Canadian Genocide researchers arrive

Renowned Canadian professor of Holocaust studies, Amanda Grzyb, accompanied by five graduate students from the University of Western Ontario (UWO), was expected to arrive in Kigali yesterday evening with plans to learn more about the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.Grzyb, a researcher on media and genocide, particularly the Jewish Holocaust, Rwanda, and the Darfur region, brought the five students on a twelve-day learning experience, as part of her new course on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.“For the last three years, I taught Holocaust classes that involved trips to sites of memory in Poland,” says Dr. Grzyb in a statement. “I am very pleased that my students can travel to Rwanda to learn about the 1994 Genocide (against the Tutsi) from local educators, survivors, scholars, and memorial guides,” Grzyb said in a statement.Apart from visiting the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi, as well as the Ntarama and Nyamata centres, the team is expected to hold debating sessions with students of Kigali Institute of Education, led by Prof Shirley Rendell, Director of the Centre for Gender, Culture and Development at KIE.Speakers at the panel will include, Jean de Dieu Mucyo, the Executive Director of the Commission for the Fight against Genocide, Senator Wellars Gasamagera, as well as professors from various institutions.Prof Rendell said she looks forward to Grzyb’s visit, which will be her second since 2010 when she gave a public lecture titled “Media Failures during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi”.“Rwanda’s story is quite unique; whereas there are Jews living in Israel, Poland, Germany and other places of the world, genocide survivors in Rwanda must live peacefully alongside genocide perpetrators,” Rendell observed.“This unique process of conflict resolution and reconciliation process is what Canadian students can learn from the discussions that they will hold with over 85 students that are studying transitional justice and conflict resolution studies at our campus”.

National

Canadian Genocide researchers arrive