The untold story of how nearly 1,000 children were rescued from Rwanda during the bloodiest and most chaotic days of the genocide is finally emerging three decades later. Aid workers risked their lives to save these children, mostly orphans, in a series of Swiss humanitarian convoys that brought them to safety in neighboring Burundi.
Many of the children were injured or had witnessed their families being massacred during the 100 days of systematic slaughter. Between April and July 1994, around one million people, primarily from the Tutsi minority, were brutally killed by the army and Hutu extremists from the Interahamwe militia.
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, who was 15 when she was smuggled out, shares her firsthand account of the little-known operation in her new book, *The Convoy*. AFP has also located other survivors from the convoys, some of whom were adopted or grew up abroad.
Umubyeyi Mairesse recounts being hidden in the back of a truck under a sheet, with orphans sitting on top of her and her mother to hide them from Hutu checkpoints. “The Rwandan authorities only allowed children under 12 to be transported on the packed convoys run by the Swiss charity Terre des hommes (Tdh) — ‘People of the Earth’ in English,” she explains.
In her book, Umubyeyi Mairesse describes the terror of holding their breath at roadblocks, hoping the fear on the faces of the bandaged and traumatized children wouldn’t give them away as militiamen inspected the trucks.
“It was chaotic,” she says, having spent years piecing together the testimonies of the “children of the convoys,” now scattered across the globe. These children were rescued thanks to the bravery of aid workers, nuns, journalists, a diplomat, and a priest.
Some of the children had already been in Rwandan orphanages before the genocide began, while many others were the children of Tutsis killed in the massacres. “Terre des hommes found itself facing an unbelievable situation,” says Jean-Luc Imhof, a longtime Rwanda specialist for the charity.
“They were responsible for more than 1,000 of these children,” Jean-Luc Imhof explained to AFP, referring to the aid workers, “and with the war and genocide raging around them, the situation was completely chaotic.” He described the children as mostly between five and ten years old, although “lots were really young, some under three.” Many had been wounded, including by machetes.
As the Tutsi rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), who ultimately ended the massacres, advanced, the army and the Hutu-led Interahamwe militia, sensing defeat, “became crazy,” Imhof said.
The first convoy in early June, organized by Terre des hommes (Tdh) with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), got safely through to Burundi.
However, Imhof noted that a second convoy on June 18, which proceeded without ICRC assistance, “was even riskier.” He recounted, “The convoy went into the incredible unknown — they were risking their lives at every checkpoint. The soldiers made the children get out… their lives were hanging by very little.”
These were deeply traumatized children, many of whom had “seen their families massacred” and carried their trauma with them. “Their normal had become escaping death multiple times a day,” Imhof added.
This was the experience for Claire Umutoni and one of her sisters, who escaped to Burundi on a July 3 convoy — a journey she still vividly recalls. “We received a phone call around April 20 from someone whose voice my father recognized,” she said. “He knew it was one of the dignitaries from the town of Butare, who told him: ‘Your time has come.'”
Her father then ordered his five daughters to flee, and at just 17, Umutoni found herself responsible for her sisters as they were chased from one hiding place to the next. Their parents were later murdered with “unimaginable cruelty,” she said.
“Bombs were falling near the school where we were staying with several orphans,” Umutoni recalled from her home in Canada. “The children had all sorts of injuries, both physical and emotional. It was terrible.”
– Clubs and butcher knives –
The terror only intensified when they joined the rescue convoy.
“I remember that on the road, there were many of the killers who had carried out genocide fleeing with hammers and machetes… It was chaos because the FPR was at the gates of Butare, but there were still perpetrators who wanted to kill the Tutsis,” said Umutoni.
At four of the checkpoints she remembers the militiamen armed with “clubs, butcher knives and grenades”.
Umutoni and her sisters made it out and were eventually taken in by their aunts.
Her aunt sent her to Canada in 1999 “to start a new life, to start over. And I chose not to spiral into madness,” said Umutoni, who now works in Canada’s Privy Council Office and is a mother to “three beautiful children”.
She returned to Rwanda for the first time in 2008 to bury her parents, who had finally been identified.
– ‘Awakening’ –
Umubyeyi Mairesse says the 30th anniversary of the genocide is an “awakening” for many of the survivors.
“It is also the start of a broader reconnection for these convoy children — those who were very young (when they were rescued and who) are finally learning the story. It’s powerful,” she said.
Since her book came out, several aid workers and convoy children she was not able to track down have contacted her.
“When someone contacts me, I explain that I can send them photos, and we try to identify which convoy they were on.”
Several of the convoy children were reunited with their rescuers for the first time at the Shoah Memorial in Paris in June.
When survivor Nadine Umutoni Ndekezi, who now lives in Belgium, began speaking about her memories of the convoy, the emotion was palpable.
“We are here… because you did not give up,” she said, thanking the aid workers and journalists for their courage.
– ‘Our heroes’ –
Umutoni Ndekezi, who was nine at the time, told of how she came across a little boy in an orphanage in Rwanda that she used to look after back home. He had bad head wounds.
He could no longer speak or walk. “He had forgotten everything. I thought that if adults could do that, then I did not want to become an adult… I lost trust in them,” she sobbed.
But thanks to the people who rescued them, Umutoni Ndekezi — now a mental health social worker — said she “regained hope”.
“They stayed true to their values and put their own lives at risk,” she told the audience.
“The boy’s parents were exterminated. He left with you on June 18 — I can never thank you enough, you saved our humanity and gave us the strength to move forward.”
Other survivors concurred.
“They are our heroes, what they did was incredible,” Claire Umutoni told AFP.
“I chose to live in the name of those innocents who were murdered,” she declared. “To remain dignified and stand up to the killers” who wanted to wipe her and her sisters from the face of the Earth.
