A photo of Herero women was published by Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung in 1904, the year the Herero launched an uprising against German colonists, leading to an “extermination” order for the ethnic group. ullstein bild/GettyImages
Decades before the Holocaust, Germany carried out what many historians consider the first genocide of the 20th century in Namibia. German generals targeted two land-owning ethnic groups, an estimated 80% of Herero and Nama, killing 100,000 people; and throwing the survivors into concentration camps. Now, descendants of the survivors are suing Germany for an admittance of genocide, an apology, and reparations. If the Herero and Nama win, the case could set a legal precedent and encourage other indigenous groups to sue former colonial powers. HBO/Vice news
Eric Kamuzinzi, (37-year old now), a genocide survivor who discovered a photograph of himself when he was 13 years old amidst the 1994 Rwanda Genocide against the Tutsi
When the Genocide erupted April 7, 1994, he was dressed in that jacket, a t-shirt and shorts. He wore the same cloths until September 1994 when the new government arrived and told them to return to their no-longer-existing homes.
Today, the 13 year-old Eric Kamuzinzi whose photo is one of the few remaining items that show the existence of Nyarushishi camp, is a complete transformation.
For nearly 12,000 Tutsis who lived in Nyarushishi from April to September 1994, it is a period they never wish for anybody else. And as KT Press reports, Kamuzinzi witnessed his father taken from a stadium by genocide militia, nearly starved to death and lived through presence of French commandos.
Type the word “Nyarushishi” into any online search engine, and this particular photo comes at the top. It features alongside those of French soldiers who had crossed into Rwanda from Zaire-current Democratic Republic of Congo. They came with journalists to document what had been billed as a “humanitarian mission”.
On the night of April 6, the Rwandan president is killed as his plane is shot down on descent above the Kigali airport. The hours that followed saw government soldiers and civilian militia ‘interahamwe’ set up roadblocks across Rwanda: the Genocide against Tutsi was underway.
Some 220km away from Kigali in the south west border region of Cyangugu (today Rusizi district), Kamuzinzi had returned home the previous week for the Easter break. When the massacres began, his father and mother managed to reach the stadium with Kamuzinzi and five siblings in the second week.
The Kamparampaka stadium located in Cyangugu city center was where thousands of Tutsi fled. Local officials, the communal police, gendarme and army encouraged them to seek refuge there. It was the only safe place: or so they thought.
“My father was taken away as we held hands”
For days and nights, officials entered the stadium and read out names on a megaphone. Those whose names were mentioned were taken – never to be seen again. For every round of lists, survivors and perpetrators, have testified that at least 50 men and women were taken away.
“On many occasions Prefect Bagambiki himself was leading men who read lists…,” says Kamuzinzi in reference to the Prefect (governor) of Cyangugu Prefecture at the time. Bagambiki was arrested in 1998 on a UN indictment for Genocide, but was acquitted in 2004 by the UN court set up to try Genocide perpetrators.
On some days, the operations involved scanning around the stadium and picking out well-dressed men and women. All those singled out were educated Tutsis and those believed to have money.
“One day, they came. I was standing with my father and they took him away. It was the last time we saw him,” narrates Kamuzinzi.
In early May 1994, a new plan came up. To relocate the Tutsis in the stadium away from the city. The hilly Nyarushishi area, about 15km away – is where they were ferried in government buses escorted by soldiers. The relocation took several days.
According to testimonies by perpetrators to the UN court, the relocation was conducted so that when the mass massacre was carried out, the slaughter would be done far away from any public notice. Thousands of Tutsis were in the stadium and the regular read out of lists was going too slow.
The relocation was commanded personally by Lt. Colonel Innocent Bavugamenshi, the regional Gendarme commander.
Nyarushishi site was surrounded by acres and acres of tea plantations. Nobody live here. There was no single tree as the hills had for years been stripped bare of any vegetation.
“The cold was unbearable,” is how Kamuzinzi remembers the time they arrived around May 16. He remembers all the dates because he says that period was “worst time of my life.”
