We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

While the countries surrounding it had “great artistic traditions” (257), Rwanda focused on politics—particularly the battle between those advocating a new order and “old mentalities” (258). Anti-Hutu Power forces emphasized honesty and a view of reality that could be objectively evaluated. Hutu Power challenged reality, viewing it as a construct of the imagination (i.e., they argued that the Hutu perception of reality was just as valid as the Tutsi one). Kagame, a proponent of the new order, stressed the importance of speaking the truth.

One of Odette’s professors in medical school, Théodore Sindikubwabo, became Rwanda’s interim president following Habyarimana’s assassination. On April 19, 1994, he visited Butare, the only province with a Tutsi governor and therefore “a haven of virtual calm” (262) in the early days of the genocide. During his visit, Sindikubwabo fired the Tutsi governor and gave a speech calling people to arms. Immediately afterward, “the slaughter began” (262). Gourevitch visits Sindikubwabo in Zaire, where he lives in exile and is deemed untouchable by the UN Tribunal. He refuses to admit what he said in Butare.

Various forces were busy creating new political organizations with leaders unassociated with the genocide (266). One such organization produced propaganda blaming the RPF for the refugee crisis and calling for blanket amnesty (266). Taken in by the subterfuge, international relief agencies supported this organization. Exploiting humanitarian efforts, Hutu Power engaged in guerrilla warfare in Rwanda in 1995-1996; the UN continued to shelter and enable these criminals. According to its own mandate, the UN is not supposed to protect those fleeing criminal prosecution, but it did so. No attempt was made to segregate those who organized the genocide from others. When Zaire forcibly dismantled one camp, returning approximately 15,000 refugees to Rwanda, the UN intervened to stop the repatriation. Gourevitch accuses the UN of clientitis, or “an overly credulous embrace of your clients’ point of view” (272). In reality, the returned refugees did not encounter danger but were resettled peacefully.

In Mokoto—a village in North Kivu, Zaire—Father Dhelo, who led a Trappist monastery, gave sanctuary to Tutsis in January of 1996. The Tutsis were running from attacks led by ex-Armed Forces of Rwanda (FAR) commanders and Interahamwe in UN camps. When Father Dhelo went away on business in May of that year, a Hutu mob attacked the monastery, which then housed approximately 1,000 Tutsis. The monks evacuated, but the Tutsis could not do so. Many were slaughtered, and the monks were displaced to the capital Goma. Prior to the massacre, “at least ten thousand Tutsis had been chased out of North Kivu and forced to take refuge in Rwanda” (279). In 1996, Hutu Power forces in Zaire murdered hundreds of genocide survivors entering Rwanda—yet international money continued to pour into Zaire.

Mobutu ruled Zaire as a despot. In his long reign since the 1960s, he “systematically reduced Zaire to rot” (283). Supported by the US during the Cold War, Mobutu found himself ostracized in its aftermath until the Rwandan genocide. International organizations had to deal with the dictator in regards to refugees. France restored aid to Zaire, which Mobutu used to enrich himself.

Interviewing Zairean Tutsis living in Rwandan camps, Gourevitch learns that soldiers from Zaire robbed them and forced them across the border to Rwanda. Tutsis blamed Mobutu for these troubles, and Gourevitch worries about the survivors of the Mokoto massacre, who fled to the nearby village of Kitchanga. Visiting the combat zone of North Kivu one week after the Mokoto massacre, Gourevitch observes an “endless procession of desolated villages” (286). Reaching Kitchanga, he finds hundreds of Tutsis trapped there, unable to pay the cost of transport across the border. They need to evacuate or face death. Despite many of the attackers coming from UN camps, the UN itself was unwilling to provide transportation. Officials claimed that their mandate did not allow them to do so. Instead, a group of Tutsi business leaders organized an evacuation.

The international community contributed to genocidal forces via incoherent policies toward central Africa. In Burundi, state forces closed refugee camps and repatriated Hutu Rwandans without issue. Gourevitch argues that this mass return “made it clearer than ever that the only obstacle to a comparable repatriation from Zaire was Hutu Power’s ability to intimidate not only the camp populations but also the entire international community” (293). Kagame, with Museveni and Laurent-Désiré Kabila, organized rebellious forces to overthrow Mobutu’s regime in Zaire. Hutu Power—operating from refugee camps—and Mobutu forces targeted Tutsis in South Kivu (called Banyamulenge) as they previously did in North Kivu. However, the Banyamulenge fought back. They were aided by resistance fighters from Rwanda. When the deputy governor of South Kivu ordered all Banyamulenge to leave the country, “tiny Rwanda hit enormous Zaire” (296).

