The Absentees of Hesha: Committing Genocide For Negating Absence

On 7 April 1994, 250 Tutsis were killed at the Adventist temple in Hesha, Rwanda. Sparing no one, the killers concealed the evidence of their crime with the help of the local population. Absence was, as a consequence, methodically negated: all means were mobilized to ensure that the past presence of the victims would not be acknowledged within a community that immediately and persistently reconstituted itself, indifferent to the fate of the Tutsis. Only justice has made it possible, partially, to rehabilitate these absentees and reintegrate them into the memory of Hesha.