On May 3, 1994 as genocidal atrocities continued to unfold around the country, horrible events took place in Rusizi district as students and children participated in the killings.
In an awful incident at Groupe Scolaire Gihundwe, a local school in Rusizi District, three students called government soldiers and policemen to come to the school to check on the Tutsi who were hiding there.
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When they arrived, they gathered the Tutsi and killed many of them in the students’ kitchen using guns and grenades. There were a number of survivors, however, who managed to flee to a local football stadium and surrounding places.
In Butare, Bambiro areas also experienced the killers’ onslaught on May 3, 1994, and again, the killings involved the participation of at least one youngster, a 10-year-old boy called Montfort, who raped children of his age and then killed them.
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Records from the Ministry of National Unity and Civic Engagement show that after the Genocide, he was arrested and imprisoned but released later since he was a minor when he committed the crimes.
The Genocide against the Tutsi did not start immediately in Bambiro, since the leaders of the area first took time to mobilise the people for the ill cause.
April 19, 1994 is when the killings started in the area after the speech that the then president Theodore Sindikubwabo made in Butare, telling people that they were acting as if killing did not concern them. After the speech, the Tutsi started to be hunted down, killed, and their houses were burned.
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As a result, many people fled in search of refuge. The hunt for Tutsi continued, but in the midst of it all, the killers told them that women and children would not be killed but would be protected at Bambiro.
Many women and girls went to the area, as well as young boys who were dressed as girls by their parents.
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On May 1, 1994, the number of Tutsi who fled to the place was around 454 women and children.
On May 3, 1994, the killers came with traditional weapons of all kinds, wearing banana leaves. Whistling, they surrounded Bambiro and started to kill the Tutsi. They first harassed the parents, stripped their clothes off, tortured them, and then killed them using machetes.