The Face of Genocide
During the Rwandan civil war in 1994, hundreds of thousands of the minority Tutsi community and moderate Hutus were killed in an organized genocide committed by right-wing Hutus. Tutsi rebels eventually overthrew the Hutu power, sending a million Hutus, fearful of revenge, in a mass exodus into Zaire (now the Congo) and Tanzania.
Two years later, in 1996, in a move to overthrow their own government, Zairian rebels stormed the largest of the Rwandan refugee camps, Kibumba Camp, outside Goma. Rebels sought out and executed Hutu fighters and in the process thousands of unarmed civilians were massacred as the Kibumba Camp collapsed. With nowhere else to go, the Rwandan refugees predominantly of the Hutu tribe began making their way back home to face old friends and neighbors who the genocide had been perpetrated against.
Rwandans exiled across their home border in the Congo, carry what few belongings they have. The road home is littered with corpses from both genocide revenge killings and rebel fighting against Congo government soldiers. ©Thomas James Hurst
There is no shortage of machine guns and grenade launchers in the Congo, and boys learn at an early age the power and horror these weapons can create. ©Thomas James Hurst
A man points to an area where aid workers can find more dead and dying. Aid organizations worked quickly to gather dead for immediate burial in the hopes of stopping a deadly outbreak of disease. ©Thomas James Hurst
A child dashes past a line of Rwandan refugees waiting to load into the back of trucks for their return to the villages back in Rwandan. ©Thomas James Hurst
A Rwandan boy screams in terror when separated from his mother in the chaos to flee the fighting in the Congo. ©Thomas James Hurst - World Press Photo Award - General News (1997)
Thousands of Rwandan refugees returning from exile in neighboring Zaire camp for the night along the roadside. ©Thomas James Hurst - World Press Photo Award - General News (1997)
The legs and body of a Rwandan woman who died trying to return home goes virtually unnoticed to those who still have so far to travel. ©Thomas James Hurst
An old man and a young boy travel the road home. ©Thomas James Hurst
Passengers on a bus leaving Zaire watch as other refugees prepare to board. ©Thomas James Hurst
The wide eyes of a baby look back as its mother rushes forward to a waiting truck. ©Thomas James Hurst
A 13-year-old member of Zaire’s Mi-Mi (“my-my”) Tribe poses with his bicycle and AK-47 assault rifle. ©Thomas James Hurst
An exhausted elderly woman ends a long day of walking the road out of the jungles of the Congo and back into her home country of Rwanda ©Thomas James Hurst
A father and son reunite in the Rwandan village they had lived in before fleeing to Zaire in 1994. Separated amid the chaos of their escape, each believed the other had been killed two years earlier. ©Thomas James Hurst
Two old friends, each of a different tribe, walk home together after being newly reunited. ©Thomas James Hurst