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After genocide, before peace
Wednesday, 19 April 2006

Published in The Guardian  

Genocide in Rwanda had been under way for 48 hours when 36-year-old Monique was told by a friend she would be killed. Monique fled, but her 12-year-old niece, Geraldine, was raped that night, and took years to die. "Aids is the second genocide," says Monique, who lost 27 members of her close family in 1994. That doesn't include her grandfather, who was murdered in 1963; her aunt, raped and murdered in 1973; and her father, attacked and interrogated in 1990, who later died from a heart attack. Monique's family provides a gruesome snapshot