The Forgotten Victims of the Rwandan Genocide, 30 Years On

The harrowing journey of Claude Gatebuke, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, is presented through vivid accounts of the tragedy. Pin Africa’s Manitou Nsaka provides us with the historical context of the genocide, the horrors faced by the victims, and the aftermath of one of the fastest genocides in human history. This serves as a poignant reminder of the forgotten innocent victims, especially children, in the face of war and genocide.

Between April 6 and July 4, 1994, extremist Hutus and their sympathisers slaughtered between 500,000 and a million Tutsis in Rwanda in a span of one hundred days, making the Rwandan genocide one of the fastest in human history. Moderate Hutus and the indigenous Twa people also perished during the killing spree. The genocide was mostly carried out with simple farm equipment like machetes, maces, and hoes. Incredibly, the world witnessed the impending disaster but took barely any action to prevent it.

Among the survivors of that genocide is a man named Claude Gatebuke, who immigrated with his family to the U.S. and eventually settled there.

With war raging in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, unrest in Sudan and Eastern Congo, and the word genocide back in public debate, Claude’s vivid accounts of the fateful event that changed the course of his life are even more poignant.

The Rwandan genocide, like all genocides, didn’t happen overnight.

Although the Hutu ethnic group comprises approximately 85% of the population, the Tutsi minority has historically held a stronghold of power in Rwanda. The Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy in 1959, prompting tens of thousands of Tutsis to seek refuge in Uganda and other neighbouring nations.

In 1987, a group of Tutsi exiles created the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel force that began to launch terror attacks in Rwanda in the 1990s. Claude recalls a series of horrific events that preceded the genocide. “The war started on the 1st of October 1990 when the RPF came and immediately started killing people in the areas they controlled. I started seeing amputated people, at least in Kigali, the capital. Every country has a number of people with physical handicaps, but it was very disproportionate. If you were to watch video footage of that time, you’ll notice that there were too many people on crutches,” he said. “The RPF would ask people to gather in their hundreds and sometimes thousands, surround them, throw a grenade at them, and kill people with hand weapons. As a result, people started to run away from them, and we now had an internally displaced issue. Out of approximately 8 million people in Rwanda at the time, one million had fled to Kigali,” he added.

Like everyone else in Rwanda, Claude Gatebuke couldn’t believe how easy it was to get a weapon. “It would have been easier for me to buy a grenade than to buy a bottle of soda or a loaf of bread. As for the machetes, Rwanda was predominantly a farming country at that time. Everybody had a machete like most people have a microwave in the UK,” he recalled.

The Rwandan war occurred during one of the continent’s most dramatic periods of political transition. A wave of democratisation spread through the African continent in the 1990s. A number of countries restored multi-partyism, which had previously prevailed prior to colonial independence. With the end of the one-party system model, other political parties competed for public support. There was a radical change in the country’s political scene. “Rwanda went from a single-party state to a multi-party state, which introduced a new set of political actors. The youth wings of those political parties would fight against each other in the street,” Claude said. Additionally, the RPF terror campaign gradually increased in intensity, with attacks on densely populated areas like markets and bus stops.

Concerned about the increase in violence in the region, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the heads of state from the African Great Lakes region organised peace talks between the warring factions on July 12, 1992. The long-drawn-out peace talks, which took place in Arusha, Tanzania, ended on August 4, 1993, when the accords were eventually signed.

The Arusha Accords called for the formation of a Broad-Based Transitional Government (BBTG), which would consist of the insurgent RPF and five other political parties to prepare for the general national elections. Furthermore, a UN peacekeeping force of around 2,500 UN peacekeepers would help carry out the Agreement.

With so many weapons on the streets, crime, including political assassination, became commonplace. On the evening of April 6, 1994, an aircraft carrying then-President Juvenal Habyarimana and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, both Hutus, was fatally shot down over Kigali, killing everyone on board. That night, Hutu extremists launched an organised slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutus.

Then 14 years old, Claude Gatebuke was at home with his mum and sister when he found out about the tragic plane crash. His dad was on a work trip in the US. “We heard the explosion, it was really loud unlike the usual gunfire. My mum got a phone call and told us that they shot the president’s plane. After that we started to hear bombing and shooting. It was just horrible! We could hear people shouting for help, dogs barking outside. Things were crumbling. We thought everyone around us was dead. I was so scared, I was pacing back and forth and then I became numb. The next day we started seeing these mobs of extremist Hutu going from house to house to kill Tutsis,” he said.

“It was just horrible! We could hear people shouting for help, dogs barking outside. Things were crumbling. We thought everyone around us was dead.”

Claude Gatebuke

Hutu extremists distributed guns, hit-lists, and hate propaganda to local organisations, encouraging them to “weed out the cockroaches.”

The United Nations ordered its blue-helmeted soldiers to evacuate foreigners at the beginning of the mass killings, but did not intervene.

With help from Uganda’s army, the RPF took over additional territory. On July 4, 1994, its troops marched into Kigali, the capital. Claude’s family hid in a storied shed at their house until a neighbor came to take them away. Over the next few days, the massacre continued. Claude noticed that the RPF and Hutu radicals used different tactics. “Extremist Hutus were killing people and leaving them in the street. The RPF was hiding their killings from the journalists. They systematically dumped them into mass graves,” he explains.

Fearing for their lives, Claude’s family made the risky decision to flee across the border in a truck into the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He remembers how they came perilously close to death while attempting to pass through countless checkpoints. “I was separated from my mum at one of the roadblocks. A guy looked me in the eyes and said…say goodbye to life. They took us to a carpentry shed. A bunch of people, including the truck driver, tried to save us from being killed. After pleading for hours, one of the negotiators said, ‘You know what? This boy and his mother aren’t going to make it. Let somebody else kill them.’ We got back into the truck. Everybody was crying, they were so happy to see us again.”

Claude’s family eventually made it to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite living in a squalid refugee camp, he was moved by the locals’ hospitality and empathy. They were rescued and left the refugee camp shortly after arriving in Goma. After passing through Uganda and Kenya, they arrived in the United States, where Claude’s father was.

Claude Getabuke’s story has been shared all around the world. He was inspired by Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist who became well-known after publishing a book about slavery in 1845.

“He was sold into slavery at 7 years old. I like the way he shared his story to show the horror of slavery. Reading the book reconnected me with a wish I had when they told me to say goodbye to life. While I was standing there ready to dig my grave, I was like, ‘I want the world to know what’s going on. So I don’t want to sit on my story, I want to show the world what happens to children when there’s war and genocide.'”

As Rwanda commemorates the 30th anniversary of the genocide, Claude Getabuke’s story is a reminder that children are too often the forgotten innocent victims. His story helps us honour and reflect on the suffering of the children who have survived and died in one of the darkest chapters in human history.