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In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front
A FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE: A stunning work of investigative reporting by a Canadian journalist who has risked her own life to bring us a deeply disturbing history of the Rwandan genocide that takes the true measure of Rwandan head of state Paul Kagame.
Through unparalleled interviews with RPF defectors, former soldiers and atrocity survivors, supported by documents leaked from a UN court, Judi Rever brings us the complete history of the Rwandan genocide. Considered by the international community to be the saviours who ended the Hutu slaughter of innocent Tutsis, Kagame and his rebel forces were also killing, in quiet and in the dark, as ruthlessly as the Hutu genocidaire were killing in daylight. The reason why the larger world community hasn't recognized this truth? Kagame and his top commanders effectively covered their tracks and, post-genocide, rallied world guilt and played the heroes in order to attract funds to rebuild Rwanda and to maintain and extend the Tutsi sphere of influence in the region.
Judi Rever, who has followed the story since 1997, has marshalled irrefutable evidence to show that Kagame's own troops shot down the presidential plane on April 6, 1994--the act that put the match to the genocidal flame. And she proves, without a shadow of doubt, that as Kagame and his forces slowly advanced on the capital of Kigali, they were ethnically cleansing the country of Hutu men, women and children in order that returning Tutsi settlers, displaced since the early '60s, would have homes and land. This book is heartbreaking, chilling and necessary.
Through unparalleled interviews with RPF defectors, former soldiers and atrocity survivors, supported by documents leaked from a UN court, Judi Rever brings us the complete history of the Rwandan genocide. Considered by the international community to be the saviours who ended the Hutu slaughter of innocent Tutsis, Kagame and his rebel forces were also killing, in quiet and in the dark, as ruthlessly as the Hutu genocidaire were killing in daylight. The reason why the larger world community hasn't recognized this truth? Kagame and his top commanders effectively covered their tracks and, post-genocide, rallied world guilt and played the heroes in order to attract funds to rebuild Rwanda and to maintain and extend the Tutsi sphere of influence in the region.
Judi Rever, who has followed the story since 1997, has marshalled irrefutable evidence to show that Kagame's own troops shot down the presidential plane on April 6, 1994--the act that put the match to the genocidal flame. And she proves, without a shadow of doubt, that as Kagame and his forces slowly advanced on the capital of Kigali, they were ethnically cleansing the country of Hutu men, women and children in order that returning Tutsi settlers, displaced since the early '60s, would have homes and land. This book is heartbreaking, chilling and necessary.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2018
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May 9, 2018
“My worldview changed forever when I discovered the degree to which Western officials acquiesced to—and at times actively assisted—a regime that butchered women and children in the forests I’d visited. Even now, when politicians in the West speak of the democratic values they hold dear, my heart turns cold.”
—Judi Rever
”In my life I’ve never seen a situation where so much evidence was collected and no indictment was issued.”
—former investigator for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda from Uganda in the north. An army formed by the refugee sons of the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis who had fled pogroms in the 1950s and ’60s, the RPF was attempting to reclaim the land that had been lost years before. Since the 1960s when the colonizing Belgians had left Rwanda, the country’s government had been run by the majority Hutu ethnic group (who comprised about 85 % of the population). With the 1990 arrival of the RPF, the country erupted into a civil war, which by 1993 had reached a precarious stalemate. That year, the Arusha Peace Accords were signed, stipulating that a provisional, power-sharing government be formed. This government was to provide all concerned parties with a place at the table. Members of the RPF resided in Kigali and were part of this government. However, all was far from well.
On April 6, 1994, the presidential plane was shot down by two missiles. The Rwandan president, Juvénal Habyarimana, and the Burundian president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, were both killed—as was everyone else who’d been aboard. The crash site was never properly investigated. Whether extremist Hutus or the RPF were responsible remains a contentious issue. Either way, the genocide had been sparked. The official story is that the Hutus had launched the missiles, but as Judi Rever’s stunning and meticulously researched book shows over and over again, just about everything people think they know about the Rwandan genocide needs to be questioned and revised.
Many of us are aware that almost a million Rwandans—the majority of them Tutsi, but some of them moderate Hutu—were killed in the three months following the assassination of President Habyarimana in April 1994. The machete was the preferred weapon. An extremist Hutu paramilitary youth group—known as the Interahame—set up roadblocks in Kigali and, in broad daylight, killed Tutsis in cold blood. Neighbour turned against neighbour. Even those who sheltered in churches were not spared. General Romeo Dallaire, who headed the 25,000-strong peacekeeping mission aimed at upholding the Arusha Accord, pleaded for assistance from the U.N. and the international community. No one did a thing. The U.S. wouldn’t even agree to jamming the radio waves from an extremist Hutu station, which hour-after-hour spewed hate about the Tutsi “cockroaches” and incited violence . The killing only stopped, so we are told, when the RPF and Paul Kagame (its commander, who has been the president of Rwanda since 2000) seized control of the country.
Since the genocide, Kagame has been something of a darling in the eyes of the West. Bill Clinton, who disregarded Romeo Dallaire’s calls for assistance on the brink of and during the Rwandan genocide—and who later disingenuously claimed he knew nothing about what was really going on there—has praised Kagame as “one of the greatest leaders of our time”. In 2009, the Clinton Foundation honoured him with its Global Citizen Award “in recognition of his leadership in public service that has improved the lives of people of Rwanda”. Tony Blair is a pal; Blair’s wife, Cherie, represented a member of Kagame’s inner circle, General Karenzi Karake, when an international warrant for his arrest for war crimes was issued in 2015. Since the genocide, the West has poured a steady stream of money into Rwanda, likely to atone for its guilt. The U.S. and the U.K are the biggest donors, but even Canada has supported the Kagame regime to the tune of 550 million dollars (from the time of the genocide until now). While post-genocide Rwanda is considered an economic success story, a growing body of compelling evidence indicates that the dominant narrative—in which Paul Kagame and his men figure as heroes who stopped a genocide and brought a country back from the brink—is, according to Rever and number of scholars and investigators, a gross misrepresentation of the facts. The real story is a far more dark and complex one. It should be noted that Rever states explicitly in her book that she neither disputes that extreme ethnically motivated Hutu-on-Tutsi violence occurred nor denies that there was indeed a genocide. She has, however, done enough work to know, to expose—and to be threatened by the Rwandan government for knowing and exposing—the dark story of a parallel Tutsi-on-Hutu genocide of equal magnitude.
Rever’s first inklings of there being another layer to the official story came when, as a young journalist working for Radio France Internationale, she travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in May 1997 to cover the humanitarian crisis there. Since the genocide, hundreds of thousands of displaced Hutus had been living in refugee camps in this country, too scared to return to Rwanda. Both the U.N. High Commission and scholars of the genocide estimated that 93% of these Hutus were “genuine refugees deserving of protection”. If only 7% of Hutus were perpetrators, why had so many fled Rwanda in the first place, and why were they so reluctant to return home? The RPF.
In the years immediately after the genocide, Kagame had sent his army into Zaire/Congo ostensibly to “clean out” the genocidal elements who (he claimed) were hiding in the massive refugee camps. In 1997, however, Kagame’s RPF and his Ugandan allies were dedicated to gaining control of Congo’s considerable natural resources. Coltan, a rare mineral and a critical component in electronic devices such as cell phones and laptops, was of particular interest. With the support of the West (notably the Bechtel Corporation—“one of the most powerful and secretive corporate entities in the world” and numerous big mining outfits), Kagame’s forces along with his Ugandan allies had toppled President Mobutu, the Zairean dictator who’d been in power for 32 years. These Rwandan-backed rebel forces had displaced thousands of Congolese in their pursuit of natural resources, but they had also continued their attacks on Rwandan Hutu refugees. The rebels relied on humanitarian agencies to collect refugees in one spot so that they could be efficiently massacred. Women and children were certainly still hunted in the jungles of the Congo, but having them all in one place was obviously a less energy-intensive means of eliminating them.
