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The Documentary: A Good Man in Rwanda

The Documentary: A Good Man in Rwanda: A Good Man in Rwanda

Mbaye Diagne - Senegalese Capt

05/04/2014 GMT

A Good Man in Rwanda

BBC World Service - The Documentary, A Good Man in Rwanda, A Good Man in Rwanda

How Senegalese captain Mbaye Diagne saved hundreds of lives during the Rwandan genocide

The unsung hero of Rwanda’s genocide - Captain Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese UN peacekeeper, who saved the children of murdered Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and others.

On 7 April 1994, Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese captain working with the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Kigali, helped save the lives of five children. They were the children of Rwanda’s moderate Hutu Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, who had just been murdered by Hutu extremists.  
 
Mbaye Diagne was to carry out many further acts of heroism during the genocide, which claimed the lives of well over half a million people, mainly ethnic Tutsis.  Most were bludgeoned and hacked to death with clubs and machetes at the behest of the Hutu government which had just taken power. 
 
Mark Doyle travels to Rwanda, Senegal and Canada to meet the people who knew Mbaye Diagne. He meets the man who commanded the UN peacekeeping force, General Romeo Dallaire. He meets Diagne’s wife and one of his closest comrades in arms. And, he meets the people whose lives he saved, some of whom have never told their stories before.  

"I saw evil in Rwanda in 1994" says Mark Doyle, "but I also saw extraordinary acts of courage by people who simply knew what was right and what was wrong.  Mbaye Diagne was just such a person – a good man in Rwanda".

(Photo: Captain Mbaye Diagne. Credit: RNW Africa)

BBC World Service

Mark Doyle tells the story of one of the unsung heroes of Rwanda’s genocide, Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese UN peacekeeper.

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