Rwanda 30+ Bearing Witness to Genocide

….. in one hundred days, up to one million people were hacked, shot, strangled, clubbed and burned to death. Remember, carve this into your consciousness: one million…..

Fergel Keane, BBC correspondent

2024 marks the 30^th anniversary of the 1994 Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. It resulted from decades of tribal resentment and was exacerbated by colonialism and post-colonial power struggles.

On April 6 1994, a plane carrying two African presidents, Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Nataryamira, was shot down near the Rwandan capital Kigali, killing both leaders. This event shattered the Arusha Accords, which had attempted to end the armed conflict between the Rwandan Government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front and secured a fragile peace.

The UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda estimates that Hutu extremists massacred between eight hundred thousand and one million men, women and children. They targeted Tutsi civilians and moderate Hutus. The perpetrators were soldiers, gendarmes, politicians, militias like Interahamwe and ordinary Hutu civilians.

These massacres resulted in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated on a massive scale. The UN claims the rate of killing was four times greater than at the height of the Nazi Holocaust.

The media played a crucial role in fuelling the genocide. The two key perpetrators were Radio Television Libre Des Mille Collines (RTLM, est. 1993) and the Kangura newspaper. They were instrumental in dehumanising the Tutsi by referring to them as ‘cockroaches’ and calling for their extermination.

RTLM distorted news and information and broadcast hate speech, amplifying a sense of fear, threat and urgency. It relayed details about locations and urged Hutus to go out and carry out the extermination of Tutsis.

This multi-media exhibition commemorates the 30^th anniversary of the 1994 Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. Curated by Dr Helen Vatsikopoulos, journalist, academic and UTS Fellow and Moshe Rosenzvieg OAM, Creative Director of Head On Photo Festival, the exhibition includes photography by Stephen Dupont and Martina Reyes Guilmant and video footage from the 1994 SBS Dateline program’s reporting.