Jean though Hutu looks more like a Tutsi (as he has been told many times), and he believes he survived the 1994 genocide not on the basis of his tribe, but because luck was on his side.

Jean, 42 years old now and a photographer, was a university student at the time the genocide occurred and relives the unforgettable agony he went through trying to survive the genocide.

Jean admits he anticipated violence when he heard the news that President Juvenal Habyarimana had died in a plane shooting above Kigali Airport on April 6, 1994.

“When I heard the news about the president’s death, I knew there was trouble because prior to his death two Hutu prominent politicians, were assassinated and these killings sparked some violence and some Tutsi were killed in retaliation,” Jean says.

He says he had gone home, Kinyinya Hill near the “Voice Germany Africa and Malte Island Relay Station” for the Easter weekend when the news of Habyarimana’s death broke out.

Loud deafening noise

“I was awaken by a loud deafening noise of heavy gunshot in the early hours on 7th April 1994 and I heard on radio that there was a curfew, we were all ordered to stay at home. I tried to call some of my relatives in other sides of the Kigali town to find out if they were safe and they said they were safe but the noise was still there,” he recalls.

Jean says two days after the death of the president, the Kinyinya Rural Health Centre started receiving wounded people who needed medical attention and shelter.

“I saw dead bodies, but I never witnessed any killings. I saw people I know dead, I understood that some soldiers from Kami Military Police Camp gun downed the people that were trying to reach the premises of the “Voice of Germany Relay Station” and go in hiding there and there were dead bodies around our community which was becoming a health hazard, so we started burying the bodies.’’

He explains that people in his community moved to the health centre and spent nights there for fear of being attacked in their homes. “We couldn’t spend nights at our homes, and we couldn’t go anywhere, there was a curfew so we stayed in our community,” states Jean.

Jean who lived with two of his two young brothers explained that their Kinyinya community was attacked three weeks later (towards the end of April 1994) and that was how their ‘journey’ to the unknown destination started.

“Our village, Kinyinya Hill, was attacked three weeks later by RPF rebel soldiers, we ran together with my two brothers but we lost each other along the way.

“After we left my village, we went to Kinyinya village , that’s when I first saw how catastrophic the situation was, there were many houses destroyed and rooted and many road blocks, and we kept moving with difficulties, I didn’t know where to go,” Jean notes.

With his Tutsi looks, Jean had to produce an Identity Card at each check point and one of his brothers who looked more Hutu was his saviour. “I look like a Tutsi and people wonder how I survived, I had to move with my ID and I was defended by one of my brothers who looked more Hutu.’’

When highly doubted, Jean, whose late father was a retired military officer, says he also used his father’s “matriculation number” to convince roadblocks controllers that he was not of the RPF side.

Parting ways


With Zambian president Rupiah Banda

Born in a family of seven, Jean explains with anguish how he parted company with his two siblings. “We found a shelter near Kanombe International Airport and it was also attacked that’s how we went different directions with my brothers, and that’s how our second last brother went missing, we have never seen him or heard of him. Am sure he was killed. That boy looked more Tutsi,” Jean observed.

Jean says he tried to seek refuge at his Butare Rwanda University campus, but the situation was tensed and he continued his journey.

“I later felt a sense of safety upon arrival of the French soldiers in North West of Rwanda during the famous ´Operation Turquoise´, now the war was ending but I couldn’t stay in Rwanda, now that the Kagame group took over power we couldn’t stay in Rwanda we had to leave.

“I later left the camp and went to the Democratic Republic of Congo in Bukavu, east of Congo where there was a refugee camp. I stayed there for four months.”

It was in Bukavu that Jean learnt of his elder brother’s whereabouts and without hesitation he was on his feet on a journey to the west of Tanzania in search of his brother. However, their reunion was short-lived as Tanzania decided to repatriate all refugees in December 1996 and Jean’s journey to an unknown destination continued, this time hoping to land in South Africa via Zambia.

He has been in the southern African country since December 1996. “When we were chased I wanted to go to South Africa through Zambia, Zimbabwe, my brother went to Nairobi. In Zambia I found Rwandese, though life was not very good, it was better. Zambia was offering us a ´Refugee Status´ that’s how I settled in Zambia,” Jean says.

17 years on Jean looks back at the genocide with great pain, he describes the acts as inhuman.

“It was painful to see some of my friends dead, I had never seen such atrocities and I believe that every human being has a right to a decent burial, it was insulting to see bodies decomposing like that,” opines Jean.

For Jean reconciliation based on forgiveness is the key for Rwanda to live in harmony although he foresees another looming genocide. He argues that the display of skulls of people killed in the genocide in a museum indicating that “these are the Tutsis killed during the genocide” only reminded Rwandese of the past they wish to bury.

He described the memorial week of genocide victims as a ´week of hatred revival´ for Rwanda.

“The display of skulls… shows that people have not forgotten and how do people know that those were Tutsis because a lot of Hutus also died in that genocide maybe more than the Tutsi. And the issue of saying there is no tribe in Rwanda won’t work, why deny people the right to identify themselves by tribe, they have that right,” Jean argues.

He says the discriminatory genocide charges against Hutus shows that people are still bitter. For him the remedy for Rwanda is to forgive and accept that they can live as three different tribes.