During her frightening 1997 trip to the D.R.C.—even then she had been threatened because of the information she was gathering— Judi Rever spoke to many refugees, most of them seriously ill: diseased and severely malnourished. Theirs was a narrative of terror, of being chased and hunted by the RPF, first in Rwanda during the genocide, and now in the Congo. Among those Rever interviewed were a number of orphans.
Over the years, Rever continued to meet Rwandans and hear their testimonies, but a turning point for her came in 2007 when she attended a conference on genocide held in Montreal and met Gregory Stanton, who had been employed by the U.S. State Department, had been a U.N. human rights monitor, and had worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He told her that aid agencies and governments were aware of the massacres in 1996 in Zaire/D.R.C., and that he and his investigative team had found evidence of the cremation of bodies in and around Kisangani (DRC) where a number of the massacres had occurred. Stanton also told her that he believed the American government helped to plan the invasion of Zaire.
In 2015, after years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews with Rwandans (many of them former RPF soldiers and officers who had fled Rwanda and were haunted by the past), Rever received a secret document from a Rwandan whistleblower who was associated with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The e-mailed file was a compendium of crimes against civilians, the vast majority of them Hutu, committed by members of Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front during the Rwandan genocide. The information had been gathered by criminal investigators in the Office of the Prosector of the ICTR. While the ICTR eventually convicted 61 individuals—the war crimes related only to Hutu-on-Tutsi violence. The evidence of a parallel Tutsi-on-Hutu genocide (involving hundreds of thousands of civilians) would be suppressed by the criminal court, allowing the incomplete, widely accepted narrative to continue. The leader of the Rwandan government, a war criminal, who was running an increasingly repressive, surveillance state could continue in his ways with impunity.
Based as it is on hundreds of interviews, ICTR testimonies, and documents—U.N. and other—Rever’s book tells a story the world needs to know: Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front embarked on a series of planned, discreet, systematic massacres a mere 36 hours after President Habyarimana’s plane had been shot down on April 6, 1994. As the RPF moved through and gained control of the Rwandan countryside, its preferred technique was entrapment. This consisted of notifying Hutu peasants that they would receive food, drink, and security when they gathered at a designated spot, sometimes a stadium or a school. Once the victims were in place, soldiers lobbed grenades or sprayed them with machine-gun fire. Weaker victims could be eliminated with more low-lech methods: hoes to the head. Eventually, killing fields were set up near Akagera National Park, along the Tanzanian border, where the evidence could be disposed of—i.e., the bodies of the Hutu victims could be incinerated. Rever states that the U.S. (and the U.N. by extension) with its sophisticated satellite and remote sensing surveillance technology was certainly aware of the mass graves, the bulldozers being used to dig pits, and the ongoing burning that was taking place. Peacekeepers on the ground did not have access to these RPF controlled areas.
But why would the RPF kill completely innocent people? Ethnic cleansing. Territories needed to be cleared for the hundreds of thousands of Tutsis who would be returning to Rwanda from Uganda, Tanzania, and Zaire where they’d lived in exile for decades. Livestock of the Hutu victims was not killed, as it would be valuable to the repatriated Tutsis. Only the human owners were exterminated
This book is a harrowing read. The little I have related here barely scratches the surface of its contents. Rever discusses much more, including post-genocide attacks on Tutsis along the country’s eastern border perpetrated by the RPF itself. Kagame blamed these “false flag attacks” on extremist Hutu insurgents living in nearby Zaire. In this way, he could justify (to the international community) the RPF’s entry into Zaire to “clean out” genocidal elements from the Hutu refugee camps there. Among other topics covered (in no particular order) are the following: the structure of the RPF, its recruitment and training of Tutsi civilians within Rwanda; the suppression of criminal tribunal investigators’ reports (about the multitude of heinous crimes that ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Hutus); the highly irregular relationship between the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the United States; the West’s embrace of the monstrous Kagame; the April 6th, 1994 presidential plane crash; and, finally, the Rwandan government’s ongoing attacks on dissidents, ex-RPF, and journalists like Rever herself. This is a very brave book, the writing of which has quite understandably taken a toll on the author and her family.
Rever assumes her audience has knowledge of the generally accepted narrative about the Rwandan genocide. I had read Roméo Dallaire’s book as well as a few other memoirs and nonfiction pieces about Rwanda several years back, so I knew the “official” narrative. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s not hard to find a basic outline online. Rever’s book does place demands on the reader. She tends to circle topics several times, and I wonder if the book could have been organized differently for greater clarity. However, this feels like a minor quibble. Rever consistently writes well and clearly. She provides a chart detailing the structure of the RPF as well as a list of the central characters/perpetrators in the appendices. I would have appreciated the inclusion of a map so that I could locate the many significant sites as I read about them.
Given the West’s guilt about its inaction during the Rwandan genocide its complicity in the looting of the Congo, and its willingness to turn a blind eye to the documented atrocities committed by Rwandan forces in the Congo, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been so little press coverage of this stunning and disturbing book. Two big Canadian papers, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star have run excerpts of In Praise of Blood in recent weekend editions, but as of this writing, I am unaware of any Canadian newspaper or magazine actually reviewing the book. Is it possible that its contents are just too challenging and explosive to touch? Is it perhaps unacceptable to consider a narrative that provides a perspective so different from the one Dallaire presented in his Shake Hands with the Devil ? Is it related to the fact that Canada is one of the many countries that has cordial relations with Rwanda and continues to offer aid to Kagame’s repressive regime? I don’t know. What is clear is that Paul Kagame knows who Judi Rever is. He doesn’t like what she knows.
For those interested, I am providing links to two excellent interviews with Rever:
http://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/perspe...
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/a...
—Judi Rever
”In my life I’ve never seen a situation where so much evidence was collected and no indictment was issued.”
—former investigator for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda from Uganda in the north. An army formed by the refugee sons of the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis who had fled pogroms in the 1950s and ’60s, the RPF was attempting to reclaim the land that had been lost years before. Since the 1960s when the colonizing Belgians had left Rwanda, the country’s government had been run by the majority Hutu ethnic group (who comprised about 85 % of the population). With the 1990 arrival of the RPF, the country erupted into a civil war, which by 1993 had reached a precarious stalemate. That year, the Arusha Peace Accords were signed, stipulating that a provisional, power-sharing government be formed. This government was to provide all concerned parties with a place at the table. Members of the RPF resided in Kigali and were part of this government. However, all was far from well.
On April 6, 1994, the presidential plane was shot down by two missiles. The Rwandan president, Juvénal Habyarimana, and the Burundian president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, were both killed—as was everyone else who’d been aboard. The crash site was never properly investigated. Whether extremist Hutus or the RPF were responsible remains a contentious issue. Either way, the genocide had been sparked. The official story is that the Hutus had launched the missiles, but as Judi Rever’s stunning and meticulously researched book shows over and over again, just about everything people think they know about the Rwandan genocide needs to be questioned and revised.
Many of us are aware that almost a million Rwandans—the majority of them Tutsi, but some of them moderate Hutu—were killed in the three months following the assassination of President Habyarimana in April 1994. The machete was the preferred weapon. An extremist Hutu paramilitary youth group—known as the Interahame—set up roadblocks in Kigali and, in broad daylight, killed Tutsis in cold blood. Neighbour turned against neighbour. Even those who sheltered in churches were not spared. General Romeo Dallaire, who headed the 25,000-strong peacekeeping mission aimed at upholding the Arusha Accord, pleaded for assistance from the U.N. and the international community. No one did a thing. The U.S. wouldn’t even agree to jamming the radio waves from an extremist Hutu station, which hour-after-hour spewed hate about the Tutsi “cockroaches” and incited violence . The killing only stopped, so we are told, when the RPF and Paul Kagame (its commander, who has been the president of Rwanda since 2000) seized control of the country.
