Genocide Victims Mourned in Rwanda : Africa: Executed prime minister is among 6,000 buried in service marking blood bath’s start a year ago.

All morning they growled up the hill, a caravan of cattle trucks, dump trucks, flatbeds, pickups, delivery trucks. People along the roadside bowed their heads and covered their noses and walked in procession.

This cargo was Rwanda’s horrible history.

Skeletons, bodies, pieces of 6,000 human beings were transported up lush, green, tranquil Rebero Hill, the highest point overlooking the capital of Kigali.

Only recently exhumed from a mass grave behind Kigali’s main hospital, the remains were placed in 200 oversized coffins made of unfinished plywood. Their final journey began 12 miles away at a Kigali stadium, then wound slowly through the city and up the one-lane dirt road to a gentle slope near the summit.

There, the coffins, draped with purple fabric and piled high with flowers, were unloaded one by one onto plastic sheets. Requiem music played over loudspeakers, church choirs wailed. Rwanda’s red, yellow and green flag hung at half-staff.

A year after the slaughter began here, a few of its victims received a proper burial Friday.

The new government invited the world to come share this moment, the solemn commemoration of a genocide, civil war and refugee exodus that rendered Rwanda synonymous with suffering.

The world, it seemed, could not be bothered.

“The genocide: Why the international conspiracy of silence?” demanded a signboard carried by a teen-age boy.

For the funeral, the Dutch sent a government minister, Germany its ambassador, the United Nations its local representative, Uganda its vice president and Burundi two ministers. But most of Kigali’s hotel rooms, ordered vacated by the army to accommodate arriving dignitaries, remained empty of VIPs.

Rwanda, as usual, felt very much on its own.

“After World War II, we pledged, never again. It turned out to be a hollow pledge. It has happened again,” said the Dutch representative by way of apology.

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The 6,000 or so victims reburied Friday included the former prime minister of Rwanda, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and other government moderates who were among the first to be slaughtered when Hutu extremists began their attempt to exterminate ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus on April 7, 1994. But most of the corpses were of ordinary Rwandans whose identity will never be known.

In the funeral crowd of 20,000, some survivors cried during the daylong ceremony. Others stood quietly. A cloudburst drenched the scene, followed by a colossal rainbow over Kigali.

The sight of the 200 coffins being lowered into concrete vaults was staggering but only symbolic. Up to 1 million people perished in this country last year.

“There are mass graves being found all over the country. No one will ever know the numbers,” said Rwanda’s vice president and defense chief, Paul Kagame.