Rwandan Rivers during the Genocide

One of the ways that the genocidaires killed their victims was by throwing them into rivers and lakes to drown them. While many people were killed or gravely injured before they were thrown into the rivers and lakes of Rwanda, a good number were tied up, or tied to other people before they were thrown into the rivers to drown. Throwing children into the rivers was a favourite way of killing young Tutsis. Sometimes mothers and their children would be tied up and thrown in together. Some lucky individuals who could swim, and who were either not too badly injured, or whose bindings came undone, were able to swim to safety. It goes without saying however, that a sizeable number of people who were thrown into the rivers died, and their bodies were left to float along on the currents in the rivers or lakes.

The notable rivers in Rwanda that lead into other countries are the Akagera River, the Muvumba River, and the Rusizi River which flows into Lake Tanganyika and into Tanzania, and the Nyabarongo River. Other countries that received the dead as they drifted along were Uganda, Burundi, and depending on which size of the Rusizi river that the bodies washed up on, Congo. The Hutu, who convinced themselves that the Tutsi were newcomers to the country, and therefore had no business being there, would joke that they were sending the Tutsi back to wherever they came from. Of course this is not funny at all.

In Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi, local people who lived along the river banks found themselves enmeshed in the genocide by virtue of the dead that arrived on their shorelines. These kind souls removed the dead from the water and placed them, with respect, in carefully-marked mass graves that then became memorial sites for the genocide. In recent years, many of those memorial sites have had the remains of the dead removed to the genocide memorial in Kigali. Rwanda is grateful for the respect shown to the dead people who washed up on the shores and into the lives of ordinary Ugandans, Tanzanians and Burundians who had nothing to do with the genocide, but who found themselves dealing with the aftermath of the slaughter.