Capt. Diagne, the peackeeper who died for Rwandans in ‘94

When Rwanda descended into the bloodstain of the Genocide against the Tutsi 20 years ago, Capt. Mbaye Diagne stood out from the face value-like UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda and took risks to save hundreds of lives.

Yacine Diagne, widow of Capt. Diagne, in Kigali in 2010 shortly after receiving a posthumous Umurinzi medal from President Kagame on behalf of the fallen Senegalese UN peacekeeper. File.

Thanks to the fallen Senegalise UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (Unamir) peacekeeper, Jean Baptiste Gasasira, a Kigali-basedmedical doctor, and his wife, Rwandan legislator Odette Nyiramirimo, survived the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

When Dr Gasasira and his family joined other refugees in a UN convoy of trucks to try and escape from Hotel des Milles Collines and get to the airport in Kigali as they tried to escape the killings, Interahamwe militia stopped them on the way and threatened to kill the Tutsi.

“We would be dead today if Mbaye wasn’t there to protect us,” Dr Gasasira told Saturday Times yesterday.

He said to protect the Tutsi in the convoy, Capt. Diagne got out of the UN car and confronted the Interahamwe, explaining that they would have to kill him before killing the Tutsi refugees.

The refugees could not make it to the airport that day, but they were able to go back to the hotel and hide for a few days as they planned new ways to escape.

Capt. Diagne would later go out of the way, disobeying orders and risking his life to save the Tutsi. He believed that as a peacekeeper, he could not sling his weapon to his shoulders and watch as innocent civilians are butchered in broad-day light.

The Senegalese peacekeeper did not fear death, as long as it was for a justice cause. His killing ‘behind enemy lines’ was the ultimate price he was willing to pay.

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday created a medal in honour of Diagne’s courageous acts in Rwanda; the “Captain Mbaye Diagne Medal for Exceptional Courage”.

The medal will be awarded to those military, police, civilian UN personnel and associated personnel who will demonstrate exceptional courage in the face of extreme danger while serving humanity and the UN.

Dr Gasasira said the medal was “long overdue” because the deceased’s documented acts of bravery didn’t need to wait twenty years before they could be recognised and used by the UN to inspire other people to do good.

His killing

Estimates put the number of people Capt. Diagne saved between 600 to 1,000 before he was killed on the morning of May 31, 1994, in line of ‘his’ duty to protect humanity.

Media reports at the time said he was hit and killed by a fragment from a mortar round that exploded near a checkpoint of the genocidal government where he had stopped as he came from collecting a written note for his superior.

The message had to come from the head of the then government army (ex-FAR), Gen. Augustin Bizimungu, to the Unamir commander, Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who was then based in an RPA-controlled area of Kigali.

BBC journalist Mark Doyle, one of the few foreign correspondents who were in Kigali in 1994, revisited the area years later to recreate the story of Capt. Diagne.

“I’ve covered many wars and seen many acts of courage. But for sheer grit and determination, I’ve never known anyone to compare with Capt. Mbaye Diagne,” Doyle said.

Diagne was on July 4, 2010, posthumously honoured by Rwanda for his courage in saving lives during the Genocide.

He was awarded with the Umurinzi, Rwanda’s campaign against Genocide medal, which was handed to his widow by President Paul Kagame during a Liberation Day event.

“After the then Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana was murdered, you took it upon yourself to ensure the safety of her children,” reads part of the citation at the award in Kigali.

“Diagne’s actions in 1994 stunned Gen. Dallaire, when he realised the risky operations that he was undertaking in a dangerous environment and with restrictions imposed by Unamir to its peacekeepers in Rwanda,” the citation adds.

In a description of one incident when Diagne saved the children of Uwilingiyimana–who was killed by government soldiers at the onset of the Genocide–Gen. Dallaire described the peacekeeper’s action as “gutsy.”

Capt. Diagne picked Uwilingiyimana’s terrified  children from a bungalow where they were hiding near their home after their parents were killed, and, in his unarmoured car, took them to the nearby Hotel des Mille Collines that was guarded by the UN.

Witnesses of the tense situation in 1994 say Diagne could have been killed together with Uwilingiyimana’s children by the ex-FAR.

“It’s Victoria Cross-type action,” Dallaire told the BBC’s Doyle as he described the action in a documentary by the correspondent dubbed, “A good man in Rwanda.”

The Victoria Cross (VC) is the highest military decoration awarded for valour in the face of the enemy to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories.

Capt. Diagne, who hailed from a small village in northern Senegal, was in his mid-30s when he was killed, just 12 days before he could complete his tour of duty.

Media reports say three days before he was killed, Diagne had called his wife back in Senegal, Yacine Diagne, asking her to “pray for us.”

Some witnesses of the Genocide and those he was able to save say he had a huge charm and a sense of humour that somehow constituted his magic ability to put people at ease despite the dark times during the Genocide.

Col. Babacar Faye, who served with him in the UN mission in Rwanda and is now serving in the Senegalese army, said Diagne would often use his sense of humour to talk his way through roadblocks of Interahamwe.

He would also offer money, food, alcohol, cigarettes, among other means, to get a way for Tutsi refugees through checkpoints.

Worthy honour

Naphtal Ahishakiye, the executive secretary of Ibuka, the umbrella body for Genocide survivors associations, has also welcomed the UN’s move to create a medal in Diagne’s honour, noting that he indeed stood out among UN peacekeepers in Rwanda.

“We recognise that one of the peacekeepers understood the value of life. We really support that whoever in the UN mission shall do extraordinary acts of good should receive the Capt. Diagne Medal,” Ahishakiye said.

Contact email: eugene.kwibuka[at]newtimes.co.rw