Since the genocide, Kagame has been something of a darling in the eyes of the West. Bill Clinton, who disregarded Romeo Dallaire’s calls for assistance on the brink of and during the Rwandan genocide—and who later disingenuously claimed he knew nothing about what was really going on there—has praised Kagame as “one of the greatest leaders of our time”. In 2009, the Clinton Foundation honoured him with its Global Citizen Award “in recognition of his leadership in public service that has improved the lives of people of Rwanda”. Tony Blair is a pal; Blair’s wife, Cherie, represented a member of Kagame’s inner circle, General Karenzi Karake, when an international warrant for his arrest for war crimes was issued in 2015. Since the genocide, the West has poured a steady stream of money into Rwanda, likely to atone for its guilt. The U.S. and the U.K are the biggest donors, but even Canada has supported the Kagame regime to the tune of 550 million dollars (from the time of the genocide until now). While post-genocide Rwanda is considered an economic success story, a growing body of compelling evidence indicates that the dominant narrative—in which Paul Kagame and his men figure as heroes who stopped a genocide and brought a country back from the brink—is, according to Rever and number of scholars and investigators, a gross misrepresentation of the facts. The real story is a far more dark and complex one. It should be noted that Rever states explicitly in her book that she neither disputes that extreme ethnically motivated Hutu-on-Tutsi violence occurred nor denies that there was indeed a genocide. She has, however, done enough work to know, to expose—and to be threatened by the Rwandan government for knowing and exposing—the dark story of a parallel Tutsi-on-Hutu genocide of equal magnitude.
Rever’s first inklings of there being another layer to the official story came when, as a young journalist working for Radio France Internationale, she travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in May 1997 to cover the humanitarian crisis there. Since the genocide, hundreds of thousands of displaced Hutus had been living in refugee camps in this country, too scared to return to Rwanda. Both the U.N. High Commission and scholars of the genocide estimated that 93% of these Hutus were “genuine refugees deserving of protection”. If only 7% of Hutus were perpetrators, why had so many fled Rwanda in the first place, and why were they so reluctant to return home? The RPF.
In the years immediately after the genocide, Kagame had sent his army into Zaire/Congo ostensibly to “clean out” the genocidal elements who (he claimed) were hiding in the massive refugee camps. In 1997, however, Kagame’s RPF and his Ugandan allies were dedicated to gaining control of Congo’s considerable natural resources. Coltan, a rare mineral and a critical component in electronic devices such as cell phones and laptops, was of particular interest. With the support of the West (notably the Bechtel Corporation—“one of the most powerful and secretive corporate entities in the world” and numerous big mining outfits), Kagame’s forces along with his Ugandan allies had toppled President Mobutu, the Zairean dictator who’d been in power for 32 years. These Rwandan-backed rebel forces had displaced thousands of Congolese in their pursuit of natural resources, but they had also continued their attacks on Rwandan Hutu refugees. The rebels relied on humanitarian agencies to collect refugees in one spot so that they could be efficiently massacred. Women and children were certainly still hunted in the jungles of the Congo, but having them all in one place was obviously a less energy-intensive means of eliminating them.
During her frightening 1997 trip to the D.R.C.—even then she had been threatened because of the information she was gathering— Judi Rever spoke to many refugees, most of them seriously ill: diseased and severely malnourished. Theirs was a narrative of terror, of being chased and hunted by the RPF, first in Rwanda during the genocide, and now in the Congo. Among those Rever interviewed were a number of orphans.
Over the years, Rever continued to meet Rwandans and hear their testimonies, but a turning point for her came in 2007 when she attended a conference on genocide held in Montreal and met Gregory Stanton, who had been employed by the U.S. State Department, had been a U.N. human rights monitor, and had worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He told her that aid agencies and governments were aware of the massacres in 1996 in Zaire/D.R.C., and that he and his investigative team had found evidence of the cremation of bodies in and around Kisangani (DRC) where a number of the massacres had occurred. Stanton also told her that he believed the American government helped to plan the invasion of Zaire.
In 2015, after years of research and hundreds of hours of interviews with Rwandans (many of them former RPF soldiers and officers who had fled Rwanda and were haunted by the past), Rever received a secret document from a Rwandan whistleblower who was associated with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The e-mailed file was a compendium of crimes against civilians, the vast majority of them Hutu, committed by members of Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front during the Rwandan genocide. The information had been gathered by criminal investigators in the Office of the Prosector of the ICTR. While the ICTR eventually convicted 61 individuals—the war crimes related only to Hutu-on-Tutsi violence. The evidence of a parallel Tutsi-on-Hutu genocide (involving hundreds of thousands of civilians) would be suppressed by the criminal court, allowing the incomplete, widely accepted narrative to continue. The leader of the Rwandan government, a war criminal, who was running an increasingly repressive, surveillance state could continue in his ways with impunity.
Based as it is on hundreds of interviews, ICTR testimonies, and documents—U.N. and other—Rever’s book tells a story the world needs to know: Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front embarked on a series of planned, discreet, systematic massacres a mere 36 hours after President Habyarimana’s plane had been shot down on April 6, 1994. As the RPF moved through and gained control of the Rwandan countryside, its preferred technique was entrapment. This consisted of notifying Hutu peasants that they would receive food, drink, and security when they gathered at a designated spot, sometimes a stadium or a school. Once the victims were in place, soldiers lobbed grenades or sprayed them with machine-gun fire. Weaker victims could be eliminated with more low-lech methods: hoes to the head. Eventually, killing fields were set up near Akagera National Park, along the Tanzanian border, where the evidence could be disposed of—i.e., the bodies of the Hutu victims could be incinerated. Rever states that the U.S. (and the U.N. by extension) with its sophisticated satellite and remote sensing surveillance technology was certainly aware of the mass graves, the bulldozers being used to dig pits, and the ongoing burning that was taking place. Peacekeepers on the ground did not have access to these RPF controlled areas.
But why would the RPF kill completely innocent people? Ethnic cleansing. Territories needed to be cleared for the hundreds of thousands of Tutsis who would be returning to Rwanda from Uganda, Tanzania, and Zaire where they’d lived in exile for decades. Livestock of the Hutu victims was not killed, as it would be valuable to the repatriated Tutsis. Only the human owners were exterminated
This book is a harrowing read. The little I have related here barely scratches the surface of its contents. Rever discusses much more, including post-genocide attacks on Tutsis along the country’s eastern border perpetrated by the RPF itself. Kagame blamed these “false flag attacks” on extremist Hutu insurgents living in nearby Zaire. In this way, he could justify (to the international community) the RPF’s entry into Zaire to “clean out” genocidal elements from the Hutu refugee camps there. Among other topics covered (in no particular order) are the following: the structure of the RPF, its recruitment and training of Tutsi civilians within Rwanda; the suppression of criminal tribunal investigators’ reports (about the multitude of heinous crimes that ended the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Hutus); the highly irregular relationship between the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the United States; the West’s embrace of the monstrous Kagame; the April 6th, 1994 presidential plane crash; and, finally, the Rwandan government’s ongoing attacks on dissidents, ex-RPF, and journalists like Rever herself. This is a very brave book, the writing of which has quite understandably taken a toll on the author and her family.
