We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

by Philip Gourevitch

The failure of the international community to respond adequately to both the genocide and the subsequent mixing of genocidal killers with the legitimate refugee population in the former eastern Zaire only served to prolong the crisis. This climate of impunity was further exacerbated by ethnic cleansing and conflict in the [North Kivu] region—and also by former President Mobutu’s policies of allowing these genocidal forces to operate, recruit and resupply on his territory.

Their feeling was that after sitting out the Rwandan genocide, the so-called international community had little credibility as moral referees in the war against the génocidaires.

“It becomes extremely difficult for me to imagine that the whole world is so naive as not to see that this was a real problem,”

“Even now, these fellows are crossing our borders, ex-FAR and militias, mixed with maybe some of their family members,” Kagame said. “They are armed with rocket-propelled grenades, with machine guns, they are killing people as they move, and this is nothing to the international community. What is a thing is that Tutsis were killing refugees. There’s something extremely wrong here.

“In fact,” Kagame went on, “I think we should start accusing these people who actually supported the camps, spent a million dollars per day in these camps, gave support to these groups to rebuild themselves into a force, militarized refugees. When in the end these refugees are caught up in the fighting and they die, I think it has more to do with these people than Rwanda, than Congo, than the Alliance.

“It’s not so much the human rights concerns, it’s more political. It’s ‘Let’s kill this development, this dangerous development of these Africans trying to do things their own way.’”

Rwanda had finally begun holding genocide trials. This was a historic event: never before had anybody on earth been brought to court for the extraordinary crime of genocide.

The hopes for redemption that stories like Esther’s have inspired among persecuted peoples invariably carry a faith in the restorative power of avenging justice.

“We, the international community, should have been more active in the early stages of the atrocities in Rwanda in 1994, and called them what they were—genocide.” Albright, who would be making a brief visit to Rwanda during her tour of Africa, also condemned the use of humanitarian aid “to sustain armed camps or to support genocidal killers.”

Albright’s “apology,” as it came to be known, marked a significant break with the habits of shame and defensiveness that often conspired to deny the basic facts of the Rwandan genocide their rightful place in international memory.

“During the ninety days that began on April 6, 1994, Rwanda experienced the most intensive slaughter in this blood-filled century,” Clinton said, adding, “It is important that the world know that these killings were not spontaneous or accidental … they were most certainly not the result of ancient tribal struggles … . These events grew from a policy aimed at the systematic destruction of a people.”

If Rwanda’s experience could be said to carry any lessons for the world, it was that endangered peoples who depend on the international community for physical protection stand defenseless.

“With my countrymen—Rwandans—you never know what they will become tomorrow.”

During their attack on the school in Gisenyi, as in the earlier attack on the school in Kibuye, the students, teenage girls who had been roused from their sleep, were ordered to separate themselves—Hutus from Tutsis. But the students had refused. At both schools, the girls said they were simply Rwandans, so they were beaten and shot indiscriminately. Rwandans have no need—no room in their corpse-crowded imaginations—for more martyrs. None of us does. But mightn’t we all take some courage from the example of those brave Hutu girls who could have chosen to live, but chose instead to call themselves Rwandans?