The Murambi Technical School, now known as the Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre, is situated near the town of Murambi in southern Rwanda.

Description

This memorial center is one of six major centres in Rwanda that commemorate the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. The others are the Kigali Memorial Centre, Ntarama Memorial Centre and others at Nyamata Genocide Memorial Centre, Bisesero Memorial Centre and Nyarubuye.Sites mémoriaux du génocide : Nyamata, Murambi, Bisesero et Gisozi
UNESCO, Retrieved 2 March 2015 This was the site of a

massacre A massacre is the killing of a large number of people or animals, especially those who are not involved in any fighting or have no way of defending themselves. A massacre is generally considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when per ...

during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. When the killings started,

Tutsi The Tutsi (), or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi (the other two being the largest Bantu ethnic ...

s in the region tried to hide at a local church. However, the bishop and mayor lured them into a trap by sending them to the technical school, claiming that French troops would protect them there. On April 16, 1994, an average of 65,000 Tutsis traveled to the school. Once the victims arrived, no water or food was provided. This was done to ensure the people were too weak to resist. After defending themselves for a few days using stones, the Tutsi were overrun on April 21. The French soldiers disappeared and the school was attacked by

Hutu The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the p ...

Interahamwe The Interahamwe ( or ) is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND ...

militiamen. Some 20,000 Tutsi were murdered at the school, and almost all of those who managed to escape were killed the next day when they tried to hide in a nearby church. The death toll of around 50,000 given by the government is not supported by the number of bodies exhumed, even considering yet to be opened graves and unburied bodies. According to the guide at the memorial, the French brought in heavy equipment to dig several pits where many thousands of bodies were placed. They then placed a volleyball court over the mass graves in an attempt to hide what happened. Among the bodies currently displayed are those of children and infants. Only 34 people are thought to have survived the massacre in Murambi. The memorial was founded on 21 April 1995. The site contains 50,000 graves.Murambi Memorial
GencideArchiveRwanda.org, Retrieved 3 March 2016 The school building is now a

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

exhibiting the skeletons and

mummified A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay furt ...

bodies of some of the thousands of people killed in Gikongoro Province in 1994. In his study of Rwandan genocide memorials, Timothy Longman argues that although the bodies on display at Murambi are presented as those of people killed on site, in reality they are bodies brought to Murambi from throughout the surrounding area. Those killed at Murambi were buried in mass graves on site in 1996.Longman, Timothy. ''Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda''. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 6-7.

References

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External links

Official Web site
* dark tourism Rwandan genocide Rwandan genocide museums Museums in Rwanda Mummies Museums established in 1995 1995 establishments in Rwanda