Fighting A Dreadful Fight | The Rwanda Genocide
The Rwanda genocide was a massive massacre that took place in 1994 and it was basically between the Tutsi and the Hutus people of Rwanda. The killings began early April 1994, so many people lost their lives during this incident that in just about 100 days, more than 800000 people had been killed by Hutu supremacist militia people and most of them were from the minority Tutsi community while others were the Tutsi sympathizers. These people were killed irrespective of their origin within those 100 days
, Rwanda became a very unsafe place, many of them flee the country, sought refuge in close by nations like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi as well as Congo and very many people lived in fear until international organizations stepped in to help and secure the Tutsi’s.
The genocide spread all over the country therefore there was no safe place for the Tutsi people in the entire country. The Hutu nationalists spearheaded this social anarchy which was intended to overthrow the then ruling Tutsi people who wanted to have forcefully own back their already lost homeland. It was this act of Tutsi aggression, coupled with decades of discrimination and fear for a loss of power that paved the way to genocide. Most of the killing was done by young men from the two Hutu groups of the Interahamwe who were the driving force and the Impuzamugambi who were armed, backed, and led by the government of Rwanda. Their death became a historical event and most of them were buried in Kigali thus created the Kigali genocide memorial centre and others were buried in different other locations.
AA safaris offers you that unique free opportunity to visit the various genocide memorial centers during our Rwanda Safaris. Below are the various genocide memorial centers across the country.
Kigali genocide Memorial Centre.
This is an international centre in Kigali with 3 permanent exhibitions. It was built by the City Council along side the Aegis Trust based in UK and today more than 7000 people do visit this centre just to get information about the genocide and also to see the different exhibits that are available at the site.
Nyanza Genocide Memorial Centre
Over 2000 Tutsi people sought refuge at the ETO school outside Kigali city during the early days of the genocide in April 1994 and they were under the protection of the United Nations Peace Keeping force however later the UN withdrawal from the area and they were all marched up the road to Nyanza where they were all butchered like animals so this became another site though not yet fully developed like the one in Kigali. Each year on April 11th, a memorial ceremony takes place on the site where the deserted refugees were murdered in cold blood.
Gisozi Genocide Memorial Centre
This was opened on the 10th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide in April 2004 
and provides information about the genocide
Nyarubuye Genocide Memorial Centre
This is in Kirehe district in the Eastern province. It’s a convent as well as a school and here 20,000 people who were trying to escape from Rwanda through the border into Tanzania were killed
Nyamata Genocide Memorial Centre
2,500 people were killed from this place when they had gone for sanctuary in the church therefore after the period of the genocide, it later become symbolic of the mistreatment of women during the genocide for example the mass rape, brutal attacks on women and the use of HIV as a deliberate weapon of genocide
Ntarama Genocide Memorial Centre
This is located in Bugesera a rural province of Kigali. This is where kids and women ran to hide in the church as they thought it was the safest place that they could go to but unfortunately, it was not a safe at all.
Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre
This was a technical school in the southern province where over 60000 people ran to find shelter from the interahamwe during the genocide and 27,000 people were killed and about 1800 bodies were exhumed from the mass graves, displayed in form of a stark, shocking monument, with hundreds of corpses are temporarily preserved and currently displayed in those used to be class room.
Bisesero Genocide Memorial Centre
Bisesero is set in the hills of the Kibuye province of West Rwanda. Most of the people that lived in this place used to be Tutsi called the Abasesero who were also cattle keepers and during the 1994 genocide, over 50,000 people were killed from this place despite the fact that they tried to organize themselves to fight against the massacre for some weeks but they were fighting with stick against well trained soldiers.