¡¡by Sun Yongming     

    KIGALI, April 5 (Xinhua) -- This is a new, yellow building, which stands out in village Gisozi in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Compared to those small, shabby huts, this is a mansion ora villa.

    But that's not really what it means. It means more than grandness. It is a bitter memory of this African country, a mirrorof what we lost ten years ago and a textbook teaching Rwandans andpeople living in other parts of the world to how to live harmoniously.

    Situated at the site chosen for mass burial of the 250,000 victims of Rwanda's genocide who were killed in Kigali, the KigaliMemorial Center is to open on April 7, the 10th anniversary of thehorrible genocide.

    On Monday, a group of journalists coming to cover the commemoration of the 1994 genocide were invited to meet genocide survivors and visit the newly built memorial center.

    Delivering a speech to the survivors, T. Mutsindashyaka, mayor of Kigali City, said that the Kigali Memorial Center was built to commemorate those innocent people who lost their lives in the brutal massacre of Tutsis and moderate Hutus from April to July 1994.

    The society should learn to forgive, but the past must be born in mind so that the tragedy would not reoccur in the future, he said.

    Among the survivors were men and women, old and young, who sat on benches in front of the two-story building, with solemn expression in the face. They are lucky because they survived that the genocide. They are lonely because they lost their loved. The center means so much for them.

    Lots of people stood at the high slope overlooking the compoundof the memorial center, attracted by the solemn atmosphere. Some of them were children who were born after the genocide.

    A tour of the museum will give a great shock to every visitor. The memorial center displays almost the largest collection photos and documents which record the genocide 10 years ago.

    Some sculpture facing the entrance of the exhibition hall express a sincere call for love and respect for life. There are four words on the base of the sculpture: genocide, consequence, division as well as life.

    Many photos of victims covered the wall, showing how they were happy to live with their beloved and what a fate they met when thegenocide plunged the tiny country into terror and bloodshed.

    Pointing at a picture, a young girl softly talked to her femalecompanion in local language, and there was a sigh from both of them.

    A middle-aged White woman in her fifties was absorbed in the explanation by two workers of the memorial center.

    Some photographers were taking pictures of the photo of Gen. Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian who served as the Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.

    Dallaire was a harsh critic of the world community's failure, especially the United Nations, to stop the tragedy. He sent a cable to the UN peacekeeping headquarters in January 1994 that warns of a possible massacre against Tutsis by Hutu militia.

    However, his warning neither met attention nor spurred immediate and effective action.

    There was a graveyard just outside the main building of the Kigali Memorial Center. After the end of the genocide in July 1994when the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front defeated the Hutu army and took over Kigali, many mass graves were found in and outside the capital. The Kigali City Council therefore decided to create asingle place of burial where victims could be laid to rest with dignity.

    The graves consist of concrete crypts three meters deep, each filled from floor to ceiling with coffins, and the coffins rarely contain the remains of an individual victim, but the remains of upto 50 victims, according to the center workers.

    There were some small flowers around the graveyard. Two workerswere painting the iron fencing beside the graveyard. The design ofthe graveyard is plain, just like those common people who lost their lives in those fatal days.

    "Many members of my family died in the genocide. That's a nightmare for me," Butare Fabian, a 33-year-old student at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology said.

    "So many lives were lost in 1994 and most of them are Tutsis. Ihave to say that it is more difficult for Tutsis to forget the past and heal the wounds in their heart. But for our future, we have to do that," he said.

    He said that the biggest task facing the government is to continue implementing the policy of reconciliation, which ask Hutus and Tutsis to love each other and say good-bye to the past.

    Workers were busy with their job, some were painting, some cementing the stairs and others were leveling the open-air parkinglot, making final preparation for the official opening of the Kigali Memorial Center on April 7, the 10th anniversary of the genocide, which will be attended by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and dignitaries from foreign countries and international organizations. Enditem