Kagame intended to save the Banyamulenge, dismantle the camps, return refugees to Rwanda, and change the dangerous situation in Zaire (296). While thousands of refugees returned to Rwanda, Hutu Power forces herded approximately 750,000 to a field around the Mugunga camp, just west of the capital in Goma, to use as human shields against the rebels’ advance. Press coverage of this standoff was wildly inaccurate, depicting the refugees as starving (which they were not) and incorrectly identifying the source of the problem—nor did it cover Hutu Power’s campaign of terror in Zaire. On November 15, 1996, Hutu Power leaders fled; refugees were in the middle of returning to Rwanda when rebel forces took the offensive and circled the camp. Searches of the camp turned up “receipts from arms dealers all over Europe, charters for the creation of political front organizations [and] even meticulously handwritten lists of Tutsis in North Kivu” (300). Some Hutu leaders retreated more deeply into Zaire—but the immediate threat of war was neutralized. For the first time in modern history, survivors of a genocide had to coexist with those who perpetrated the crime. It was not until June of 1997, when the rebel forces drove Mobutu from power, that Rwanda publicly proclaimed its role in organizing the insurrection.

Murderers were among the refugees returning to Rwanda—Girumhatse being one of them. He returned to the village of a survivor whose family was butchered by him, claiming that “his acts were not his fault” (304). Unlike other Hutus, who denied any participation in the genocide, Girumhatse admitted to his murders but did not take responsibility for them, claiming to be a pawn doing as the state dictated to save his own life. In reality, he was a “mid-level figure” (307) operating a roadblock and commanding others. He expected to take advantage of a Rwandan law that “offered sentence reductions for lower-level criminals who confessed” (309)—but considering he did not fit into this category, he could not necessarily avoid the death penalty.

In November of 1996, President Pasteur Bizimungu initially welcomed the returning refugees, and the Rwandan government placed a moratorium on the arrests of those suspected of genocide (307). The next month, camps in western Tanzania were closed, increasing the number of repatriated Rwandans to 1.5 million. Despite the enormous challenges of reintegrating such large numbers into society and bridging ethnic divisions, the international community gave little financial aid to Rwanda. Bonaventure worries that young survivors, without help, will drift toward extremism. Without any assistance (and the return of killers), survivors continued to live in fear. Many were afraid to accuse murderers, fearing retribution. Impoverished Rwanda took a crucial first step in rebuilding homes for Tutsi victims, many displaced from squatting in the homes of Hutus, now returned.

When rebel forces reached Goma and Mobutu’s palace, the contrast of his wealth with the nation’s poverty was staggering. On May 17, 1997, rebel leader Kabila assumed the presidency and renamed Zaire to the Democratic Republic of Congo. A Pan-African alliance supported Kabila, as African leaders understood the rebellion as a means to stop the Rwandan genocide. Where the international community failed to act in the face of genocide and its own refugee camps, Africa took charge of its own destiny and solved the crisis.

Museveni, who supported the rebellion from the start, made great improvements in Uganda since the fall of Idi Amin and Obote’s dictatorship in 1986. He emphasized the need for a slow transition to democracy. Multiparty democracy, common in Europe, cannot work without a middle class and a “coherent national public debate” (329) as it will devolve into tribal factions. Although Museveni took power in 1986, it was not until 1996 that he was formally elected. Gourevitch cites Uganda’s progress as a source of hope for central Africa but stipulates that there has yet to be a peaceful transition of power.

The US Ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson, threatened aid to the Congo if it refused an investigation into the killing of Hutus who fled the camps. Kabila wanted to ensure that such killings were contextualized, as Hutu Power forces were fighting for Mobutu and attacking Congolese villages—so he promised the UN “unlimited access” (335) for its probe. After this correspondence, Richardson gave “the highest-level official acknowledgment of reality and responsibility by an international statesman” (336). He noted the international community’s failure to respond to the genocide and its intermingling of genocidal killers with legitimate refugees. Unfortunately, the press gave little attention to this statement. Such failures caused Africans to be dubious about the proposed investigation—with Kabila later stonewalling it.

In a change of mood, Kenya’s leader Daniel arap Moi, received Kagame and subsequently turned over seven “masterminds of the genocide” (337) to the UN tribunal. In an interview with Gourevitch, Kagame—still threatened by Hutu Power forces—expresses anger at the international community’s many failures to help and alleges that international actors felt threatened by Africa taking control of its own destiny.

On a flight to Rwanda in February of 1997, Gourevitch watches two American films, both of which justify vigilante justice. The irony of western condemnation of select Tutsis seeking similar justice is clear. The previous December, Rwanda placed several people on trial on genocide charges. Several were sentenced to death or life imprisonment, but there were “some lighter sentences” (344) and acquittals. Karamira, Bonaventure’s friend from prison who later became the extremist behind Hutu Power’s name, was among those sentenced to death.

In 1997 and early 1998, the war continued, with bands of Hutu Power and ex-FAR commanders murdering Tutsis and foreigners: “In a good week, only one or two people might be killed, and in some weeks hundreds were killed” (346). Despite the Rwandan law offering low-level offenders who confessed lighter sentences, most Hutus denied any participation in the genocide and indeed, the genocide itself.

President Bill Clinton visited Rwanda in 1998 and apologized “for refusing to intervene during the slaughter, and for supporting the killers in the camps” (350). Although the apology was well received, no one believed that the international community could be relied upon in the future. Gourevitch concludes his book with a hopeful but tragic story, recounting an attack on a girls’ school with students ordered to separate into Hutu and Tutsi groupings. The Hutu girls refused, calling themselves Rwandans, and as a result, were “beaten and shot indiscriminately” (353).