In October 1993, Tutsi soldiers assassinated Burundi’s Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye. The killing plunged the country into a spate of ethnic violence that would ultimately claim the lives of 300,000 people.
Deo Niyizonkiza, then a 20-year-old medical student, heard the news of the president’s death from a friend at the hospital where he was studying. The friend warned that Hutu militiamen were approaching the hospital, and they wanted revenge. Niyizonkiza, a Tutsi, ran to his dorm room and hid under his bed. When he came out after the killers had left, piles of bodies were lying on the floor. “There was the smell of burned meat,” Niyizonkiza recounted. “There were piles and piles of bodies.”
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Watch Ole Schell’s remarkable documentary about the life of Deo Niyizonkiza in the video below.
