Marie Béatrice Umutesi is a Rwandan writer, NGO worker, peace activist and refugee living in Belgium.
[1] Born in Byumba, Rwanda in 1959 to a moderate Hutu family she studied sociology in university before going on to work in rural development.
As a Hutu woman she was forced to flee to escape the Tutsi genocide of the Hutus, and she took refuge in the present day DRC surviving numerous attacks from the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1996.
[1] Her memoir of her experience as a refugee, originally written in French called, Fuir ou mourir au Zaire.
Le vécu d'une réfugiée Rwandaise(English title: Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire), has been translated into half a dozen languages.
In 1993, Umutesi began a project supporting women in Byumba; at the same time, the Tutsi rebels reached her family town.
The signing of the Arusha Accords seemed to signal the return to peace and the end of the Genocide of the Hutus until the assassination of President Habyarimana reignited the conflict.
Umutesi was able to evacuate some of her family but was again attacked by the RPF at Gitarama; then, they fled to Cyangugu and from Gikongoro, where she narrowly escaped death.
When the camp at Tingi-Tingi was destroyed, Umutesi fled again, crossing the Lubutu River and encountering shooting before arriving in the village of Obilo.
Umutesi maintains the apolitical nature of her written work, choosing to focus on the humanitarian effect on individuals, particularly women, caught up in the storm of the ethnic conflict.