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| Captain Mbaye Diagne |
Captain Mbaye Diagne (? -31st, May 1994) was a Senegalese Army officer and a United Nations military observer during the Genocide in Rwanda in 1994. He saved many lives simply by putting Tutsis in the back of his car and drove them through dozens of checkpoints to safe places. The people he saved also included the four children of the Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who was killed the second day of the genocide with her husband, along with ten Belgium peacekeeper.
The Rwanda Genocide happened in 1994 from April 6th to mid July killed a massive amount of people, approximately 800000. This conflict was between the two sides of people in Rwanda, the Hutus and the Tutsis. The minority Tutsi and the majority Hutu people are both Rwandans. The Tutsis have been ruling Rwanda for centuries and the Hutus just gained power in the rebellion of 1959-1962. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), mostly contained by Tutsi, invaded the northern Rwanda in order to get rid of the Hutu government. The Rwandan Civil War began, and a lot of Hutus became one of the members of the Hutu power ideology. The Hutus thought that the Tutsis intended to enslave the Hutus, so the Hutus believe that they must do everything to resist the Tutsis’ intension. International pressure of the Hutu government made the government to a cease-fire in 1993.
The Assassination of Habyarimana in 1994 started the Rwanda Genocide, where and when the Hutus killed a lot of Tutsis and the pro-peace Hutus. Members of the Akazu planned the genocide. Akazu, a Hutu power group. Many Hutu civilians also joined massacre, killing a lot of the Tutsis, some even may be their own neighbors. The genocide was well organized by the government, and both the national government and the local military force, plus civil officials and media supported the genocide.
When Kofi Annan received the fax that acknowledged him that the genocide was possibly to happen, he didn’t think that was serious or anything. General Romeo Dallaire was present too, who was the United Nations Force Commander in Rwanda, and Kofi Annan ordered General Dallaire first, “Not to take any action,” and second, “to share the informant secrets with the Rwandan Government.”[1] Which he knew had strong ties to the Hutu extremists. The genocide happened, but nobody seemed to pay attention to it.
The genocide started by the assassination of the president of Rwanda Juvénal Habyarimana. The Hutu extremists, who had refused to negotiate with the TRPF (Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front) decided to kill moderate politicians. The next morning, 6th, April 1994, the Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her husband were killed.
From the first few hours of the genocide “captain Mbaye Diange had ignored the orders of the United Nation headquarters to remain neutral and worked to save the lives of hundreds of Rwandans.”[2]
Later the morning that the prime minister was killed, Captain Mbaye heard rumors about the assassination of the prime minister from the people that was fleeing to the hotel that he stayed, Hôtel des Mille Collines. He drove to investigate and found the prime minister’s four children being hidden in the adjoining United Nations Development Programme housing compound. UNAMIR Force Commander Roméo Dallaire, who was trying to find out what had happened to the prime minister, discovered him later that morning. Dallaire told Mbaye to wait for UNAMIR armored personnel carriers to rescue the children and UNDP employees later that day, but the APCs never appeared. Mbaye eventually put the children in the back seat of his vehicle, covered them with blankets and made his way to the hotel[3] and hid the children in a closet.
Captain Mbaye Diagne had a quite unique personality. He was humorous, brave, selfless, and intelligent. Those are what he had and relied on while saving hundreds of Tutsis’ lives, the prime minister’s children’s lives the people who rode on his car’s lives, and many times, his own life. Through his own unique sense of humor and bravery, he was able to make extensive contacts among the military and militias, and relying on these contacts and his humorous and brave personality, he was able to get pass dozens and dozens of checkpoints where the Hutu killers with machetes guarded. Through his ability of defuse tense situation and occasionally of small bribes of cigarettes and money, he saved dozens and hundreds of lives.[4] The video on the right is about Captain Mbaye Diange saving the Tutsis' lives and the children of the Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.
