Carl Wilkens an American citizen who witnessed the Rwandan Tutsi genocide of 1994 will share his experience at Bellarmine University on Tuesday, September 27 at the Amy Cralle Theater.
Carl Wilkens is the former head of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International (ADRA) in Rwanda that chose to remain in the country during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
Wilkens sent his wife and children away and remained to help prevent the massacre of 400 Rwandan orphans at the hands of the Hutu militia.
He is the author of I’m Not Leaving (2011), a memoir about his experience while in Rwanda in 1994, and was featured in Frontline’s “Ghosts of Rwanda”.
His humanitarian work has been recognized with a 2005 Medal of Valor from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Wilkens’ visit is cosponsored by the QEP and the Bellarmine chapter of STAND, a student anti-genocide coalition.
Jean de Dieu Mucyo, the Executive Secretary of Rwanda National Commission against Genocide had recently in an interview with igihe.com recommended on Wilkens’s genocide testimonies and documentation.
Mucyo said, “wilkens came to Rwanda during the 15th genocide commemoration and gave us testimony about his life in Rwanda during the genocide. His speeches and writings are really based on the truth about the 1994 mayhem”.
Bellarmine University is an independent, private, Catholic university in Louisville Kentucky. The liberal-arts institution opened on October 3, 1950, as Bellarmine College, established by Archbishop John A. Floersh of the Archdiocese of Louisville and named after the Cardinal Saint Robert Bellarmine.
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