Rever assumes her audience has knowledge of the generally accepted narrative about the Rwandan genocide. I had read Roméo Dallaire’s book as well as a few other memoirs and nonfiction pieces about Rwanda several years back, so I knew the “official” narrative. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s not hard to find a basic outline online. Rever’s book does place demands on the reader. She tends to circle topics several times, and I wonder if the book could have been organized differently for greater clarity. However, this feels like a minor quibble. Rever consistently writes well and clearly. She provides a chart detailing the structure of the RPF as well as a list of the central characters/perpetrators in the appendices. I would have appreciated the inclusion of a map so that I could locate the many significant sites as I read about them.
Given the West’s guilt about its inaction during the Rwandan genocide its complicity in the looting of the Congo, and its willingness to turn a blind eye to the documented atrocities committed by Rwandan forces in the Congo, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been so little press coverage of this stunning and disturbing book. Two big Canadian papers, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star have run excerpts of In Praise of Blood in recent weekend editions, but as of this writing, I am unaware of any Canadian newspaper or magazine actually reviewing the book. Is it possible that its contents are just too challenging and explosive to touch? Is it perhaps unacceptable to consider a narrative that provides a perspective so different from the one Dallaire presented in his Shake Hands with the Devil ? Is it related to the fact that Canada is one of the many countries that has cordial relations with Rwanda and continues to offer aid to Kagame’s repressive regime? I don’t know. What is clear is that Paul Kagame knows who Judi Rever is. He doesn’t like what she knows.
For those interested, I am providing links to two excellent interviews with Rever:
http://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/perspe...
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/a...
January 15, 2019
It seemed that the RPF could now commit crimes out in the open and still receive billions of dollars in aid. And Kagame could continue to receive human rights awards despite these murders, the Spanish indictment and Amnesty's reports – buoyed by propaganda and protected by powerful friends in the West. What were these Western allies supporting? From the point of view of the RPF's victims, it all seemed to be in praise of blood, an endorsement of mass murder.
The brief and accepted version of the Rwandan genocide that occurred over 100 days from April 7 to mid-July of 1994: In a country made up of a Hutu majority and Tutsi minority populations, after enduring a Tutsi monarchy under Belgian colonisation, a Hutu-led rebellion saw Rwandan independence in 1962 and the fleeing of Tutsi refugees into Uganda. After years of the ensuing Hutu rule and Tutsi oppression, rebel forces from the Uganda refugee bases – Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under the leadership of Paul Kagame – engaged the Rwandan government in a Civil War starting in 1990, and during a peace accord in 1993, President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane was shot down by (what was concluded to be) Hutu extremists who were opposed to the ceasefire. The killings began the next day, with Hutu murdering Tutsi wherever they found them; neighbour against neighbour, egged on by military forces and radical radio stations. Up to a million Tutsi would be killed, seventy per cent of their population, in an event rightly called genocide. Hamstringed UN forces, under the leadership of Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, were helpless to stop the violence, and Paul Kagame and the RPF were eventually credited with bringing stability to the country; he has been president since 2000, with a mandate to continue his rule through 2034. But this isn't the whole story as journalist Judi Rever would eventually discover and reveal in her explosive and essential work of reporting, In Praise of Blood.
In October, 1996, Kagame's army and Ugandan allies invaded what was then known as Zaire and attacked Hutu refugee camps; a move the West deemed totally justified as the new Rwandan leader committed to tracking down “génocidaires” and bringing them to justice. What Rever discovered at these camps were mostly starving and exhausted women and children who told of fleeing through the jungle just steps ahead of massacring death squads. This experience would set the journalist on a years-long path of inquiry that would put her in touch with wary Rwandan expats throughout Africa and Europe (many of whom would end up murdered); that would see her receiving confidential reports and documents that were forwarded to her at great risk; and that would see her health and personal life suffer. Meanwhile, Kagame and his allies would oust Zaire's longstanding dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and deliver the country into the hands of someone who would ensure its resources (and especially the coltan necessary for high tech equipment) were “open for business”. To what degree was the West behind Seko's ouster? It turns out that Bechtel – a mining giant based out of Hope, Arkansas – was assembling a “master development plan” for the new Democratic Republic of the Congo before its old government was even toppled; satellite images that Bechtel was using to identify the country's mineral potential were given to the invading rebels for military purposes, and in return, Bechtel was first in line to win mining contracts with the Congo's new government. Although the Congo's new leader Laurent Kabila, Kagame, and some of their top officials have become immensely wealthy from their share of these mining profits, this couldn't have been accomplished without international complicity. “Bechtel's links to U.S. intelligence officials, former politicians and military personnel have made it one of the most powerful and secretive corporate entities in the world. The company has been accused of being a US shadow government.” Rever mentions only in passing that Bechtel's base of Hope, Arkansas is the hometown of Bill Clinton.
It's clear that the evidence of RPF crimes was everywhere in the days and months after the genocide. So why did the image of Kagame and his forces as the heroes who put an end to the killing of innocents persist? I believe it is because so many institutions and governments needed the story of the genocide to be one of good and evil, with the evildoers simply defined. But the UN in particular cannot claim ignorance when it comes to these crimes.
In Praise of Blood can be a little meandering, with Rever going back to events over and over again as she collects more evidence and testimony over the years, but it's probably a necessary format as she eventually convinced me that:
• Kagame and the RPF instigated the genocide against their own Tutsi people by having a fifth column inside Rwanda, ready to start and promote the bloodletting
• Kagame and the RPF fired the missile that brought down President Habyarimana's plane (killing also Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and ten others in the process)
• The RPF committed a simultaneous genocide against the Hutu people – killing people inside their homes within the areas they controlled, tracking down escapees and luring them to public places with offers of food and supplies and then killing them en masse, trucking refugees back from Uganda to be murdered, cremated, and dispersed – and that, where the West has recognised these deeds, they have been excused in the name of revenge
• From the UN's and national governments' lack of action at the time (attributed to US pressure), to their refusal to investigate evidence or follow through with what investigations there have been, the world is complicit in the genocide of both peoples
This book is packed full of evidence (and footnotes and appendices) that support these findings, and still, Paul Kagame and the RPF are referred to on Wikipedia as the liberators of Rwanda; the country has been the recipient of billions of dollars in foreign aid; the Clinton Foundation gave Kagame their Global Citizen Award in 2009, saying, “From crisis, President Kagame has forged a strong, unified and growing nation with the potential to become a model for the rest of Africa and the world.” I can't imagine what the Rwandan people – those on both sides who experienced genocide and who now live under a strongman-surveillance government – think of the rest of us. However, despite In Praise of Blood being such a necessary light in the darkness, I fear it's one that hasn't caught enough attention as yet; what will it take for the world to demand the truth?
June 11, 2018
This book is a bomb. An explosion. A tsunami. It's one of the most difficult and disturbing books I have ever read. It's one of the best books I have ever read.
Bravo Judi Rever. You are a journalist. A real journalist. You are a courageous person.
I know enough about the story and the region to know that the author faces a well-oiled public relations machine that has the support of much of the developed world. She has been attacked. She will be attacked. As is virtually anybody who dares to challenge the accepted narrative of what happened in Rwanda, what's happening in Rwanda, what has happened in the DR Congo, and what happens to Rwandans and others who dare to talk about the other genocide.
History, as we all know, is written by the victors. To really understand history, it is important to listen to all who have a story to tell. Judi Rever's book gives space to many of the people that those in charge in Kigali would rather at best, ignore, and at worst, eliminate. Those of us in the truth business have much to learn from you. J’espère qu’il y aura une version française sous peu.
Bravo Judi Rever. You are a journalist. A real journalist. You are a courageous person.
I know enough about the story and the region to know that the author faces a well-oiled public relations machine that has the support of much of the developed world. She has been attacked. She will be attacked. As is virtually anybody who dares to challenge the accepted narrative of what happened in Rwanda, what's happening in Rwanda, what has happened in the DR Congo, and what happens to Rwandans and others who dare to talk about the other genocide.
