The Africa Faith and Justice Network hosted a discussion in Washington, DC, with the authors of a new collection of testimonies from survivors of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
The following article was published in the July-August 2023 issue of NewsNotes.
Rwandan genocide survivors Claude Gatebuke and Delphine Yandemutso say they co-wrote the book “Survivors Uncensored,” to provide genocide survivors a platform to share insights into their experiences and showcase stories of resilience and humanity. Speaking at an event hosted by the Africa Faith and Justice Network in Washington, DC, on June 5, Gatebuke said, “Through this event, we endeavor to call attention to the need for healing, reconciliation, accountability, and peace promotion.”
Co-author Delphine Yandemutso opened the event by telling her story of surviving genocide in Rwanda. Her story begins in 1994 at age 10, when the killings came close to her home and her parents decided the family should flee to Zaire.
“We stayed in Goma for a short while, and I remember seeing so many dead people on the road. We didn’t stay there too long and we went to another area, but not for too long because there was a campaign by the government to get everyone in unofficial areas to go to refugee camps. We lived in Kitali Refugee Camp. We had to start over there, start going to another school, which was held outside. But that didn’t last for long. The fighters destroyed the camp. It was the start of another chapter.
“It’s so hard to describe but I will try to describe that night. They strategically attacked the camps during the night to minimize the casualties. I remember hearing the bullets but you can’t know where they are coming from. The bullets look like fire in the air and bombs coming from everywhere. People didn’t know where to go, what to take. We had to run away from the bullets and we ended up in the jungle. We were followed, people were killed and died of thirst.
“My family was my two parents and four children. I remember being together and being separated on and off until we eventually lost my older brother. We still don’t know what happened to him. At some stage we lost my dad as well. So it was just my mother and three children.”
Feeling vulnerable to middle-of-the-night attacks, Yandemutso’s family moved repeatedly and ultimately resettled in the capitol region where they rebuilt a normal life. “Sometimes when we talk about it, it is like we are reliving what happened,” she said.
“It’s hard but there is a reason why we survived. We didn’t survive to be silent. That brings me to the book. The process of putting the book together was not easy. The perpetrators who killed millions of Rwandans and Congolese are in power and they don’t want our stories told.”
Co-author Claude Gatebuke went on to thank all the other survivors who bravely told their stories in the book. He explained why these stories matter:
“There is a singular, official narrative that the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front, the ruling political party led by Pres. Paul Kagame] wants you to tell which is that extremist Hutus started killing Tutsi out of the blue and then out of heaven came the heroic army, the RPF, that stopped the genocide. And Rwanda and the region and the world has been living happily ever after.
“But that’s not true. The RPF was in the middle of all of this. They had infiltrated the militia that were committing the genocide. They said this themselves, this is not my words. This is the words of the officials of the RPF. They had been doing this for years. The RPF had been gathering people in camps and massacring those people. The RPF was more systematic and smarter in how they killed people. They took them away from the crowds and they killed them in hiding and they burnt the bodies. The extremist Hutu militias who were civilians were just killing people with bodies piling up in the middle of the streets.
“If you listen to the RPF you will think every Hutu person is an evil person and every Tutsi person is a victim. That is not true. The people who saved so many people, despite what the RPF says, were actually Hutu people, including Paul Rusesabagina [who inspired the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda] who was recently abducted and then released, under [international] pressure, by the Rwandan authorities.
“Those are the stories that we have in the book. But also stories of resilience and hope,” Gatebuke said. “Anybody who wants there to be militaristic leaders are in for a fight [with] Africa’s youth and the rest of the world that is compassionate and wants peace. It starts with sharing our stories.”
Faith in action
- Watch the book discussion at https://mogc.info/AFJN-Rwanda-book-talk
- Purchase the book at https://mogc.info/SurvivorsUncensored
Photo of the book cover to Survivors Uncensored, courtesy of Amazon