On Monday, a team of genocide survivors launched a new website meant to serve as a central database of names, photographs, and brief biographies of over one million people murdered in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The initiative, according to a press release issued on that occasion, is an effort to honor their memory and restore their identities.
“It is necessary to name the victims of the genocide against the Tutsi so that they are no longer reduced to numbers. They are not a million people without names, not a million strangers,” said the survivors’ representatives who signed the statement.
Survivors are the first witnesses of the genocide, and their children are the second. This database will be a kind of virtual memorial where young people can put a human face on the one million lives lost in the 1994 annihilation of Rwanda’s Tutsi, the statement continued.
A 2004 Rwandan government census of genocide victims found that 1,074,017 were murdered during the 100 days of genocide. The same report indicates that 93.7% of the victims were killed because they were identified as Tutsi, 1% because they were related, married or friends with Tutsis, 0.08% because they had physical traits similar to those of Tutsis and 0.8% because they had ideas contrary to those of the Hutu regime of the time, or hid people hunted by the killers.
A database of victims’ names and stories is an important new way to remember them, but its real impact will depend on how many survivors actually share their loved ones’ details. Click here to visit ‘’ https://ibukatutsigenocide.org/’’ and add the name of your loved one too. Ends..
By Albert Gasake
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