Overflowing Jails

After the Rwandan genocide, more then 40 000 people were in jail, most of them Hutu. There were so many that every jail was full way past capacity. The main prison in Kigali that was built to hold 1600 held 8000 people and the population was growing every day. There were many that were guilty and had participated in the genocide, but there were also many innocent people being held in jail. About 4 prisoners died each day of suffocation.

It is so crazy that the jails were so full that people died from suffocation. The picture I looked at was a picture of a jail cell that was absolutely crammed full of people. And many of those people were innocent!

When the genocide was over, there were many Hutus that fled to neighbouring countries because they were scared of revenge while many Tutsis returned home. The new Tutsi authorities agreed that those responsible for the genocide had to be punished, but many of the worst offenders had already fled.

The fact that people were suffocating in jail because there were so many people is what really hit me about the description of this picture. There shouldn't be so many people in jail that people are suffocating! This fact speaks volumes about the genocide and how so many people participated in it.

Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 207 Print.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. (Pamphlet) New York: Aperture, 2000. 12 Print