Ndera Genocide Survivors website is a result of the will of few residents of Ndera sector and neighboring areas who survived the killing at CARAES (Psychiatric Hospital of Ndera) and “Petit Seminaire de Ndera” during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi; as well as those who had found refuge elsewhere.
As the genocide against the tutsi broke out in Ndera, hundreds of terrified Tutsis sought refuge from the storm of machetes wielding militia at a catholic high school called Petit Seminaire de Ndera and a neuropsychiatric hospital called CARAES. They gathered together for the sake of comforting each other, but also for the younger ones to protect the most vulnerable. The choice of those two places is significant. During the previous killings of tutsi in 1959, 1963, 1973 in Rwanda, people who found refuge in catholic churches were spared, mostly because the killings were instigated by political and church leaders, and the church had a say in most major decisions of that time. Following the fact that the major institutions of Ndera namely Petit Seminaire de Ndera and CARAES are headed by the catholic church, people who found refuge there were expecting to be protected by church leaders, especially at CARAES which was managed by European missionaries of the Brother of Charity congregation. Unfortunately that protection has never happened.
After the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, we – as well as many others – found ourselves without our fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, neighbors. With the intense desire of honoring the memories of our loved ones who lost their lives in Ndera, we vowed to meet every year to always remember those dark days. Eventually, we realized that the best way to preserve the stories shared by survivors for future generations was to digitize their accounts publicly.
In addition to preserving history, this website provides direct access to a list of names, pictures as well as testimonies about those we lost. As there were numerous lives lost, each year we add two testimonies about members of our community who died. We hope to share and preserve a fraction of what happened on April 11th 1994 at Petit Seminaire, and April 17th 1994 at CARAES with anybody it may interest. With this website, we also intend to make sure that those who participated in the genocide against the tutsi will always be reminded of their inhumane actions and their effect on the Rwandan society in general, and our lives in particular.