Rwanda is now demanding that France arrest their former first lady — Agathe Habyarimana. This is the latest in the an on-going political conflict between France and Rwanda, where Rwanda is attempting to extradite and prosecute war criminals, and France continues to put pressure on the African nation for the role they believe President Kagame played in the former President’s death (just prior to the genocide).
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families
When you deal with books on genocide, you’re usually looking at one of three different formats. The most commonly seen is probably the third person objective variety; the second is the first person narrative (the survivors tale); and the third is the fictionalized novel.
The last one is useful to those who study Holocaust/genocide literature, but of lesser value to those who want to study the dynamics and outcomes of a particular genocide. In We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, Philip Gourevitch manages to use his skills as a reporter to meld the third person narrative with eye-witness accounts to create a personal history of the Rwandan genocide that’s far more accessible than a traditional academic study.
What initially drew me into Gourevitch’s book is the fact that he and I share the same questions. Like myself, he wants to know, more than anything else, how such an atrocity can happen.
No doubt, the promise of material gain and living space did move some killers. But why hasn’t Bangladesh, or any other terribly poor and terribly crowded place of the many one might name, had a genocide? Over population doesn’t explain why hundreds of thousands of people agreed to murder nearly a million of their neighbors in the course of a few weeks. Nothing really explains that. [p.180]
He goes on to outline a laundry list of reasons that are at least marginally responsible for the sudden swell toward genocide – including precolonial inequalities, the hierarchical government, the Hamitic myth, the economic collapse of the 1980’s, the extremist Hutu Power, propaganda, superstition, ignorance, alcoholism, and any number of other factors that figure into the complex cultural soup that still exists in Rwanda today.
By using a series of visits to the country and interviewing those who took part in the genocide as well as the survivors, he manages to weave together a depiction that is both vivid and frightening. Unlike the Holocaust, where the victims are looking back at an atrocity that happened fifty or sixty years ago, Gourevitch is able to talk with people who are still struggling with what happened, and living in the state of uncertainty that follows any genocidal outbreak.
While the Rwandan genocide differed greatly from the Holocaust, the sense of separation, extremism, and fear are clearly palpable through Gourevitch’s interviews in a way that eerily echoes the past. It’s through this accessibility that we see how little has changed since those nationalistically turbulent days, and through this narrative, we can clearly see the cautionary signs of what we might expect as Darfur continues to deteriorate.
It’s this tangible quality that makes We Wish to Inform You a valuable book on modern genocide.
France sued over Rwanda
Four survivors of the Rwandan genocide are suing the French Government for being complicit in the murder and rape of Tutsis in 1994. The charges will require that the government release 105 documents pertaining to the case.
The four survivors say French troops committed crimes themselves, and also let Hutu killers enter refugee camps under their protection.
I don’t think they’ll have any trouble establishing that French Troops (and UN workers) allowed Hutu genocidaires to enter the refugee camps as its already been well documented.
Rwamakuba innocent
Reuters reported this morning that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has acquitted former Rwandan education minister Andre Rwamakuba on charges of genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination and murder. The court voted unanimously after hearing insufficient evidence of Rwamakuba’s guilt.
Rwamakuba was a former doctor at the Butare University Hospital and was accused of using an axe to kill Tutsis. He took a position as an interim spokesman when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in 1994.
Since the ICTR began trials in 1997, twenty-six people have been found guilty and five have been acquitted. It has indicted some 80 people for genocide and related crimes.
Rwanda genocide suspects in UK
According to the Independent, at least three suspects in the Rwandan genocide are living in the UK. Among them is Celestin Ugirashebuja, a former mayor, who reportedly incited his community to kill hundreds of Tutsis.
To date, he has not been arrested or interviewed about the allegations against him. The 55-year-old former mayor of the rural commune of Kigoma, close to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, is one of at least three suspects known to be living in the UK whose names appear on a list of the 100 most-wanted genocide suspects issued by Rwanda.
The document claims Ugirashebuja had a “direct hand” in five separate massacres and individual killings. When asked at his home about the allegations, Ugirashebuja denied his involvement and said they were part of plot against him. He said: “It is all lies. We are people of God. They [the Rwandan government] want to kill all Hutus in England. It is all lies against me.”
Oddly enough, it seems that the reason that Britain is dragging its feet in extraditing Ugirashebuja has to do with their war crimes law. Apparently, the current law applies prosecuting Nazis, but not Rwandans.