30th Anniversary of Kibeho Rwanda

The Preacher Story, 2025, is the thirty-year anniversary of the Kibeho Massacre which I witnessed in 1995.

George Gittoes, 'The preacher', 1995. Courtesy of the artist.

I was in Rwanda with a medical unit of Australian Peacekeepers at Kibeho where thousands of internally displaced refugees were crowded together at a Cathedral and school. Some of the girl students had seen the Virgin Mary in visions and the people came there believing they would have her divine protection. The killers slaughtered them with machetes. Children would put their hands up to protect their heads and the blades would cut their hands off and they would bleed to death. If I could get to them in time, I would put elastic bands around their wrists to stop the bleeding but then wondered how they could survive without hands and their parents dead. The killing was systematic. People lost their dignity by burying themselves in mud walls hoping not to be seen or in some cases sliding down into shitters (covered pits where people went to shit through a hole). I pulled a woman and her children out of a shitter where they had hidden though a night of slaughter ̶   the mother standing up to her hips in excrement while holding two babies all night.  In the midst of this I heard the most beautiful choral singing. I followed the sound and there was a preacher holding a bible up and leading his congregation in song. It was incredibly moving. He had restored their dignity. They would not die like frightened animals but with their inner pride in place.  I asked him if he thought that if I stayed with them, they might not be killed. He said, “It is more likely George, as they do not want witnesses, and you have documented their crimes.” He then showed me four young boys whose parents had been killed in the night and asked me if I could try to get them to safety. Reluctantly, I agreed. I used my best magic and got the boys out safely past the killers who were beheading anyone who tried to escape.  I put them under a UN truck, and they lived. When I returned the whole congregation were dead on the ground among their possessions. I could only find the Preacher’s blood-stained yellow coat.  I never found his body.