Blood bonds: Reconciliation in Post - Genocide Rwanda

Title: Blood bonds: Reconciliation in Post - Genocide Rwanda

Photographer(s): Jan Banning

Writer(s): Marjan Slob, Dick Wittenberg

Designer(s): Victor Levie

Publisher(s): Lecturis, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Year:2025

Print run:

Language(s): English

Pages: 152

Size: 16 x 24 cm

Binding: Hardcover

Edition:

Print:

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: Rwanda,2024

ISBN: 978-94-6226-551-6

https://janbanning.com/product/blood-bonds-reconciliation-in-post-genocide-rwanda/

In Rwanda, that process has been ongoing since shortly after the 1994 genocide. The Rwandan genocide stands out for the sheer intensity of its violence: in just one hundred days, between 800,000 and one million people were killed—a higher daily death toll than during the Holocaust. It is also unique in the intimacy of its brutality: neighbors and acquaintances killed one another using simple weapons like machetes, axes, and clubs—tools that required close physical proximity.

The victims were primarily Tutsis, but also moderate Hutus. Radical propaganda portrayed them as two distinct ethnicities, though the roots of the conflict lay more in a historical divide between cattle herders and farmers. Survivors bear deep emotional and physical scars, while many perpetrators grapple with guilt and social exclusion—often after serving long prison sentences. Yet both groups have had to continue living in the same communities, sometimes even as next-door neighbors—seemingly a recipe for renewed violence and bloodshed. Since 2005, more than 115,000 survivors and perpetrators have participated in sociotherapy groups, in which former perpetrators often express remorse and ask for forgiveness. Many reveal the locations of victims' graves, allowing them to finally receive a dignified burial. In numerous cases, former enemies have become friends and now support one another. Rwanda demonstrates that even in the most divided societies, healing is possible.