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Rwanda: 30 years of trauma after the Tutsi genocide
Rwanda: 30 years of trauma after the Tutsi genocide
(franceinfo)
The head of French diplomacy, Stéphane Séjourné, began his first African tour in Kenya which will then take him to Rwanda, where he will attend, on Sunday April 7, the commemorations of the 30th anniversary of the genocide. Three decades of reconstruction for the country.
A survivor of the genocide in Rwanda holds, in her hands, the portraits of her parents and her big sister, killed thirty years ago because they were Tutsi. She came to have their faces drawn, there’s no way they’re going to fade. “My children ask me a lot of questions about what happened with the family”she explains, very moved. “Being able to see their portraits at home will allow them to form an image of themselves.” A few pencil strokes on a sheet or on a tablet, so as not to forget what happened during the 100 murderous days of 1994.
Between 800,000 and a million people killed
At the time, ethnic tensions were high, having been stoked for decades. Hutu extremists then publicly preached the extermination of the Tutsis. On April 6, 1994, the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down by a missile, the explosion precipitating their bloody project. The violence then quickly spread throughout the country. Between 800,000 and a million people were killed in three months. Today, more than half of the Rwandan population was born after the genocide.
