldiers.
They covered typical military skills including field tactics, parades and leadership training.
Recruits were as young as 15 years old and not well educated, so after boot camp Turayishimye was assigned to a headquarters unit because of his penmanship.
“I think that’s what saved my life in the jungle,” he said.
He spent his days penning training manuals and log books, except when the RPF relocated and Turayishimye was enlisted to carry crates of ammunition.
When a plane carrying Rwanda President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprian Ntayamira crashed, possibly by rocket fire, on April 6, 1994, the genocide began. As many as 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by government forces.
Two of Turayishimye’s brothers were killed. His brother Jean Karane was a civilian but killed by a machete because he was a Tutsi.
Turayishimye’s family sent his 15-year-old brother, Ndayambaje, to get food or water, but he was caught in the crossfire between Tutsis and Hutus and shot in the thigh before bleeding to death.
Fighting ended with a Tutsi victory July 4 of that year, Turayishimye said.
In 1998, after six years in the RPF, Turayishimye requested his discharge and went to work as a secretary for the country’s defense department in the Army archives. In 2003, Turayishimye transferred to the office of national security services as a personal assistant to Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa.
Fleeing Rwanda
His troubles continued when Nyamwasa was suspected of plotting to overthrow the president. Government officials began interrogating Nyamwasa’s associates.
Turayishimye feared guilt by association.
“It was one of the reasons I fled the country,” Turayishimye said.
Turayishimye snuck out of the country and applied for a Burundi passport that he used to request a visa to the United States in 2005.
He told embassy officials he planned to attend his aunt’s wedding and tour the country for business opportunities to take back to Burundi even though he didn’t plan to go back.
The embassy granted the visa but Turayishimye still carries some guilt.
“I feel so bad for those people in line,” he said. “There were about 70 in line and only nine got visas.”
The American dream
Turayishimye went to an immigration lawyer as soon as he arrived in Massachusetts.
He was granted asylum in 2011 and got married. The couple have a 5-month-old son as well as Turayishimye’s newly arrived twins.
His girlfriend in Rwanda was pregnant when he had to choose between fleeing or staying to face possible execution.
She gave birth to twins but in 2007 agreed to surrender the boys to Turayishimye’s family so he could support them and eventually bring them to the United States.
After he arrived in Massachusetts, Turayishimye moved to Gardner and started learning English using DVDs from the Levi Heywood Memorial Library before taking an online course at Mount Wachusett Community College.
Once Turayishimye was proficient in English, he enrolled at Mount Wachusett to study criminal justice.
Then he was recruited to serve as an interpreter at the arraignment of a Burundi national facing criminal charges in Worcester District Court in 2009.
He was enamored of the legal system and switched his major to paralegal studies before graduating in 2011.
The American College of History and Legal Studies offered Turayishimye a one-year scholarship.
Students who meet academic standards after a year are automatically admitted to the second year of studies at Massachusetts School of Law in Boston, said spokesman Art Sesnovich.
Turayishimye graduated from the American College of History and Legal Studies last fall and started classes at Mass School of Law.
“I said I wanted to be able to at least advocate for and talk about my issues with Rwanda,” Turayishimye said.
Rwanda National Congress
Turayishimye won’t turn his back on his homeland.
The multiethnic government run by Tutsis and Hutus remains as fragile as it has ever been, he said.
“Twenty years have gone by, but we still have this ethnic divide,” Turayishimye said.
Turayishimye helped found the Rwanda National Congress in the United States to discuss the issues facing the country including human-rights violations, a one-party political system that stunts political debate and the economic struggles of countrymen even as the country improves.
“Being in the United States they still think we are trying to overthrow the government,” Turayishimye said. “In Rwanda they might convict me of terrorism.”
He faces trial in his homeland for the allegations.
“Let’s hope things will change,” Turayishimye said.
Read more: http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/news/ci_25211712/man-divided#ixzz2uHvWhLZJ
let hope that your mind will be changed , and you will stop harassing your homeland,the country that gave your the speech you have now. we feed up with you