How do you tell the story of a genocide?

Using 360-imagery to convey the feeling from a Rwanda genocide memorial site

If someone missed it, this April marks 20 years since the Rwanda Genocide. Two decades. It’s not long ago that close to a million people were slaughtered, as the international community turned its back. But how can you make people understand what really happened, as the massacres kept going in 1994?

It’s nothing but a horrible visit, to the church at Nyamata. You can sense that something’s amiss as you get close to the building, cracked windows hinting at the cause. But once inside, it gets downright painful. Not simply because you know what happened here (thousands of people slaughtered with machetes), but because of the fact that it suddenly becomes tangible. You can feel it.

Clothes from the genocide victims are piled on the tiers, and immediately brings about a sense of identification. That t-shirt could’ve been my brother’s. That shiny belt could’ve been my girlfriend’s, worn on a summer night in Sweden.

-The worst thing I experienced, a moment where I truly realized the magnitude of the genocide, was when visiting the church at Nyamata. A pair of red shoes were visible among all of the clothes, obviously shoes from a child. At that point I realized that no one hade escaped from the hate, Ingvar Carlsson (who led the UN Rwanda commission) said a few weeks ago in an interview with me.

I also saw children’s shoes among the clothes. But not just one pair. There were many.

This is where it gets tricky, as a journalist. How do I transfer this eeriness into a story for someone else to experience?

The hard part about telling the story about an atrocity is conveying that sense, and giving people the chills. Make them feel the feeling of walking inside this church in Rwanda — this museum of the macabre — which I am convinced would pierce through the thickest of skins if they just got the chance. No visitor could leave untouched by this memorial — whose very clothes and skulls tell a silent but at the same time roaring story about what human hate can amount to, if left to fester. But texts and images about this place just doesn’t do it justice.

Instead of putting it to words, or trying to portray the site in a few photographs, I’ve tried to convey the silent story of Nyamata through a 360-reportage. To let you not only read about, but truly wander through, this memorial — bearing witness to one of this world’s worst genocides.

As if you were there.

See the reportage at nyamata.martinedstrom.com