Massacre

Massacre

"With Brent that day were Marek Pazik and Stefan Stec, both polish officers who had briefly been billeted in the Gikondo Parish Church, known as the Polish Mission because it was run by priests from Poland.

Pazik and Stec did not last long under the austere regime at the mission, but two of their fellow Polish MILOBs had stayed on.

That morning, a faint call had come from the men at the mission begging for help.

The batteries on the radio were dying and all Brent could make out was that there had been killings at the church.

Not knowing what to expect, Brent, Pazik and Stec armed themselves and, hatches down, set off to Gikondo in the APC with a Bangladeshi officer and three men.

Along the route, they passed through fighting between the RGF and the RPF, through Genarmerie roadblocks and through ever-increasing and chaotic militia roadblocks.

They saw the bodies of men, women and children near these roadblocks.

So many civilians were on the move, it looked like the entire population was abandoning Kigali.

At the church, they came to a halt and dismounted.

Pazik and a Bangladeshi soldier went to the rectory to find the Polish MILOBs, while Brent and Stec confronted the first evidence of wholesale massacre.

Across the street from the mission, an entire alleyway was littered with the bodies of women and children near a hastily abandoned school.

As Brent and Stec were standing there trying to take the number of bodies, a truck full of armed men roared by

Brent and Stec decided to head for the church

Stec went inside while Brent stood by the door to cover him and to keep the APC in sight

They confronted a scene of unbelievable horror – the first such scene UNAMIR witnessed – evidence of genocide, though we didn’t yet know to call it that

In the ailsles and on the pews were the bodies of hundreds of men, women and children

At least fifteen of them were still alive but in a terrible state

The priests were applying first aid to the survivors

A baby cried as it tried to feed on the breast of its dead mother, a sight Brent has never forgotten

Pazik found the two Polish MILOBs, who were in a state of grief and shock, hardly able to relate what had happened

The night before, they said, the RGF had cordoned off the area, and then the Gendarmerie had gone door to door checking identity cards

All Tutsi men, women and children were rounded up and moved to the church

Their screams alerted the priests and the MILOBs, who had come running

The priests and officers were seized at the church doors and slammed up against the wall with rifle barrels at their throats

They were forced to watch at gunpoint as the gendarmes collected the adults’ identity cards and burned them

Then the gendarmes welcomed in a large number of civilian militiamen with machetes and handed over the victims to their killers

Methodically and with much bravado and laughter, the militia moved from bench to bench, hacking with machetes

Some people died immediately, while others with terrible wounds begged for their lives or the lives of their children

No one was spared

A pregnant woman was disemboweled and her fetus severed

Women suffered horrible mutilation

Men were struck on the head and died immediately or lingered in agony

Children begged for their lives and received the same treatment as their parents

Genitalia were a favorite target, the victims left to bleed to death

There was no mercy, no hesitation and no compassion

The priests and MILOBs, guns at their throats, tears in their eyes, and the scream of the dying in their ears, pleased with the gendarmes for the victims

The gendarmes reply was to use the rifle barrels to lift the priests’ and MILOBs’ heads so that they could better witness the horror

Killing with machetes is hard work, and sometime in the night the murderers became fatigued with their gruesome task and left the church, probably headed for some sleep before they moved on to the next location

The priests and MILOBs did what they could for the few survivors, who moaned or crawled from underneath the corpses that had sheltered them

Both of the MILOBs were overwhelmed by emotion as they recounted the night’s events

One fell completely silent while the other admitted that though he had served in places, such as Iraq and Cambodia, this was it, he was going home

The men needed to get out of there, to get back to the security of headquarters and regain their equilibrium, and they urged the priests to join them

But the fathers refused, saying they had to stay with the wounded, who were too many to carry in the APC

Brent and the others gave the priests a radio and a charged battery, what water they had and a small first aid kit, and promised to report the incident and mount a rescue mission

They warned the priests that since it was already mid afternoon, it was unlikely that a large armed escort with ambulances or heavy transport could be mounted and then negotiate the dozens of roadblocks before nightfall, but the priests were confident they could hide overnight, as the militia and gendarmes had surely finished with them

Feeling like deserters, the UNAMIR group returned to Force HQ, and the Polish MILOBs were put to bed. 

Kigali sector was directed to conduct a rescue mission, but as Brent had suspected, it couldn’t comply until the next day – dozens of missions were already underway.

Early the next morning, the priests called on the radio and reported that the militia had returned during the night.

Our APC had been spotted at the church, and the killers had returned to destroy the evidence of the massacre.

They had killed the wounded and removed and burned the bodies.

The decision to leave the priests and the victims had disastrous consequences, but such are the decisions that soldiers make in war.

Some days you make decisions and people live, other days people die.

Those innocent men, women and children were simply Tutsi.

That was their crime."

