NEWS
Rwandan Daughters.
April 7th 25 years ago marked the anniversary of one of the most horrible genocides in modern memory. The Rwandan Genocide took place over 100 days in 1994, where over one million Rwandan people were murdered. The systematic degradation, rounding up, and finally murder of over 70% of the Tutsi population by Hutu majority government remains a painful scar in the country’s history, and lives on amongst the population who are still recovering from the violence. The Rwandan Daughters project is a photography project worked on by German photographer Olaf Heine, and the organizations Ora Kinderhilfe. For the past three years, he has been documenting 80 victims of rape during the genocide, and their children. Many women were raped during the genocide, many died from AIDS related diseases or were forced out of their communities due to the stigma around their rape by Hutu supporters. This project is a powerful portrayal of their lived experience, featuring mothers and children that must find ways to reconcile their trauma standing shoulder to shoulder.