Documenting the Rwandan genocide

Warning: Some of the images below are graphic and show victims of massacres. 

On April 7, 1994, one of the most harrowing events in modern history began: the Rwandan genocide. 

One hundred days of unfathomable slaughter in which an estimated 800,000-1,000,000 people were killed. 

Rwandans were pitted against Rwandans, Hutu against Tutsi, neighbour against neighbour, and in some cases, family member against family member. 

From grandmothers to infants, no one was spared - all dispatched to the next world by machete, machinegun or hand grenade. 

Thirty years ago, Jack Picone was among the first international photographers to document the carnage.

He reflects on the journey he took in the grips of genocide, how ordinary Rwandans are finding healing and forgiveness, and the memories that still haunt him to this day.

It’s 2024, and I have a recurring dream.

I’m walking in the vestibule of a Catholic church.

The space is crammed with dead people on the floor. There are bodies on top of bodies.

I walk through the vestibule to access the door to the church's altar.

As I walk, I accidentally step on a body that is soft with decomposition. I feel the flesh giving way under my feet.

I am mortified and disgusted with myself.

The frozen faces of the dead look up at me accusingly.

This is when I wake up.

The past comes rushing back and I remember that it is more than a dream.

It’s a remnant of a memory of something I experienced inside a Belgian Catholic church in Rukara, Rwanda, in 1994.

I was in London in April 1994 when I first heard about the massacres taking place in Rwanda.

Three days later, on April 10, I booked a flight.

But Rwanda had closed the airports and land borders, slamming shut its doors and locking out the rest of the world.

So I landed in Entebbe in neighbouring Uganda before illegally crossing the border on a minor road into Rwanda.

Immediately, I was confronted by heavily armed Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) Tutsi soldiers, the forces "liberating" the country from their genocidal opponents.

I expected to either be arrested or deported; instead, they took me to their commanding officer for questioning.

The officer was an urbane, articulate soldier dressed in guerrilla fatigues who unbeknown to me would in six years be Rwanda’s president.

But in 1994 Commander Paul Kagame led a force of 10,000 –14,000 RPF soldiers against the Hutu militias perpetrating the genocide.

Kagame questioned me and, once satisfied that I was not a spy but a working photojournalist, attached me to him and his RPF troops as they fought against the Hutus, snaking their way back to the capital, Kigali, that they needed to take.

On the road to Kigali with the RPF soldiers, I saw a once enchanted landscaped gouged, broken, blackened, bullet- and bomb-scarred – a kind of dystopian event sci-fi filmmakers try to recreate but never fully achieve.

On a micro level, I witnessed tens of thousands of Rwandans lying twisted and dead on roads, in the doorways of houses, in gardens, in churches, in cars, in forest groves, in rivers, in coffee fields - everywhere.

I looked at them, and they stared laser-like back at me with frozen faces and myriad expressions that ranged from contorted abject fear to puzzlement, the latter seemingly asking: Why, why me?

Fast forward to 2019, the 25th anniversary of the genocide, when I returned to Rwanda.

It was time to ask questions about the country post-genocide and what peace looked like for the Rwandan people.

I revisited places I had been to in 1994, interacted with Rwandans and reconnected with several who remembered me.

We recalled our time together during the genocide and we cried together.

There was catharsis.

I saw great progress, which was affirming and edifying, but I also sensed a nation conflicted by personal memory and a "national dictate" to forgive.

This dictate was unconventional, curious, and almost surreal.

President Kagame has ordered the Rwandan people to “forgive” one another for their roles during the genocide, even for the most heinous crimes.

Yet forgiveness is complicated, meaning many things to many people and manifesting itself in a multitude of ways.

Can forgiveness be prescribed, I wondered.

People usually cannot be ordered to “forgive” one another, yet in Rwanda, they have been.

Alice Mukarurinda and Emanuel Ndayisaba have an extraordinary tale.

The two genocide survivors in Kigali were in the process of forgiving one another.

Alice wore dresses that popped in primary colours.

She radiated warmth and strength, and had an intense gaze that locked onto you during a conversation.

Emanuel was almost diametrically opposite.

He was reed thin and wore white long-sleeve shirts and muted-coloured chinos that suggested conservatism and reservedness.

Eye contact seemed hard for him during our conversations.