Aid workers from the International Committee of the Red Crescent (ICRC) arrived and set up a small tent health center on the edge of the camp. For weeks, they received dying and wounded tutsi who had been attacked, raped women and starving babies.
French commandos arrive
Inside the camp, people were organized according to the time when they arrived from the stadium. The ‘suburbs’ of the camp were numbered “Stade 1”, Stade 2 – and so on. When a resident mentioned the ‘stade’ with figure, everyone knew which part of the camp they were based.
Kamuzinzi has no recollection of when this photo was taken. But remembers many journalists came to Nyarushishi camp. But still vivid memory of the exact spot. He sat here every evening engulfed in thought of a bleak future.
KT Press retraced the journey to Nyarushishi with Kamuzinzi. Today, the site dotted with the blue tents back then, is lined with a well-established community.
The hill had no trees, but a lush greenery has returned. The tea plantations are still there – even much larger – contributing billions to the country’s national coffers.
In the foreground hidden away on the left of this photo was the ICRC facility. It was less than 10 meters away from the exact spot where Kamuzinzi is seated. He sat facing it.
In mid-June, the French government in Paris approved entry into Rwanda of its 2500 troops stationed across in Zaire on Thursday June 23. The first troops crossed into Cyangugu town.
In Paris, within hours the military headquarters announced three mass graves were found by the advancing commandos. But the discovery of the mass grave was mentioned in single sentences from the barrage of news stories which were concentrating on the troop deployment.
French troops arrive in Rwanda
RTLM hate radio reported on the same day from Gisenyi – up north – that the French soldiers had come to “help us fight the RPF”. The broadcaster also said the French would be providing weapons. It called on “Hutu girls” (abakobwa b’abahutu) to put on frocks to welcome the French.
French academic and historian Gérard Prunier has documented rare details leading up to the decision to deploy French commandos to Rwanda. Prunier wrote in 2000 that France’s initial plan was to go to Gisenyi, but decided to enter through Cyangugu to “rescue” the Nyarushishi people.
By settling on going in Nyarushishi, according to genocide researcher Prof Linda Melvern, the politicians in Paris saw this as an opportunity to show the world that they were neutral. And so, accompanied by journalists the commandos drove into Rwanda.
During the same period, however, according to Prunier, in a less publicized move, French officers visited the ‘interim government’ at Hotel Meridien in Gisenyi. They delivered supplies and equipment.
The commander of the retreating former government troops Maj Gen Augustin Bizimungu declared in media reports from the time that his forces would launch an offensive against RPF.
It’s exactly at this very place he used to come and sit while thinking deeply about his future
It was on June 25 that first unit of 50 French commandos with mass of journalists arrived at the Nyarushishi camp. There are countless images of the deployment. Kamuzinzi remembers them taking cover on the overlooking hills. They set up an unmarked cordon between the displaced in the camp and militia armed with all sorts of crude weapons.
“The Men Who Killed Me”
What the Nyarushishi camp residents witnessed in the proceeding weeks will remain with the survivors for generations.
For weeks, women and young girls in the camp lived through horrific experiences. Samer Muscati, director of the International Human Rights Program at Toronto University law faculty, documented their plight in a book published in March 2012.
“The Men Who Killed Me” features testimonials from 17 survivors. Through their narratives and Samer Muscati’s powerful portraits of them, these 16 women and one man bear witness not only to the crimes they and their countrymen endured, but to the incredible courage that has allowed them to survive and flourish.
Women raped did not tell the ICRC staff when brought to the clinic – often unconscious. They feared that since the aid workers were “bazungu” (white people), they would point them out to the French soldierAn Ethiopian contingent of the UN peacekeeping mission UNAMIR arrived on August 21, 1994, to take over from the French to the relief of the camp’s occupants.As the French troops withdrew, thousands of government soldiers moved around Cyangugu mobilising villagers to flee across border to Zaire, now DR Congo. The New York Times reported August 18 that the former government officials who were already in the Congolese Bukavu city sent buses to ferry people telling them the advancing RPF rebels would “kill all of you”. The “shuttle service”, as The Times called them, came into Rwanda daily. By the time the RPF had arrived, hundreds of thousands had abandoned their villages. Thousands had been and continued to be killed in Cyangugu — in the stadium, in the churches and in the bushes — as part of an orchestrated campaign by government and militia to exterminate Tutsi.
