When the killings started, our family was not aware that Tutsi were the target. Therefore, we had no time to plan our escape. Trouble began in another part of our sector [area], in Nyagasambu, but soon spread to our cellule [town]. People were chased by the interhamwe who had been brought in from Bugesera. They assembled everyone in a group. When it came to our family, Hutu residents from both cellules tried to pass us off as Hutu by saying that ‘there was no tutsiship in our family.’ Those neighbors who we thought were trying to defend us told us to escape to a neighboring village. We left. We realized later that they were not trying to defend us. There was pressure on them to kill us and they did not want to kill us themselves. So they sent us to be killed to another village…

My brother Theoneste went to the nearest village. But the people there refused to kill him.…The next day he came home and went straightaway to a roadblock surrounded by interhamwe. He told them to kill him themselves and end the story there. These interhamwe brought him back to the house. They told us that he had to be killed in order to prove that the whole family were not agents of the FPR (Rwandan Patriotic Front). They left him in the house, knowing that he would not try to escape. During this time messages were coming in every hour, urging our family to kill Theoneste. […]