Kibeho

One of the many military events not widely recalled each year is the Kibeho Massacre: April 22nd, 1995. The massacre of over 10,000 Internally Displaced Persons took place, occurring twelve months after the Rwandan genocide which saw upwards of 1,000,000 slaughtered. The Australian contingent that was on the ground at the time comprised a miniscule number of professionals when accounting for the overall number of 120,000 IDPs situated in the camp at Kibeho: for those that can recall, it was here that the Virgin Mary did appear, and in 2001 the Pope and the Vatican added Kibeho to the list of approved Marian apparition sites. What occurs here is based on actual events, occurring between April 17th and May 9th, 1995. During the deployment of Australian Infantry to Rwanda, whose main task was to provide security for the contingent, many a variety of task was met: carrying stretchers through the AUSMED hospital, escorting dental technicians, medics, and other specialized personnel through the winding hills of this land-locked country, and conducting security pickets on key installations to which were their sole responsibility. They never expected to be confronted by the slaughter of more than 10,000 men, women, children and babies. The basic infantryman was trained and prepared more for a situation as that presented by Vietnam, scaled down versions of the Falkland War and Somalia, or even a prolonged campaign against highly trained foes. During his deployment to Rwanda the training received seemed highly irrelevant and extraordinarily left-field. No one could fathom that their worst nightmare may actually bear its rancid fruit of toxicity.