Chairperson of AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat speaks at #Kwibuka 23
Chairperson of AU Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat speaks at #Kwibuka 23
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00:00 [Music]
00:07 Excellences, Mr. President of the Republic, dear brothers,
00:14 Madam First Lady, ladies and gentlemen, dear brothers, dear sisters, Rwandans.
00:25 It is with great emotion and a deep resentment that I find myself today in front of you
00:41 in this memorial full of meaning, history, tears, greatness and dignity.
00:53 Twenty-three years ago, something horrible, indescribable happened in this beautiful country.
01:06 I am one of them.
01:09 During this supreme level of human stupidity, hundreds of thousands of men, women, children were massacred
01:25 for the one and only reason that they would be congenitally different from each other.
01:33 Yes, in 100 days, a hideous ideology was born, like a weapon of mass destruction,
01:50 one of the worst human tragedies.
01:55 Yes, the machetes, raised and maintained by an ideology of hatred,
02:05 really become weapons of mass destruction.
02:10 Mr. President, my first thought is to bow humbly
02:20 before the memory and souls of these thousands of human beings.
02:26 I pray for their eternal rest, that their souls find in the immortalization they have made by this memorial
02:36 the best comfort and the most restorative relief from the sorrows of theirs.
02:46 What I saw this morning, what I heard, what I feel,
02:54 affects me deeply in my being and in my consciousness.
03:01 What was here will no longer be, once gone, what it was when it arrived.
03:11 And so, can one imagine what the survivors, the orphans, the widows and widowers,
03:25 those who endured this tragedy in their flesh and in their souls, have endured?
03:34 All I can say is that I respect them.
03:40 But what comforts me, what comforts us, is the strength, the courage, the dignity
03:51 and the formidable resilience of this wonderful people,
03:55 which gives the most beautiful example of human re-enactment.
04:01 The Rwandan people is like the phoenix that re-emerges from its ashes,
04:06 that emerges from the depths of the abyss.
04:10 The Rwandans have rebuilt themselves, restructured themselves,
04:14 climbed very high on these beautiful hills, and even higher in Africa and in the world.
04:22 Rwandan people, you deserve respect and admiration.
04:29 Mr. President Paul Kagame, I am among these millions of men and women,
04:37 especially Africans, who have immense esteem for you, your leadership,
04:48 your ability to transcend what Mandela called the fragility of the human being,
04:54 which is selfishness, the spirit of revenge and the inability to forgive,
05:01 which allowed you to raise and rebuild Rwanda,
05:07 to realize a multidimensional governance, strong in life.
05:13 You are today a builder and a precious symbol of the African Renaissance.
05:21 To succeed in these challenges, you must be an exceptional man.
05:28 You must be forged in steel, but to see your silhouette, Mr. President,
05:34 I would say that you are perhaps an alliance of other materials more resistant than steel.
05:43 The place and the moment do not lend themselves to political discourse.
05:52 I would simply like to bow down before our dead in all humility
06:00 and reaffirm the fidelity of Africa in their spirit.
06:07 I would also like to say from my presence here, from the most audible voice,
06:13 my oath to do everything so that the horrors of the genocide of 1994
06:20 can never happen again on our land of Africa.
06:25 And to do this, history must remember these tragedies
06:30 and must be taught to our children and grandchildren to avoid forgetting,
06:38 banalization, negationism, revisionism.
06:45 This day must be commemorated everywhere in Africa.
06:52 Never again, never again, a genocide suffered by Tutsis here in Rwanda.
06:59 Thank you.
07:01 (Applause)
07:04 (Music)
07:08 (Music)
07:11 (Music)
07:15 (Music)
07:18 (gentle music)
07:20 [BLANK_AUDIO]