A woman holds her dog as civilian families evacuate April 11, 1994 from Kigali, Rwanda. The majority of French and Belgian nationals living in Rwanda were evacuated by Belgian commandos. Within 100 days, over a million were massacred. (Photo by Getty Images – Scott Peterson/Liaison)
They came with guns, uniforms, and promises. The children, clutching their mothers, looked up at the Belgian soldiers with wide, desperate eyes. Surely, the white men with blue helmets would save them.
Instead, on April 11, 1994, they drove away—with their dogs and their dignity—leaving behind the babies, the mothers, the old men, and the bloodbath that would follow.
For the Tutsi who had fled to Eto Kicukiro, a renowned technical college in Kigali at the time, it was supposed to be a haven, a final refuge in a country tearing itself apart. Instead, it became a death trap. Among them was 74-year-old Speciose Mukayiranga, who had already survived decades of persecution.
She had seen neighbors turn into killers, and killers disguise themselves as neighbors. But nothing prepared her for the betrayal of that day—when the soldiers they trusted handed them over to the very executioners they were running from.
A History of Being Hunted
For Mukayiranga and thousands of others, genocide didn’t start in 1994—it was decades in the making. “From 1959, we never knew peace,” she said.
That year marked the beginning of targeted killings, expulsions, and systemic discrimination against the Tutsi—sown by Belgian colonial rule, which had deliberately divided Rwandans along ethnic lines to weaken their unity under the monarchy.
By 1962, young Speciose was already aware of the hatred. She was visiting her aunt in what is now Gicumbi District when she first saw people being hunted and killed for being Tutsi. It was the beginning of a long nightmare.
In 1992, she was attacked in her own home in Kicukiro—surviving only by a miracle. The following year, 1993, she warned her husband she believed she would be killed. That warning changed everything.
“I decided to send our five children into hiding,” she said. “I took them to Butare, hoping they’d be safer there.”
Two of them died. The other three managed to escape across the border into Burundi—saved by strangers who risked their lives.
“By 1994, it was just the two of us left—me and my husband. No children.”
The Road to Eto
As April dawned, the tension in Kicukiro became unbearable. Grenades exploded every night. Militias, the interahamwe, stalked the roads. Speciose and her neighbors could no longer sleep. They sought refuge at the Christus school, but were chased away by local officials who claimed they were disturbing the peace.
They returned home with nowhere else to go.
Then, on the night of April 6, the plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down. By morning on April 7, Rwanda was on fire.
Killings erupted across the country. Speciose’s priestly brother at Christus was murdered. Her younger brother and his children were butchered in Gatenga.
“We were hearing death in every direction,” she said. “Grenades. Screams. Names of the dead.”
There was no water. No electricity. Their Belgian neighbor had fled, but his houseboy secretly gave them water. They were hungry, cut off, and hunted.
By April 9, it was worse than hell.
Their own neighbors—the ones they had danced with at weddings and helped bury the dead—came with guns and machetes. They looted, set fire to homes, fought over children’s shoes, and slaughtered with impunity.
“We recognized the voices,” Speciose said, her voice breaking. “People we had shared meals with. People we had once called family.”
That night, they made the desperate decision to flee their home forever.
April 10: The Last Hope
On April 10, Speciose and her husband reached Eto Kicukiro. Others had also come from all directions—men, women, babies, elders—hoping the Belgian soldiers stationed there would protect them.
“We believed we were on UN territory,” she said. “We believed we had a chance.”
Speciose breaks down when speaking about the ordeal at Eto Kicukiro
The next day, April 11, senior officials came to Eto. They began singling out Hutu who had fled alongside the Tutsi—not all Hutu had supported the genocide, and some had tried to escape the violence too. These were quietly removed, spared from what was coming.
Speciose’s husband asked the Belgian soldiers what would happen to them.
“They said, ‘Don’t worry. Your brothers will protect you. We’re leaving.’ That’s when we knew. We were finished.”
Then came the sickening final act.
The Belgians began selecting those with white spouses—foreigners and their families.
“It was racial,” Speciose said. “Anyone white or linked to a white person was chosen.” She remembered a Hutu man who was married to a white woman.
“My husband told him, ‘Go. Save yourself.’ The man replied, ‘Why would I run? Why are you the ones dying?’”
Moments later, the soldiers started their engines.
Young Tutsi men threw themselves in front of the vehicles, holding up passports, crying. “Our boys clung to the trucks. They showed documents. They pleaded. They were beaten and thrown off.”
“They took the dogs,” she said. “But they left the babies.”
There was an infant, only four days old, belonging to a neighbor. “They left it behind. No Tutsi was spared. That is genocide. The Belgians committed genocide that day at Eto.”
April 11: The Day the Sky Fell
“That day,” she says, voice heavy with grief, “is when Rwanda was truly abandoned.”
No child, no elder, no mother was spared. The Interahamwe came with grenades and machetes. They stormed Eto in the rain, slicing, hacking, screaming. Survivors fled blindly—many into traps, others straight into roadblocks.
Speciose was herded with hundreds toward Nyanza hill in Kicukiro, surrounded by killers. “We were stripped. Beaten. Made to walk in mud, barefoot, while children, even babies, were slaughtered beside us.”
Bagosora himself, one of the masterminds of the genocide, was seen preparing the massacre site. At the top of the hill, the Tutsi were lined up, cursed, spat on, and accused of killing Habyarimana. “We were told we deserved to die. That we were snakes. Cockroaches.”
They were executed in waves. Grenades first. Then bullets. Then machetes to finish off the wounded.
“I was lying in a sea of blood,” she recalled. “The blood of Tutsi soaked the hill from top to the road below. The rain washed it through the town.”
Her husband was killed next to her. She survived by going limp, playing dead, half-buried in the bodies of her people. Looters came afterward, prying rings from fingers. One old man cursed them, saying, “Even in hell, you dogs will not find peace.”
A newborn died with its mother. Its brother, too. Only the father lived.
The Miracle of Survival
They used everything—machetes, hammers, clubs, spears. There were no weapons they wouldn’t use.
“No one can explain what it means to survive something like that,” said Speciose, choking with emotion. “I speak for myself—but I speak for the dead too. We are here because of God’s hand and the Inkotanyi. That’s it.”
The following day, on April 12, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPF/A) arrived.
Of the more than 4,000 people who sought refugee inside Eto Kicukiro, the RPF rebels fought through to Rebero, saving the less than 100 who had made it through the night and survived.
While the massacre at Eto-Kicukiro unfolded, the same horror played out across Rwanda. That same day, over 10,000 Tutsi were killed in Ruhuha, Bugesera District. Thousands more were slaughtered in Gashora and nearby regions.
April 11 wasn’t just the day the Belgians left.
It was the day the world closed its eyes. And the sky fell on Rwanda.
