Jan Grarup, a celebrated Danish war photographer has been put on the spot allegedly for ‘magnifying’ his role in a number of events including the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Grarup is an award-winning photojournalist in Denmark.
The 54-year-old boasts a vast back catalog, having covered war and conflict in many countries including Rwanda and most recently Ukraine. He has over the years recounted his experiences to packed audiences and published books about them.
However, a new probe into his work has poked holes in some of his claims, dismissing some parts of his stories as mere attempts to put himself in the limelight.
Carried out by his fellow Danish journalists Helle Maj and Jørn Stjerneklar, the probe reviewed the photographer’s work during and after the genocide in Rwanda, as well as places like Ukraine.
"In September this year, it emerged that Jan Grarup had repeatedly lied his way to his career as a star photographer. First came the revelations about placing himself in places he wasn't in the war in Ukraine,” reads part of the report.
The document goes further to note that he sometimes told stories of seeing dead bodies he hadn't seen and magnified his own role in world-historical events in places like the West Bank in Palestine and South Africa.
At some point, the report talked about "serious falsehoods” in how Grarup portrays himself in his coverage of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Among other things, he is questioned for claiming to have visited difficult places which were being controlled by the genocidal forces.
While it is true that the photographer was one of the few press corps who were in Rwanda in the immediate aftermath of the Genocide in 1994, Grarup claims in his catalogues that he at times had to negotiate his way through roadblocks mounted by the Interahamwe militia.
"If Jan Grarup travelled into genocide-controlled areas and experienced church massacres hours after they happened, then he was either a murderer – or he was dead,” reads a comment by Tom Ndahiro, an independent genocide documentarian, as quoted in the report.
One of the places he claims to have visited amidst killings include Nyamata.
In an interview with The New Times, Ndahiro discounted this, saying that the killings in Nyamata were committed in April, while available records say Grarup came to Rwanda in May.
"So it is not true when he says he witnessed the killings or was at the scene a few hours after they were committed,” he says referring to excerpts from the Danish’s catalogue.
Ndahiro, who participated in the liberation struggle, says he worked closely with media corps who covered Rwanda during the Genocide.
"I accompanied the first group of journalists that went to Ntarama in Nyamata when the RPF conquered the area. What we saw depicted that the killings had happened earlier in April, because there were skeletons and bones,” he told The New Times.
The report notes that Grarup's "grand narrative about his horrific experiences during the genocide is pure fantasy. Jan Grarup was only in Rwanda for a total of 36 hours, from May 20 to the morning of May 21 before sunset.”
In 2019, on his return to Rwanda, Grarup is said to have told a number of lies in a an article he published about his trip in Politiken, a leading daily published in Danish.
He had travelled to Rwanda during the 25th commemoration of the Genocide.
For example, he claimed that he took part in the exhumation of remains of victims of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Kicukiro. Kigali. This was however refuted by Adeline Umutoni, a Rwandan journalist who worked as his ‘fixer’ during his trip.
Umutoni says that she only informed him that some genocide victims had been discovered and took him there to witness and possibly get interviews as a journalist.
In addition to this, since Umutoni is a genocide survivor, Grarup interviewed her about her story, but to her dismay, he changed a number of things to exaggerate the story, including making claims that she separated from her family during the Genocide and never got to see them again.
"Jan clearly knows that several years after the genocide, I met my father, and later on my mother. Of course, I was not sure if they were still alive before we re-united, but there is no way I could tell Jan that we never met again,” Umutoni says.
Furthermore, his reportage on the Ukraine-Russia war was disputed by his two Ukrainian fixers, according to the expose by the Danish journalists.
"They say that Grarup did not attend 50 funerals on the trip, he attended only three. He didn't sit in a café three hours before it was bombed - he sat there the day before. He didn't witness an attack with 40 dead soldiers - he only heard about it. And he didn't even fire a mortar shell at the Russians - he just wrote a greeting on the shell. He just wants to draw attention to himself and his upcoming book,” reads the report in part.
Politiken, the media outlet he works for released a statement about him, noting that he admitted that "his memory has failed him in connection with several stories” regarding how he covered the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
However, the expose indicates that his continuous change of the story both in his write-ups and in his speaking engagements point to a deliberate effort by the photographer make himself more important than the story.