History, as we all know, is written by the victors. To really understand history, it is important to listen to all who have a story to tell. Judi Rever's book gives space to many of the people that those in charge in Kigali would rather at best, ignore, and at worst, eliminate. Those of us in the truth business have much to learn from you. J’espère qu’il y aura une version française sous peu.
February 2, 2019
A well-crafted, impressively researched book, and an absolutely gutting read.
Rever and her interviewees' courage in communicating this bloody history is a stark contrast to the silence coming from the UN and the Western countries who prop up, protect, and reward the murderous Kagame regime.
Highly recommended.
Rever and her interviewees' courage in communicating this bloody history is a stark contrast to the silence coming from the UN and the Western countries who prop up, protect, and reward the murderous Kagame regime.
Highly recommended.
December 11, 2021
I have numerous qualms with this book. However for brevity I refer people to the following articles for a more in depth critique of the work. Whille there is no doubt that the RPF engaged in well documented reprisal killings, her assertion of a double genocide theory is a regurgitation of ideas promoted by genocidaires in the aftermath of 1994. Several of her claims have been invalidated in recent years. “Readers would be wise to seek out more reliable information, available in the huge amount of thoroughly researched scholarly studies published over the years, before taking ‘In Praise of Blood’ at face value.”
1. https://www.theafricareport.com/24534...
2. https://www.zammagazine.com/chronicle...
1. https://www.theafricareport.com/24534...
2. https://www.zammagazine.com/chronicle...
December 31, 2018
Seldomly do I come across a book that changes my view on a particular topic as fundamentally as Judi Rever’s meticulously researched In Praise of Blood. Like most people, I only had a rudimentary understanding of the Rwandan 1994 civil war beforehand, and I had more or less swallowed the dominant narrative of the conflict hook, line and sinker. That is, the story of the barbaric genocide of the Tutsis, perpetrated by Hutus, both military and neighbours alike, where the “international community” stood passively by and Kagame and his troops came in and saved the day by expulsing the Hutu génocidaires, subsequently leading an unprecedented process of national reconciliation.
Canadian journalist Judi Rever has worked on this book for five years, talking to numerous Rwandan exiles, former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) officials, obtained leaked mails and reports, in the process turning herself into a main target of the Rwandan intelligence service. Something that in hindsight is only natural, as the Rwandan regime relentlessly attempts to assassinate anyone who dares to expose what it has done in Rwanda and Zaire/DR Congo for the past 28 years. Yes, what happened in Rwanda is rightly labelled a genocide, but there wasn’t only one. There was the one we all know of, the massacres of Tutsis startingin April 1994, lasting approximately 100 days. Then there was the genocide of Hutus, perpetrated by Kagame’s RPF which by that time was already well underway, and continued for several years with the tacit support of the West.
The two genocides were very similar in their motives and methods. But the RPF were much more skilled at covering up their crimes when compared to the Interahamwe, thus receiving the sympathy and (eventually) the support of the world looking on. The RPF had a very clear objective: to seize power in Rwanda and take revenge for 1959 (marking the start of the Rwandan revolution, when the Tutsi monarchy was toppled). To achieve this goal they initiated an ingenious and barbarous plan, which I will not reveal here, but which I can only imagine must have succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations. Today, Paul Kagame is hailed as one of Africa’s greatest leaders, particularly popular among foreign politicians, the media and the business community. And while he continues fuelling the conflict in DR Congo and brutally represses any internal criticism, he is able to freely fly to the UK and the US to receive awards like the Clinton Global Citizen Award, while the génocidaires on the Hutu side are serving their well-deserved sentences behind bars. Had it not been for this victor’s justice, Central Africa could have looked very different today.
Canadian journalist Judi Rever has worked on this book for five years, talking to numerous Rwandan exiles, former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) officials, obtained leaked mails and reports, in the process turning herself into a main target of the Rwandan intelligence service. Something that in hindsight is only natural, as the Rwandan regime relentlessly attempts to assassinate anyone who dares to expose what it has done in Rwanda and Zaire/DR Congo for the past 28 years. Yes, what happened in Rwanda is rightly labelled a genocide, but there wasn’t only one. There was the one we all know of, the massacres of Tutsis startingin April 1994, lasting approximately 100 days. Then there was the genocide of Hutus, perpetrated by Kagame’s RPF which by that time was already well underway, and continued for several years with the tacit support of the West.
The two genocides were very similar in their motives and methods. But the RPF were much more skilled at covering up their crimes when compared to the Interahamwe, thus receiving the sympathy and (eventually) the support of the world looking on. The RPF had a very clear objective: to seize power in Rwanda and take revenge for 1959 (marking the start of the Rwandan revolution, when the Tutsi monarchy was toppled). To achieve this goal they initiated an ingenious and barbarous plan, which I will not reveal here, but which I can only imagine must have succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations. Today, Paul Kagame is hailed as one of Africa’s greatest leaders, particularly popular among foreign politicians, the media and the business community. And while he continues fuelling the conflict in DR Congo and brutally represses any internal criticism, he is able to freely fly to the UK and the US to receive awards like the Clinton Global Citizen Award, while the génocidaires on the Hutu side are serving their well-deserved sentences behind bars. Had it not been for this victor’s justice, Central Africa could have looked very different today.
November 7, 2018
Quote me! Humans are the vilest creatures on God's green earth. Chilling and frightening details on the Rwandan genocide saga. Kagame and co might escape ICC prosecution, and even be celebrated as heroes but believe me....Karma is real, and in due time everyone gets his or her due. Big ups to Judi Rever. May your light never dim.
March 18, 2019
Great book but hard to read! I have studied a lot about Rwanda but this was more graphic and real! Took me time to read cause I would read on and off! Good writer and well articulated but holy shit it’s heavy reading! You have to be ready for it if you read this book!
April 8, 2018
Finally, the sun shining on Kagame’s horrible crimes
April 19, 2018
Chilling
May 19, 2019
Wow. What a powerful and important book. It just goes to show that there is more to every story than anyone can possibly know. I will look at Rwanda differently the next time I go there.
November 23, 2024
good journalistic account of the various monstrous crimes and atrocities committed by the rwandan patriotic front from their early days in the rwandan civil war through the congo wars and their continued rule in the present. addresses directly much of the pro kagame propaganda and narratives you will commonly find and produces convincing evidence from many sources rebutting these. one thing this book doesn't do so much is give a good overview of the wider context for the rwandan civil war and particularly the congo wars. i don't think that's a problem because it's out of the book's scope but reading a larger scale book like America's Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the DR Congo would be a good complement to this. anyone versed in the parapolitical literature will be struck by how familiar much of the rpf playbook is - their entire mode of military operations seems to derive from western counterinsurgency operations like the phoenix program and the strategy of tension, and as the government of rwanda they operate a brutal security state that far more resembles liberal ideas of 'totalitarianism' than any socialist state i've ever read about. some of the stuff about massacres during the rwandan civil war to depopulate areas so that they could be settled by returning ugandan tutsis also has parallels with the nakba or perhaps nazi lebensraum. the last part of the book also details how agents of the rwandan government attempted to murder the author in belgium and canada, so i imagine it took some courage to actually go ahead and publish this.
May 23, 2025
This book was a prime example on remembering that our understanding of history isn’t complete or objective and that history is written by the victors.
I will be the first to admit my understanding of the history of Rwanda is rudimentary at best.
The official narrative of the Rwanda Genocide solely focuses on the genocide committed by Hutus against the Tutsi (and the author doesn’t deny that happened). But this book is an explosive expose on the atrocity committed by the RPF in Rwanda and Zaire against the Hutus and Congolese people.