In the interview of Mark Doyle, a BBC World Service journalist, Mark Doyle talked about how Captain Mbaye saved Mark’s life and his own and several people’s around them from a grenade. They were in Captain Mbaye’s car going to see an orphanage. They got stop by the government militia, and the militiaman was holding a stick grenade. He leaned through the car window and was waving the grenade literally under the journalist’s nose, because the militiaman thought that the journalist was a Belgian. Mark Doyle said in the interview that “because at the time the Belgians were perceived by the government to be pro-rebel -- and so this militia man thought because I'm white and driving around -- and most of the white people who lived in Kigali at the time, the majority were Belgian -- he thought I was Belgian.”[5] So the militiaman asked Captain Mbaye, “Who's this guy? Is he Belgian?” Mark said “if Mbaye had said the wrong thing at that point, then I've no doubt that we'd have all been killed.”[6] What Captain Mbaye did was that he joked, “ ‘No, no -- I'm the Belgian. I'm the Belgian here, look -- black Belgian.’ And he broke the tension of the moment, and once the tension of the moment had been broken, he said, ‘No, no -- in fact, look, this guy is the BBC. Here's his badge. He's a BBC journalist, he's British, and he's got nothing to do with Belgian.’ And this kind of put the military man off guard a bit and he no longer wanted to kill us. And I just wonder[ed] if a Canadian soldier or a French soldier would have been able to do that, to joke with this guy and potentially save my life and the life of all the other people around who would have been killed by this stick grenade.”[7] Said Mark Doyle.
Another story was about how Captain Mbaye went through dozens of checkpoints with dozens of Tutsis in the backseats of his car. “On one occasion he found a group of 25 Tutsis hiding in a house in Nyamirambo, a Kigali neighborhood that was particularly dangerous. Capt. Mbaye ferried the Tutsis to the U.N. headquarters in groups of five -- on each trip passing through 23 militia checkpoints with a Jeep-load of Tutsis. Somehow, he convinced the killers to let these Tutsis live.”[8]
On May 31st, Capt. Mbaye was driving alone back to U.N. headquarters in Kigali when a random mortar shell, fired by the Rwandan Patriotic Front towards an extremist checkpoint, mistakenly landed next to his Jeep. He was killed instantly.[9] The video on the right is about the death of Captain Mbaye Diagne.
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| the moment of silence to show respect of Captain Mbaye Diagne, the "body bag" in the picture was made by UNICEF plastic sheeting and some tape as refered in the passage |
[1] The Ghost of Rwanda, documentary (2005) Documentary film directed by the PBS. Post by the Frontline: The Triumph of Evil website.
[2] Memories of Captain Mbaye Diagne, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/capt.html, last modified, Apr 30th, 2011
[3] Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil, Carroll & Graf: New York, 2003, ISBN 0-7867-1510-3, pp. 245-246, 268
[4] "Memories of Captain Mbaye Diagne": Mark Doyle, "Ghosts of Rwanda" program, Frontline, posted 1 April 2004
[5] Memories of Captain Mbaye Diagne, Mark Doyle, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/capt.html, last modified, April 30th, 2011
[6] Memories of Captain Mbaye Diagne, Mark Doyle, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/capt.html, last modified, April 30th, 2011
[7] Memories of Captain Mbaye Diagne, Mark Doyle, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/capt.html, last modified, April 30th, 2011
[8] The Man Everyone Remembers: By Greg Barker, the producer of "Ghosts of Rwanda”, http://www.cafeafricana.com/Capt.%20Mbaye%20Diagne.html, May 5th, 2011
[9] The Man Everyone Remembers: By Greg Barker, the producer of "Ghosts of Rwanda”, http://www.cafeafricana.com/Capt.%20Mbaye%20Diagne.html, May 5th, 2011
[10] Memories of Captain Mbaye Diagne, Gregory “Gromo” Alex, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/video/capt.html, last modified, April 30th, 2011
