Nobody Knows What Happened in Rwanda: Hope and Horror in the 1994 Genocide

April 6, 1994. That date would be seared forever in the memory of Jean Jacques Bosco, a university student in Rwanda at the beginning of the genocide. In just a few days, he and his fellow students saw the end of the world they knew. Friends turned against friends. Innocent students were massacred. Desperate to save all he could, Bosco led a group of students in a dangerous escape through an unfriendly civil war zone, risking everything to find safety and freedom. No One Else Knows What Really Happened in Rwanda is the searing account from one who grew up there, who intimately knew the political tensions that birthed the civil war and the ensuing genocide. Bosco's account is an important addition to the stories of the Diaspora, and sheds light on the suffering of a people who lived through war, fled as refugees, and now live with the identity of traitors in their homeland. For him and many others, the war never really ended. As they continue to struggle to clear their names, they hope for justice and a new beginning in the much-loved land of their birth. This book speaks not just to the horror of war, but to the unquenchable human spirit that rises above racial division to see the humanity in one another. It is a tribute to courage in the darkest of times. It speaks to the importance of faith in one another, and to the love for one's homeland in the midst of political chaos and destruction.

Jean Jacques Bosco grew up and lived in Rwanda until the age of 28, where he had an enjoyable but short-lived career, first as a high school teacher at Rambura Secondary School and then as a television journalist. He studied intermittently TV journalism in Belgium and France from 1990-1993. The author holds a BA in Philosophy and Master's Degree from the University of Lomé in Togo and holds several diplomas in Education, TV Journalism, and English as a second language. His youthful sense of hope and optimism would soon be dashed as he found himself fleeing genocide in 1994 and living in exile. During his first 2 years of exile, he had hopes of one day returning to his homeland but again watched how his countrymen, this time his Hutu kinsmen, desperately faced a second Rwandan genocide in the Congo DRC in 1996. He then exiled in Canada, only to learn there was an international warrant to prosecute him as a participant in the 1994 genocide. Fear, trauma and uncertainty were part of his life for 9 years before it could be confirmed that the accusations that he was a war criminal were baseless. A life-long learner, Jean Jacques Bosco is concurrently completing a BA in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, Canada and an LLB in Criminal Law online at the University of London in England. In Canada, Jean Jacques Bosco has owned and operated a Soccer Academy since 2000, and he continues to be a community soccer volunteer. He has a family and 3 children.