                                                (482)

Recruitment

British citizens arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting for IS
On 29 September
                                         (468)

War Preparations

Pulszky, from his own standpoint, his news for the Daily Tribune were partly auspicious and partly disappointing at the end of September.
Turkey was assembling troops on Russia's frontier (so the war, long-awaited, b the emigration, was imminent), and arrests and executions took place inside Hungary (as the conspirators were again discovered and the chances of a rising annulled).
                                 (237)

Government Spies

As the English police would not oversee the activities of Kossuth and his followers, Austria had to find means to watch them.
The Government in Vienna kept a ring of spies around the Kossuthites in England such as "Berndorf" an unidentified correspondent of Schwarzenberg, who sent his nom de plume letters from Pulszky's enterage, or Istvan varga, who kept contacts with Kossuth's sisters in Hungary, or Mr Loosey in America whose tasks had been to trace every step of the Hungarian colony there.
                               (237)

Left Wing Support

When Pulszky came back from America, Kossuth acquainted him with a combination of plans which must have appeared to him as details of a great conception with a chance to succeed.

Brushing aside Pulszky's unfavorable reception in the White House, Kossuth found some comfort in the co-operation of certain American individuals

Lieutenant Nelson visited him in England and he had not given up hope of an expedition, if only a ship could be bought

The young Americans on the left wing of the Democratic Party were pledged to support him
                                               (237)

Blackmail

Baroness von Beck claimed that her husband Baron von Beck had lost his life in the Viennese Revolution, and thought that Mr Pulszky did not deserve the high position he filled in London Society, as his conduct had been questionable in Vienna.

She also criticized his private life as well

Pulszky was forewarned of the attack about six weeks before the publication of the book.

A man called, or using the non de plume of Ferdinand de Carl wrote to Pulszky on 16 January 1851 that unless he makes a generous pecuniary contribution to the authoress, he will be attacked in the German language edition of her work, all the more, as Pulszky had succeeded in 1850 to persuade the publisher of the English edition to suppress her criticism of his person
                                   (237)

The Press

The prime mover behind the Welsh sympathy for the Hungarians was Arthur James Johnes who appeared in the columns of the Herald as "Cambrensis"
He was a judge in the County Court of North West Wales, a radical, a disciple of Bentham, a great believer in education and freedom of the press
It was he who organized the first meeting of sympathy at Liverpool in mid November 1849 which was followed by other meetings in rapid succession at Bala, Aberystwyth and Bangor
Judge Johnes regarded the meetings not merely as beneficial to the unfortunate Hungarians, with whom he most sincerely sympathized, but also as offeering proof to the English that the Welsh were alive to the cruelties of the Autocrats, quick to feel in the name of humanity and Christianity for the Hungarians, and progressive enough to make full use of press and platform to register their opinion on the matter
                                  (237)

Impostors

Another example of such great impostors was Ephrem Leo Jacob Koricosz "prince of Armenia" who claimed to have descended from Mary of Hungary, daughter of Louis I of Anjou and from Jacob VI Prince of Armenia
Koricosz turned up in London in the autumn of 1849 when the sympathy for the Hungarians was at its height and claimed that he was an implacable enemy of the Czar, who had disinherited him as Armenian ruler and oppressed his "brothers" the Hungarians
Koricosz won favors for a long time but was unmasked as the son of a Dutch merchant called Joannis
                                      (237)

Immigration 1850

Some of the Hungarians, indeed, found employment and made a living from themselves in Britain.  Their former army commanders Klapka and Szabo in particular were in favor of their staying together or as closely connected with one another as possible as was possible, in the hope that if a new insurrection were to start in Hungary they should be ready to join in.  Others could not get used to the idea that emigrants were expected to work, and so waited either for a pension similar to what the Poles had received in the thirties or had blamed Pulszky, who had been the best connections, for not having found work.
                                              (237)


Doesn't this sound familiar today?  It also gives a reference that human activity and beliefs have not changed much over the last 160 years or so.  I am not referring to a class or race here, but only the human as the example.  The mentality of the human and the survival "skills" that are being portrayed is what draws my attention to this passage.  The conditions and reasons why these people were emigrants were basically identical as well






DLB

Post 2/8/14

The Lazi People:

The huge temperate rain forest which still covers the mountains of the eastern Pontos has wild animals: boar, bear and deer.  The Lazi, or perhaps only the older Lazi in their more remote villages, think that it also contains monsters.  The Germakoci, for instance, is a giant creature, human in form but covered with fur, which sometimes approaches hunters in the high forest.  Slow-witted, the Germakoci reacts to human beings with curiosity rather than aggression, and likes to imitate whatever they do; the way to be rid of him to set fire to a twig and wave it around, so that the giant seizing the burning brand, sets light to his own fur.  Roaring with alarm, he plunges downhill and runs until he reaches the Black Sea and leaps into it.
                                              (394)