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The Rwandan Genocide Begins, Part 2

Binyenzi Schadrac, Rwandan Survivor

After I dropped my family off in Tanzania, I came back in Rwanda on April 1. I couldn’t go in my house ’cause I was hunted down there, so I had to go to leave with a friend, trying to hide during the night, during the day go to work. But it didn’t take long. On April 6, that’s when the killing started after the president of the country was killed in a plane crash. We knew that there was a plan of killing Tutsis; that was an experience that I had been through before, and we could hear people being killed around. So, it was like you were waiting for your turn. Fortunately, until the eighth, which was really two days after the starting of the massive general genocide, I decided to leave that house, ’cause I told my friends if I have to die, I’d rather die running, not waiting for my killers to get me in the house. By four in the morning, four am on the eighth, I told my friends Charles—Charles was his name, and his wife and his three boys. I told them, “I’ve got to leave this house.” And I left the house under the cover of the night, passing through the big swamp that is between the Kigali airport and a big high school called ETO, École Technique Officielle; that is a school that is headed by—that was headed by the Belgian priests. My thinking was if I get to that school, maybe I’ll be protected by the priests.