In interview with The Times, Eliezer Niyitegeka, the information minister at the time, confirmed that buses and trucks were crossing the border to “provide transport for refugees”. Niyitegeka died in March this year from a Mali jail where he was serving life sentence for his role in the genocide.
In Kigali, a new government comprising the RPF and other parties had been formed and sworn in July 19, 1994. RPF troops – who were now in government, arrived at Nyarushishi camp in September.
“You can’t imagine how happy everyone was when we saw inkotanyi,” said Kamuzinzi in our interview.
“We had been hearing Inkotanyi were in other places. So we waited eagerly for them to save us. There are times when rumors would circulate that Inkotanyi had come. This prompted people to run towards the hills to meet them only to find it was a false alarm.”
Cyangugu was within the infamous French “zone turquoise” – covering a large sway of south western Rwanda. While other regions had come under RPF control in early July, it would be weeks later, and eventual pullout of the French, that the entire territory was declared liberated.
The new government forces embarked on a resettlement exercise for the survivors. Kamuzinzi with his mother and siblings – like the tens of thousands others began the uphill task of rebuilding their lives.
French troops check their gear at the airport June 24 1994 in Bukavu Zaire before departing to Nyarushishi
Kamuzinzi’s mother had been a teacher before the genocide, just like their missing father. So she returned to class when schools opened in early 1995.
Kamuzinzi went back to secondary school at Karubanda seminary – eventually university in 2001 where despite the hardships at the time, he completed five years later.
Today, he is a social affairs officer in one of the sectors of Rusizi district.
Kamuzinzi tells us he first saw the Nyarushishi camp photo of him in 2015 when he got urge to do internet search.
“The feeling just arose so I went online and put the word ‘Nyarushishi’ in Google search. It was among top images. But there were many other photos from the camp showing French soldiers,” he narrated.
According to records we have obtained, the image was taken August 25, 1994, by journalist Jean-March Bouju reporting for The Associated Press (AP) news agency.
As for the missing father, Kamuzinzi tells us; “We gave his remains a decent burial at the memorial site” on June 23, 2018 when 3,516 newly discovered victims from the region were laid to rest at the Nyarushishi site where already 4,738 were buried.
Kamuzinzi got married last year. His wife also survived the horror in Nyarushishi camp. They had a two-month old baby girl when we conducted the interview three weeks ago.
Project compiled by: Fred Mwasa, Fulgence Kwizera, Ephraim Musabwe.
Last week, my co-worker asked me for a recommendation of the top 5 books on the Genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. This is a tough question to answer since there are a lot of great options out there, ranging from direct memoirs from survivors such as Reverien Rurangwa’s “My Stolen Rwanda”, Immaculee Iribagiza’s “Left to Tell”, or Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse’s trilogy. From my personal experience, however, here are my top 5 recommendations for books written by researchers and journalists who were in Rwanda or arrived in the immediate aftermath of the genocide. The order from one to five does not really matter, and in fact, my first choice is near the bottom of the list.
Leave None to tell the story- Genocide in Rwanda (1) This book is perhaps my favorite account of genocide because of the level of detail it provides. The Author, Alison Des Forges, documents genocide preparation, development, and consolidation of the Hutu Power ideology in each and every commune (County) of Rwanda. The book does not even shy away from mentioning the names of those Hutus who were at the helm of killings in their respective localities. Reading this heavy-weight piece of work, I realized how little I knew about the very tragedy I survived—the genocide against the Tutsi. Free PDF is available here. This book was also recently published in Kinyarwanda as ‘’Ntihazasigare n’uwo kubara inkuru’’ which I would highly recommend as well.
