In 1994, from April through mid-July, the Tutsi population of Rwanda lost approximately 500,000 of its members due to the genocide provided by the more populace Hutus. It was a devastating mass extermination that included rapes of thousands of Tutsi women all predicated on a long-standing ethnic battle between the two groups. Estimates of the final death toll have ranged to 20 per cent of the country's population.
  

 

As a nine-year-old, Emmanuel Habimana heard his father tell him to run - and returned moments later to see blood pouring from his father's mouth - gunned down by a Hutu. Habimana lost eight of his 13 family members during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and he considers himself lucky because so many more lost everyone.
 

Emmanuel Habimana-is the co-director of work-in-progress, The Children Who Lived, a documentary about the lives of orphans in post-genocide Rwanda. The documentary is funded by National Geographic and scheduled to be completed this coming fall. In 2010 he traveled to the United States where he spent five months co-producing his documentary at NET Television in Lincoln, Nebraska and speaking at institutions that ranged from middle schools in Nebraska to Human Rights Watch in Washington, DC. He will graduate from Kigali Independent University with a degree in law in 2013.

 

 Please join us on Thursday to listen to Mr. Habimana's
incredible story of loss and hope.