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Exploring/Recording Stories of Survival: Gatumba Survivors Project
With Professor Chris Davey and guest, Espoir Nindeba
Explore Professor Davey’s Open Digital Project at https://commons.clarku.edu/gatumba/
On Aug. 13, 2004, 166 people were massacred, and around a hundred were injured, at a UN refugee camp near Gatumba, Burundi. Most of the victims were members of the Banyamulenge community — a Congolese Tutsi ethnic group — fleeing outbreaks of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Banyamulenge refugees were deliberately targeted by the Forces Nationales de Libération (FNL), a Hutu supremacist rebel group fighting in Burundi’s civil war. During the massacre, hundreds of FNL fighters beat drums and sang Christian hymns as they shot, stabbed, and burned refugees. The next day, an FNL spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack.
Despite investigations by the UN and Human Rights Watch confirming the involvement of the FNL and its then-leader Agathon Rwasa, the justice system stalled for political reasons. Most survivors of Gatumba have resettled from Burundi as refugees in the US, UK, Rwanda, Kenya, and other countries.
The purpose of this archive is to preserve witnesses to this massacre and evidence its lifelong impact on survivors, as well as document the lives of this refugee group.
This will be a hybrid event. https://clarku.zoom.us/j/98578069306
Professor Chris Davey is Charles E. Scheidt Visiting Assistant Professor of Genocide Studies and Genocide Prevention, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
The Goddard Library Open Project Series is an event series dedicated to highlighting open collections made available through Clark University’s Institutional Repository, Digital Commons.