Emanuel had admitted to killing dozens of people during the genocide.

Alice was one of his victims, left for dead in a swamp after he cut off her hand.

Emanuel was imprisoned for his crimes, but under the laws of "Gacaca" - the local courts set up to encourage truth and reconciliation - he confessed to his murders and was released.

After his release, he recognised Alice and admitted to her that it was he who tried to kill her.

In an unlikely realignment, they have reconciled and now work in a restorative group teaching reconciliation within the community.

I asked myself how someone like Alice could forgive a murderous man wielding a machete who had already killed dozens of other people. How could Alice forgive Emanuel after he chased her into the swamp and delivered multiple wounding blows upon her body and head, one of which cut her hand right off, leaving her oozing blood and about to die?

I asked myself if I could be like Alice; if I could forgive the person who did this, and the answer was "no".

It was unfathomable and beyond my scope of comprehension.

But I wanted to know the "why" of how it was possible for Alice to forgive.

I felt humbled by her, like I could learn from her, like understanding her ability to forgive would make me a better person.

I also wanted to know the "why" of the tens of thousands of other Alices and Emanuels peppered across Rwanda who forgave each other.

Was it because of Kagame’s dictate to the Rwandan people that they must "forgive"? Was it because of Alice's strong Christian faith? Was it because of Emanuel’s guilty conscience? Was it because of the Rwandan people’s "need" to forget and look towards the future? Was it one or any combination of these things?

The answers to my questions are unclear, unanswered and unknown. But the wheels of absolution turn slowly, perplexing yet yielding forgiveness.

Seeing Rwanda contemporaneously was compelling.

Once again, the landscape had returned to what it was before the genocide - more like the first time I travelled there in 1984 when I trekked high up the Virunga Mountains to see the gorillas of Gorillas in the Mist fame; when descriptions of Rwanda gushed about "The Land of a Thousand Hills".

Since the genocide, Rwanda has sometimes been called the Switzerland of Africa, a name which recognises Kagame’s stabilising of the country, which has led to some visible progress.

Rwanda is considered safer and less corrupt than many African countries, and its growth figures are frequently among the highest in the world.

However, despite all this, Kagame has also been labelled a brutal autocrat.

In 2023, Human Rights Watch published a report that said: “Since the RPF took power in 1994, it has also responded forcefully and often violently to criticism, deploying a range of measures to deal with real or suspected opponents, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, political prosecutions, and unlawful detention, as well as threats, intimidation, harassment, and physical surveillance. Such measures are not limited to critics and opponents within the country.”

Rwanda's government justifies its heavy-handed ways by arguing that it is protecting the country and stopping it from falling into darkness again. This is the sociopolitical and cultural Rwanda that genocide survivors now live in.

I had more questions.

Though I suspected the answers may be complicated and elusive, at best, I requested an interview with President Kagame with no expectation of getting one.

So I was surprised when the interview was granted.

It transpired that the president remembered me from our time on the road with the RPF in 1994. It seemed that incendiary times of war stay forever tattooed in men’s minds - whether they be presidents or photographers.

I was granted 25 minutes, but we were still talking 45 minutes later.

As in 1994, Kagame was energetic, smart, cogent, even funny and with an acuity that was not to be underestimated. We animatedly discussed the 1994 genocide, the RPF, the economy, gender equality, education and peace in Rwanda.

When I asked him the "hard" questions, concerning the myriad alleged human rights transgressions and his autocratic rule that have been levelled against him by human rights groups, governments and NGOs, he smiled and deftly deflected, returning to a topic he was more comfortable with.

Journalistically, it was low-yielding, but what did I expect?

It’s 2024 and 30 years have passed since the genocide.

The recurring dreams of bodies in a parish church in Rukara stay with me, as the countless dead loved ones of many Rwandans stay with them.

But Rwanda today is a very different country.

Yes, there is much evidence that confirms it is under the yoke of dictatorship - which is ethically, morally and deeply concerning.

But outside the sphere of politics, Rwanda is also a people and a country carrying the vast pain of the genocide within its collective memory while refusing to be defined by it.

Rwanda is Alice and Emanuel forgiving each other.

It is ordinary, everyday Rwandans - not their questionable government - on a mission to make the impossible possible as they try and turn the darkness of what the genocide left them into light.