My biggest takeaway from this book is that the Rwanda Genocide isn’t a simple narrative of the forces of good vs evil but a glimpse into the inhumanity we’re all capable of when we dehumanize others. I was also reminded of the capacity of a few poweful individuals and their ideologies to cause the suffering and loss of lives for millions of others.
I will be the first to admit my understanding of the history of Rwanda is rudimentary at best.
The official narrative of the Rwanda Genocide solely focuses on the genocide committed by Hutus against the Tutsi (and the author doesn’t deny that happened). But this book is an explosive expose on the atrocity committed by the RPF in Rwanda and Zaire against the Hutus and Congolese people.
My biggest takeaway from this book is that the Rwanda Genocide isn’t a simple narrative of the forces of good vs evil but a glimpse into the inhumanity we’re all capable of when we dehumanize others. I was also reminded of the capacity of a few poweful individuals and their ideologies to cause the suffering and loss of lives for millions of others.
September 12, 2023
Gekocht in een Standaard Boekhandel uitverkoop
Zeer schoquerend boek over een voor mij relatief onbekend onderwerp. Hoe de belangen van het globale Noorden bewaard worden ten koste van miljoenen afrikanen gedurende decennia is niet iets uit het verre verleden. No surprise voor velen, maar de naakte feiten liggen voor het rapen en toch worden de (on)rechtstreekse verantwoordelijken niet aansprakelijk gehouden...
Toch had ik graag wat dieper ingegaan op de motivatie van het Westen en de dynamiek tussen de verschillende landen, in plaats van (met alle respect he) elke moord heel gedetailleerd te gaan beschrijven.
Zeer schoquerend boek over een voor mij relatief onbekend onderwerp. Hoe de belangen van het globale Noorden bewaard worden ten koste van miljoenen afrikanen gedurende decennia is niet iets uit het verre verleden. No surprise voor velen, maar de naakte feiten liggen voor het rapen en toch worden de (on)rechtstreekse verantwoordelijken niet aansprakelijk gehouden...
Toch had ik graag wat dieper ingegaan op de motivatie van het Westen en de dynamiek tussen de verschillende landen, in plaats van (met alle respect he) elke moord heel gedetailleerd te gaan beschrijven.
Read
August 5, 2025C’est bien connu: l’histoire est écrite par les vainqueurs et c’est encore plus d’adon quand, en plus d’avoir un pouvoir incontesté, on possède aussi un capital sympathique et un statut de sauveur. Ouvrage important pour comprendre la complexité d’un conflit centenaire qui, soit dit en passant, tient ses racines dans la négligence colonialiste.
July 6, 2021
I have come a long way since I decided to learn about the Rwandan genocide. The first book I read was 'We would like to inform you...'. In that book the story was simple; Rwanda had ethnic tensions between the Hutu and the Tutsi, in 1994 the Hutu president was assassinated and that sparked a killing spree whose proportions have not been seen before or since, the Hutus killed the Tutsis, Kagame and his RPF ended the genocide, the end. This is an unfair summary but it is close enough.
'Shake hands with the devil' basically had the same story. After reading a book about Congo, I couldn't square the behavior of the RPF in Congo with the narrative that I had. In fact, I found out that even Wikipedia had a more complex story of Rwanda and the genocide than I did. This brings us to 'In praise of blood'.
This book is a documentation of the 'crimes' of the RPF, before, during and after the genocide. The author's primary evidence are two UN reports that were leaked to her. These reports had been suppressed at the behest of the US. Other evidence is from personal interviews with victims and former RPF members. The author also had first hand knowledge from her work as a journalist in Congo.
This book argues that the RPF assassinated the Hutu president, an incident believed to have sparked the genocide. Furthermore, it claims that the RPF carried out mass murders against Hutus before, during and after the genocide. I tried to look up things as I read this book, a lot of it is actually publicly known.
The author faced personal consequences while doing her research. The government of Rwanda made her life miserable. She had to receive personal protection from the governments of Canada and Denmark.
I am still interested in African history, and I have a few more books on my TBR list around this topic. I don't even know how many stars to give.
'Shake hands with the devil' basically had the same story. After reading a book about Congo, I couldn't square the behavior of the RPF in Congo with the narrative that I had. In fact, I found out that even Wikipedia had a more complex story of Rwanda and the genocide than I did. This brings us to 'In praise of blood'.
This book is a documentation of the 'crimes' of the RPF, before, during and after the genocide. The author's primary evidence are two UN reports that were leaked to her. These reports had been suppressed at the behest of the US. Other evidence is from personal interviews with victims and former RPF members. The author also had first hand knowledge from her work as a journalist in Congo.
This book argues that the RPF assassinated the Hutu president, an incident believed to have sparked the genocide. Furthermore, it claims that the RPF carried out mass murders against Hutus before, during and after the genocide. I tried to look up things as I read this book, a lot of it is actually publicly known.
The author faced personal consequences while doing her research. The government of Rwanda made her life miserable. She had to receive personal protection from the governments of Canada and Denmark.
I am still interested in African history, and I have a few more books on my TBR list around this topic. I don't even know how many stars to give.
November 27, 2018
Very carefully researched volume that establishes beyond a reasonable doubt the culpability of Kagame and the RPF in provoking and perpetuating ethnic violence, and in committing atrocities against Hutu refugees in camps in DRC following the conflict. Caution -- the reporting is very detailed and somewhat lost on readers who won't recognize names.
May 24, 2019
This book gives details on how the RPF not only perpetrated the Genocide against Hutus, but also on how the RPF instigated the Genocide against Tutsis. It is noteworthy to underscore how the ICTR failed to bring about justice by holding RPF accountable of the genocide crimes they committed.
July 22, 2018
An amazing book written by an incredible woman who had the courage, and tenacity to continue with her writing despite threats to her security. A shocking story on so many levels.
October 25, 2018
Heartbreaking!!!
March 25, 2019
Let the truth be known
March 21, 2023
The parts where the author told her personal experiences felt wedged in. Either make it more of a memoir or leave those parts out.
March 4, 2024
In Rwanda, death is generally not regarded as the end. If the spirits of the dead are dishonored, many believe evil will befall those responsible. The soldiers would have believed that the intentional disturbing of a corpse was sure to unleash malevolent spirits. They had to tamp down their fears and overcome their cultural prohibitions about the respect due the dead since a program of ethnic cleansing was under way, At twilight's darkest hour, they transported the corpses southeast to Akagera park, a vast wilderness area near the border with Tanzania, far from the scrutiny of the United Nations peacekeepers and the few NGOs still in Kigali. There, they dumped the bodies in pits, and incinerated them with a mixture of gasoline and gas oil. Soon the smell of smoke with death in it issued from the RPF's improvised "ovens." When the genocide broke out, Kagame's forces already controlled a large swath of Byumba, having seized it during the war of invasion that began in late 1990, and they had pushed up to a million Hutus into displacement camps such as Nyacyonga, where disease and hunger were rife.
- Getting away with mass murder - In Praise of blood : The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front by Judi Rever
.
