Thirty years after the Rwanda genocide, the untold story of how around 1,000 children were rescued from the bloodiest days of the massacre is finally coming to light. During the 100 days of systematic slaughter between April and July 1994, aid workers risked their lives to save these children, mostly orphans, and transport them to safety in neighbouring Burundi through a series of Swiss humanitarian convoys.
Many of the children were wounded or had witnessed their families being massacred in front of them. The Rwandan authorities allowed only children under 12 to be transported on the packed convoys run by the Swiss charity Terre des hommes (Tdh), or “People of the Earth” in English. Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, who was 15 when she was smuggled out, recounts this little-known operation in her new book, “The Convoy”. She was hidden in the back of a truck under a sheet, with orphans sitting on her and her mother to conceal them at Hutu checkpoints.
The situation was chaotic, with war and genocide raging all around. Jean-Luc Imhof, a longtime Rwanda specialist for Tdh, described how the charity was responsible for more than 1,000 of these children, many of whom were between five and 10 years old and had been wounded, including with machetes. As the Tutsi rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR) closed in, the army and the Hutu-led Interahamwe militia became increasingly violent.
Claire Umutoni and her sister escaped on a July 3 convoy after receiving a warning call that their time had come. Their parents were later murdered with unimaginable cruelty. Umutoni Ndekezi, who was nine at the time, recalled finding a little boy in an orphanage with severe head wounds and how the rescue efforts gave her hope again. The survivors praise the aid workers, nuns, journalists, a diplomat, and a priest who risked their lives to save them, calling them “our heroes”.
