Noel Zihabamwe was nine years old when he lay down in the back of a ute, spreading the blood of other young victims on his neck as he pretended to be dead to escape death in Rwanda.
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It was the height of the 100-day genocide that claimed about 800,000 lives in April 1994 when members of the majority ethnic Hutus and minority Tutsis and Twa were killed in a bloodbath perpetrated by extremist militias.
"It was the last time I saw my father and my mother," Mr Zihabamwe said in a moving survivor's testimony at a commemorative event held in Western Sydney for the Rwandan diaspora on Sunday.
The gathering marked 30 years since the bloody events that tore the country apart.
Mr Zihabamwe lived in refugee camps with other victims from his province and then spent years in a Catholic orphanage in Rwanda before fleeing the iron-fisted regime of Paul Kagame, who has ruled the nation for 24 years.
Arriving in Australia in 2006 as a humanitarian entrant, Mr Zihabamwe, of Hutu and Tutsi descent, has become a community leader trying to unite a fractured and scarred people.
Tears flowed down his sister Brigitte Farrow's face as she addressed other survivors as well as politicians in attendance including state parliamentarians Nathan Hagarty and Damien Tudehope.
"Lives were shattered and innocence in a way was tragically cut short," she said.
"That's why we stand here. It's a long journey because many people are suffering with trauma and they can't open up because they are scared. We are here to help."
Among the attendees were other Rwandan survivors turned dissidents living mostly in France who launched a book, Survivors Uncensored.
They were on a speaking tour to raise awareness about how the current regime is replicating the same hostile political climate that led to the genocide three decades ago.
Rugaba Patrick, 34, who fled to France as a refugee, said it was important for survivors in the diaspora to connect because they offer a counter-narrative to the government's politicisation of the genocide.
As a four-year-old he still remembers militias hacking at members of his family with machetes in western Rwanda.
He lost 150 people from his larger extended family during the genocide.
"If we try to speak about what we went through, they (authorities) don't want us to talk about it. They follow us and they want to kill us outside the country," he told AAP.
Mr Zihabamwe's brothers were abducted by Rwandan police in 2019, he believes due to his own political opposition.
Recent media reports allege former Rwandan killers are now living in Australia.
A Rwandan refugee from South Australia, who preferred not to be named for fear of repercussions from the Kagame government, told AAP that informants in Australia have tracked his movements and those of other dissidents.
Delphine Yandamutso, a 39-year-old public servant and Mr Zihabamwe's wife, also contributed to Survivors Uncensored after fleeing the genocide and spending years in refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"Militias were chasing us, they were literally trying to exterminate us when I was 10," she said.
"Surviving is experiencing something that nearly killed you. It's an experience but it's not who you are, it doesn't define you."
Ms Yandamutso stressed the healing power of narrative storytelling for Rwanda and other refugee communities who have fled conflict.
"It's a journey, it's not a one-day thing. When you choose the journey of healing that's when you start telling the story, that ugly truth or those emotions you don't want to experience.
"It's important to be heard, to be listened to. I want to tell my testimony, my story by myself and for myself."
Australian Associated Press
