Life After Genocide. Rwanda.

Genocide is a big word. They often refer to large numbers like 8000 people killed in Srebrenica, in one week. Over 1000000 people killed in Rwanda in 100 days. I want to put some faces onto some of the people behind those numbers. Having worked on the topic of “Life After Genocide” in Srebrenica, Bosnia for the past few years, I started focusing on Rwanda during 2014. It was the year of the 20th commemoration of the genocide in Rwanda. And I was talking to survivors who today live in Switzerland (Where I am based), I met Révérien Rurangwa, a young man who was the only survivor from his immediate family. Révérien was 15 year old boy and lost his entire family (43 family members) in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. This story is about Révérien who has been living and working in Switzerland since 1996. We travelled back to Rwanda together in order to visit his village, 20 years after he survived the genocide. During the visit, he also visits Janvier, a girl whom he met while being taken care of at the Red Cross field hospital. She was 11 years old and badly injured after having been thrown into a deep pit. She is now paralysed from her neck and down. Today, she barely gets to go outside and stays in her bedroom as she can not move from her bed. I feel this topic is important. I deals with integration of people in a European community in a period when immigration takes up a lot of headline space. Often time, beliefs are based on assumptions which then become he basis of public opinion. I therefor want to create stories that gives the messages directly from individuals.