Christophe Calais

On April 19, 1994, as civil war in Rwanda was at its fiercest, thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, persecuted by the army and Hutu extremists, sought refuge in Murambi, taking shelter in a school still under construction.

Two days later, at 3 a.m., the assassins marched in, armed with machetes. The slaying continued until nightfall. Those who attempted to escape were killed by Hutus in neighbouring villages. The result was an ethnic genocide - 50,000 dead, and 4 survivors.

In July, 1994, the defeated Hutus fled to the camps in Zaire. Exiled Tutsis from the generation that had escaped the kilings of 1959 then started to return home. As they slowly started to regain control over their country, this community soon learned of three large mass graves in the area. It decided to pool together some money to erect a memorial to the genocide on the very site of the massacre.

Thus in May, 1997, a team of 20 Rwandans led by a Chilean specialist started to exhume the bodies. From the 50,000 bodies found and the many scattered bones and skulls, 26,000 corpses were selected, cleaned and covered in lime, to preserve them in the position they had died in 4 years earlier. Little by little, they were laid in storage in the classrooms of the Murambi school.

But the task seemed endless and money was quickly running out. More important still, the country had other priorities to deal with, and the memorial was far from completion.

Nevertheless, in the “country of a thousand hills” that has become that of a thousand mass graves, the earth has produced these sculptures from hell. I felt compelled to describe this macabre dance: bodies petrified in eerie postures, bent legs, arms outstretched, dislocated heads… Men, women, children offering a last gesture of tenderness as a pathetic shield against barbaric killers that buried the people they had fatally wounded when they were still alive.

This story was shot in December 1997.