Victims and former executioners, sitting side by side, sometimes hand in hand. Thirty years after the outbreak of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, which left more than eight hundred thousand dead between April and July 1994 and during which between one hundred thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand women were raped, according to the United Nations, Jan Banning focuses his lens on these men and women who suffered or perpetrated the horror, but who nevertheless learned to live together again. The 70-year-old Dutch photographer thus revisits from the angle of compassion the two major themes that run through his work: the traces left by conflicts on bodies and minds, and criminal justice.
For a month, in January 2024, he surveyed, with journalist Dick Wittenberg, 71, the districts of Rubavu and Karongi, on the shores of Lake Kivu, as well as the center and east of the country. There they met around thirty Rwandans who had participated in community sociotherapy programs. This method, developed in Rwanda since 2005 by several NGOs, treats post-traumatic stress at the scale of a village or community. Its objective: to repair the social bonds destroyed by the genocide, by helping participants regain their dignity and cohabit.
During group sessions of ten to fifteen people, victims and former killers can express their suffering, discuss and, if they wish, ask for or grant forgiveness. The approach has already benefited more than sixty thousand people in the country, where, despite the policy of unity and reconciliation advocated by the government, divisions remain deep. “Genocide represents the worst that humans can do. And yet, it seems that even then, the men can find a way to reconcile. And that’s something truly extreme,” says Jan Banning.
“Very difficult first therapy sessions”
In their homes, at the local cabaret or in banana fields, survivors and former executioners look straight into the lens, looking solemn. Jan Banning lights them with a flash: the harsh light highlights the shadows on the brown walls, the dirt roads and the large green leaves. “I wanted strong contrasts, echoing the history of Rwanda and its dark side,” slips the photographer. Dick Wittenberg collected their testimonies. They retrace all the facets of this local genocide: neighbors killing neighbors, broken marriages between Hutu and Tutsi, machete or club attacks, house burnings and cattle thefts. Then, for the survivors: the indelible scars, the fear of leaving home, the depression, the desire for revenge. Then the gacaca, these popular courts which, between 2005 and 2012, tried nearly two million people for acts linked to the genocide. Finally, the return of the former executioners, upon their release from prison, on the same hill, in the same village, sometimes a few steps from the houses of their victims.
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