"In Praise of Blood" presents a controversial perspective on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The Author, Judi Rever, challenges the narrative of a single genocide primarily targeting the Tutsi minority and proposes the occurrence of two genocides. This theory, known as the Double Genocide Theory, suggests that alongside the well-documented genocide against the Tutsi, a second genocide was perpetrated by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) against the Hutu majority. Many actually acknowledged that the concept of a double genocide is not entirely new but for me, it is. The last book i read about Rwanda’s Genocide was written by Joseph Saberanzi titled ‘God sleep in Rwanda’ which pretty much highlight the conventional timeline of what entailed between Hutu Majority and Tutsi Minority. Now that i finished this book, i have more questions than answers to what happened exactly during those time. BUT i also have to highlight that this book was awarded a lot of prize for its credible reporting when it was published. Over the years, people started to find inconsistency and inconclusive evidence presented by her. This includes witness testimonies on the alleged death camps by The RPF. Some forensic anthropologists and scholars also raises questions the feasibility of mass cremations and acid disposal methods described in the book. Some even accused her to be Genocide denier. Just in case you wanted to read this book, i hope my review might help you determine whether it’s worth reading it or not. Now back to the concept of double genocide and how it applied in the Rwanda History. It was previously propagated by Hutu hardliners and genocide perpetrators as a means of deflecting blame from their own atrocities. The author argues that accusations of RPF genocide against the Hutu were used as a smokescreen by the extremist Hutu regime to divert international attention from their own genocide against the Tutsi. She further highlighted that the RPF's alleged genocide against the Hutu was conducted in secrecy. She also establishes the link that Western allies may have been complicit in covering up these atrocities. The fact that it was United States, United Kingdom and Canada is the one that turning blind eye on this is not surprising given the current situation on Gaza. Overall, this book has been eye-opening and illuminating in demonstrating another angle of the bloodiest event in the Rwanda History. This was not an easy read considering how graphic the crime was particularly on what they inflicted on women specifically. I think it’s time to find another book written by the Rwandan that could help shed light on the premise of ‘Kagame is the one orchestrating the whole thing to claim the power’ which heavily denotes by Judi Rever and offered the perspective of civilian when this massacre happened.
- Getting away with mass murder - In Praise of blood : The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front by Judi Rever
.
"In Praise of Blood" presents a controversial perspective on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The Author, Judi Rever, challenges the narrative of a single genocide primarily targeting the Tutsi minority and proposes the occurrence of two genocides. This theory, known as the Double Genocide Theory, suggests that alongside the well-documented genocide against the Tutsi, a second genocide was perpetrated by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) against the Hutu majority. Many actually acknowledged that the concept of a double genocide is not entirely new but for me, it is. The last book i read about Rwanda’s Genocide was written by Joseph Saberanzi titled ‘God sleep in Rwanda’ which pretty much highlight the conventional timeline of what entailed between Hutu Majority and Tutsi Minority. Now that i finished this book, i have more questions than answers to what happened exactly during those time. BUT i also have to highlight that this book was awarded a lot of prize for its credible reporting when it was published. Over the years, people started to find inconsistency and inconclusive evidence presented by her. This includes witness testimonies on the alleged death camps by The RPF. Some forensic anthropologists and scholars also raises questions the feasibility of mass cremations and acid disposal methods described in the book. Some even accused her to be Genocide denier. Just in case you wanted to read this book, i hope my review might help you determine whether it’s worth reading it or not. Now back to the concept of double genocide and how it applied in the Rwanda History. It was previously propagated by Hutu hardliners and genocide perpetrators as a means of deflecting blame from their own atrocities. The author argues that accusations of RPF genocide against the Hutu were used as a smokescreen by the extremist Hutu regime to divert international attention from their own genocide against the Tutsi. She further highlighted that the RPF's alleged genocide against the Hutu was conducted in secrecy. She also establishes the link that Western allies may have been complicit in covering up these atrocities. The fact that it was United States, United Kingdom and Canada is the one that turning blind eye on this is not surprising given the current situation on Gaza. Overall, this book has been eye-opening and illuminating in demonstrating another angle of the bloodiest event in the Rwanda History. This was not an easy read considering how graphic the crime was particularly on what they inflicted on women specifically. I think it’s time to find another book written by the Rwandan that could help shed light on the premise of ‘Kagame is the one orchestrating the whole thing to claim the power’ which heavily denotes by Judi Rever and offered the perspective of civilian when this massacre happened.
August 1, 2025
A few years ago, I heard connections made between the UK government's 'Rwanda Policy' and M23's activities in the DRC, namely that the money given to Kagame's government for taking in British asylum seekers was funneled to the militia as a Rwandan proxy force. Since hearing this, I've been reminded of my lack of understanding of any recent historical context for the African great lakes region. Seeking a book that could explain how my childhood 'Hotel Rwanda' perspective could be complicated by history, I was recommended In Praise of Blood.
From the start Rever is successful at blending her political revelations with the personal effects on her life. This is effective not only in giving a feeling of falling down a rabbit hole alongside the author, but also in bringing home the real danger of Kagame's security apparatus, even to a western journalist decades later. During the middle section of the book, this authorially personal element is understandably set to the side, for long descriptions of the logistics, staffing and accounts of various massacres. There's definitely a degree to which this kind of grim detail and specificity of accusations is necessary both to have the effects she wants on her readership and to reinforce the narrative being put forward in legal testimony by survivors. However, this was definitely the point where I found it hard to persevere. It may be a particular feature of reading on a kindle, to not be able to casually flick through to see how long a chapter goes, but I struggled with an indefinite feeling string of graphic descriptions of killings.
Following these descriptions, she turns to how the US pressured UN institutions to systematically cover up RPF crimes and give Kagame as a clean, heroic narrative. Here the book does a good job giving you a sense of a variety of kinds of international organisations, and how they can be bent by the soft power of the American state. It's particularly interesting understanding the subtlety of coercion exercised there, and the US's blunt hammer currently being taken towards transnational institutions that attempt to confront genocide.
This accessible history of the RPF and the Congo feels like a good place to start for me, and made me prepared to engage with more granular histories and contemporary analysis of how we got to the current conflicts.
From the start Rever is successful at blending her political revelations with the personal effects on her life. This is effective not only in giving a feeling of falling down a rabbit hole alongside the author, but also in bringing home the real danger of Kagame's security apparatus, even to a western journalist decades later. During the middle section of the book, this authorially personal element is understandably set to the side, for long descriptions of the logistics, staffing and accounts of various massacres. There's definitely a degree to which this kind of grim detail and specificity of accusations is necessary both to have the effects she wants on her readership and to reinforce the narrative being put forward in legal testimony by survivors. However, this was definitely the point where I found it hard to persevere. It may be a particular feature of reading on a kindle, to not be able to casually flick through to see how long a chapter goes, but I struggled with an indefinite feeling string of graphic descriptions of killings.
Following these descriptions, she turns to how the US pressured UN institutions to systematically cover up RPF crimes and give Kagame as a clean, heroic narrative. Here the book does a good job giving you a sense of a variety of kinds of international organisations, and how they can be bent by the soft power of the American state. It's particularly interesting understanding the subtlety of coercion exercised there, and the US's blunt hammer currently being taken towards transnational institutions that attempt to confront genocide.
This accessible history of the RPF and the Congo feels like a good place to start for me, and made me prepared to engage with more granular histories and contemporary analysis of how we got to the current conflicts.
December 20, 2025
9.4/10
The strength and bravery of Judy Rever is incredible. I cannot say I would have withstood what she went through if I were her. She is an example of what good journalism can do, and it’s a shame that her colleagues instead choose to cover for the blood-soaked Kagame government.
The official narrative of the Rwandan genocide is not only wrong and simplistic, but a tool used to support some of the worst atrocities on the African continent in recent memory. The RPF used this narrative to commit a genocide of its own against the Hutu population, killing before, during and after the official genocide had occurred. It primarily targeted two groups within the Hutu ethnic group: Peasant masses in the north and Hutu “intellectuals” countrywide. The former refers to the mass killings of Hutu peasant populations so that aggrieved Tutsi refugee expatriates could settle the land of the Hutus now shot, incinerated or hacked to death. The latter is even more disturbing. Wanting to create a pliant mass of Hutus, incapable of speaking up about anything, let alone the RPF’s crimes, there was a systemic slaughter of the smartest, most successful and most political Hutus in Rwanda. Teachers, lawyers, business owners, were all exterminated so that the population could be easily cowed and controlled.