The Rwanda Crisis, History of a Genocide: In the Rwanda Crisis, journalist Gérard Prunier provides a historical perspective that Western readers need to understand how and why the nearly total extermination of Rwanda’s Tutsi population came to pass. Gerard Prunier probes into how the genocidal events in Rwanda were part of a deadly logic – a plan that served central political and economic interests – rather than a result of primordial tribal hatreds, a notion often invoked by the media to dramatize genocide.
3. A people Betrayed the Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide: Linda Melvern reveals how the great powers failed to heed the warnings of the coming catastrophe and refused to recognize the genocide when it began, ignoring obligations under international law, specifically the 1948 genocide convention. A set of secret documents leaked to the author from within the Security Council proves that the circumstances of the genocide were suppressed or ignored. Linda Melvern’s Consipiracy to murderpublished in 2004 is equally a must-read.
4. Life Laid Bare, the Survivors in Rwanda Speak.Originally published in French as ‘’ Dans le nus de la vie’’ the French author, Jean Hatzfeld skillfully describes the daily survival stories of 14 survivors who miraculously survived the extermination of Tutsis thanks to the papyrus swamps along the Nyabarongo river in Bugesera. The book demonstrates the uncertainty and pervasive effects of genocide on the lives of survivors. Jean Hartzfeld’s other books such as the ‘’Antilope’s strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide’’ and ‘’Machete season ‘’are worth checking as well. 5. You can’t talk about books about the Rwanda genocide against the Tutsi without mentioning We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, by Philip Gourevitch of The New Yorker.
This book describes Gourevitch’s travels in Rwanda after Genocide, in which he interviews survivors and retells their stories but also provides a very useful context in which the genocide broke out. In the last chapters of this book, Gourevitch discussed a topic that caught my attention with a lot of interest. How the international community soon forgot the bleeding wounds of survivors and focused all the attention on Genocidaire who fled west to the Congo after committing a brutal genocide. Ends.
Mrs. Samantha Lakin, a Ph.D. candidate at The Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, and I have last month authored a short paper on justice and memorialization in post-genocide Rwanda. The paper was first published by the International Bar Association (IBA). We have analyzed the ICTR and memorialization efforts in Rwanda from the perspective of survivors, including interviews with survivors and a review of the secondary literature. We have also discussed lessons learned from the transitional justice processes that occurred in Rwanda and challenges including the survivors’ continuing call for reparation. Click here to read the full paper.
In this paper, Albert Gasake, Legal Advocacy Coordinator at SURF and Justice Commissioner at GAERG, examines the ongoing struggle of genocide survivors to secure fair compensation for property lost or destroyed during the genocide.
The paper looks at the failures of the Gacaca courts, which closed in 2012, and the shortcomings of the laws that replaced them—laws meant to address unresolved compensation claims but which have delivered little real progress.
🎥 Watch:Maria’s story — a genocide widow shares her fight to receive compensation for her destroyed property.
A key focus is the Travaux d’Intérêts Généraux (TIG) program, introduced under Gacaca as an alternative penalty. Gasake questions whether TIG has diverted resources away from survivors into public works, leaving many without meaningful redress. He also critiques the Prime Minister’s Special Committee on Gacaca, arguing that its vast remit, short timeline, and lack of enforcement powers make it unlikely to resolve outstanding claims—and that failure to do so risks closing the door on future settlements.
The paper also draws on findings from the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, whose surveys and community dialogues reveal survivors’ deep concerns over the inadequacy of current compensation processes.
While Gasake acknowledges that reparation alone cannot solve all the challenges survivors face, he stresses that it can provide a measure of restorative justice—offering survivors the means to rebuild their lives, restore dignity, and strengthen reconciliation.
His conclusion is clear: since the genocide, efforts to address compensation have been largely inadequate, and this failure is undermining reconciliation. He calls for urgent action to create an effective, survivor-centered reparation system—a need that is especially pressing as Rwanda approaches the 20th anniversary of the genocide in 2014 and the momentum for compensation wanes.
“If reconciliation is truly possible, it will only be built on a foundation of complete justice.” — Albert Gasake
5. You can’t talk about books about the Rwanda genocide against the Tutsi without mentioning 