The RPF did this in the most horrific ways possible. Community meetings called to lure Hutus to their deaths. Hutu men forced to kill their own families. The use of the agafuni. I could go on.
These atrocities are compounded by RPF complicity in allowing the well-known Tutsi genocide to occur, going so far as to kill other Tutsi’s to exacerbate ethnic tensions. They are also compounded by the RPF’s despicable actions in Congo, which have to date killed millions. All of this is similar to the holocaust and Israel’s subsequent conduct. Paul Kagame is a vicious, disgusting human being, and the west’s support for him is a sign of it’s deep and permanent moral rot. This book is horrifying and heartbreaking. Our world is caked in blood.
The strength and bravery of Judy Rever is incredible. I cannot say I would have withstood what she went through if I were her. She is an example of what good journalism can do, and it’s a shame that her colleagues instead choose to cover for the blood-soaked Kagame government.
The official narrative of the Rwandan genocide is not only wrong and simplistic, but a tool used to support some of the worst atrocities on the African continent in recent memory. The RPF used this narrative to commit a genocide of its own against the Hutu population, killing before, during and after the official genocide had occurred. It primarily targeted two groups within the Hutu ethnic group: Peasant masses in the north and Hutu “intellectuals” countrywide. The former refers to the mass killings of Hutu peasant populations so that aggrieved Tutsi refugee expatriates could settle the land of the Hutus now shot, incinerated or hacked to death. The latter is even more disturbing. Wanting to create a pliant mass of Hutus, incapable of speaking up about anything, let alone the RPF’s crimes, there was a systemic slaughter of the smartest, most successful and most political Hutus in Rwanda. Teachers, lawyers, business owners, were all exterminated so that the population could be easily cowed and controlled.
The RPF did this in the most horrific ways possible. Community meetings called to lure Hutus to their deaths. Hutu men forced to kill their own families. The use of the agafuni. I could go on.
These atrocities are compounded by RPF complicity in allowing the well-known Tutsi genocide to occur, going so far as to kill other Tutsi’s to exacerbate ethnic tensions. They are also compounded by the RPF’s despicable actions in Congo, which have to date killed millions. All of this is similar to the holocaust and Israel’s subsequent conduct. Paul Kagame is a vicious, disgusting human being, and the west’s support for him is a sign of it’s deep and permanent moral rot. This book is horrifying and heartbreaking. Our world is caked in blood.
June 28, 2021
Judi risked life and limb to write this thing, holy shit. Being that this book is a counter to the mainstream Rwandan genocide narrative, I'm not the best candidate to properly review it - since I didn't know anything about the Rwandan genocide before I picked it up.
What's here is despicable, tragic, and ultimately unsurprising - the UN and the Western world protecting and empowering a tyrant because his regime suits their economic interests? Sounds about right. The wealth of witnesses as well as the personal threats that Judi endured to write this book are more than enough to convince me of her thesis.
This book really is monumental in terms of what its central argument accomplishes - if Paul Kagame did even one tenth of what the evidence says he did, then any country that continued to send millions in aid to Rwanda is implicated in the genocide of nearly a million Hutus (and thousands of Tutsis).
As far as the reading experience goes, this book is a bit of a mess. I get it - Judi has to grab testimony from any witness she can find, her experiences are finite, truth is stranger than fiction, etc., so the main result is a pretty confusing structure. The book sorta kinda moves chronologically, it sorta kinda uses the author's life to center the narrative, it sorta kinda weaves in the stories of witnesses to paint an intimate picture of the killings - but mostly, it hops between subjects from chapter to chapter. One chapter might be about media coverage of the genocide, the next might be about a particular massacre that Judi found a wide assortment of witnesses to speak on, another will be about threats she endured, another will describe the power structure of Kagame's regime, etc. - it's all interesting, it's all apt content for what the book purports to do, but the transitions between chapters and ideas can be quite abrupt. But hey, whatever, let's give it four stars because Judi almost DIED
What's here is despicable, tragic, and ultimately unsurprising - the UN and the Western world protecting and empowering a tyrant because his regime suits their economic interests? Sounds about right. The wealth of witnesses as well as the personal threats that Judi endured to write this book are more than enough to convince me of her thesis.
This book really is monumental in terms of what its central argument accomplishes - if Paul Kagame did even one tenth of what the evidence says he did, then any country that continued to send millions in aid to Rwanda is implicated in the genocide of nearly a million Hutus (and thousands of Tutsis).
As far as the reading experience goes, this book is a bit of a mess. I get it - Judi has to grab testimony from any witness she can find, her experiences are finite, truth is stranger than fiction, etc., so the main result is a pretty confusing structure. The book sorta kinda moves chronologically, it sorta kinda uses the author's life to center the narrative, it sorta kinda weaves in the stories of witnesses to paint an intimate picture of the killings - but mostly, it hops between subjects from chapter to chapter. One chapter might be about media coverage of the genocide, the next might be about a particular massacre that Judi found a wide assortment of witnesses to speak on, another will be about threats she endured, another will describe the power structure of Kagame's regime, etc. - it's all interesting, it's all apt content for what the book purports to do, but the transitions between chapters and ideas can be quite abrupt. But hey, whatever, let's give it four stars because Judi almost DIED
November 26, 2023
I don't know why African leaders are so brutal. Why do they steal and why do they treat their people with such harsh aggressiveness? I feel maybe when they saw the colonials treat the people the way they did, these people may have thought it was the right way to do things, but then there is no logic or thinking and no economic strategies or development. This, amongst ALL of the genocides in the world, is the worst. Mugabe, Amin and Pol Pot are dastardly cowards and the later presidents should really have used common sense to learn from the previous. Their dim-witted thinking is proof for the world. Worst of all is how the United States especially backs these killings, as they do all over the world, with the aim of fattening their wallets. This book is beautifully researched and informative, but so so tragic. I could not read it all for the sad stories, but I have very little faith and a lot of hatred for humanity and the capitalism of the Americans who allow themselves to sleep whilst the blood of babies seeps into the ground.
July 29, 2018
Just spotted this one on the shelf at the library, checked it out, and finished it in a sitting. Deeply informative, revealing and violent, and wholeheartedly written. Judi Rever expertly (and I use this word because she MUST be one of the leading experts on the Rwandan genocide and the years that followed) details the moments after the media turns its lens away from an epicentre of human tragedy. In Praise of Blood deftly explores the vicious [continuing] tragedy in Rwanda's history and the personal risks that those investigating put forth.
Reminds me of It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War, but less memoir-based. Written in an engaging, personal voice nonetheless.
Would do a bit of research on the Rwanda genocide beforehand if you don't have a basic understanding of the complex topic already. Rever does her best to cover the origins, but can get a little lost in the meat of the book that takes place in the years following the genocide.
Reminds me of It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War, but less memoir-based. Written in an engaging, personal voice nonetheless.
Would do a bit of research on the Rwanda genocide beforehand if you don't have a basic understanding of the complex topic already. Rever does her best to cover the origins, but can get a little lost in the meat of the book that takes place in the years following the genocide.
May 31, 2025
This book not only details the horrors of the Rwandan genocide but also presents compelling evidence supporting the occurrence of two separate genocides of different scales , as well as the complicity of the Western world in both. While this may be controversial, one could argue that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) played a significant role in both genocides—serving as instigators of the first and perpetrators of the second. This brave woman, Judi, essentially sacrificed her life and family to compile the evidence for this book.
July 27, 2021
What an incredible book! Heavy but eye opening into the corruption at the UN level and the dirty games played to hide the truth. My only expose to the Rawandan Genocide history was through the movie Hotel Rawanda. This book busts open the well established narrative and delves in the deep and heavy politics and back room dealings that facilitated this horrific event.
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