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

by Philip Gourevitch

This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

During the first nine and a half months of 1996, the fact that the Mobutist–Hutu Power alliance in eastern Zaire was slaughtering thousands of people and forcing hundreds of thousands more from their homes did not seem to excite the international press. During that period, exactly one dispatch on the subject, reported from Rwanda, appeared in my local paper, The New York Times, and in its competition, The Washington Post, coverage had been limited to two freelance “opinion” pieces. Perhaps the idea that people called refugees not only suffer and require aid but also are capable of systematic crimes against humanity, and may require direct confrontation by military force, was considered too technical or confusing in an age of radically reduced foreign coverage. But, in early November, the prospect of three-quarters of a million refugees dying en masse, under siege or in battle on the lava fields, once more drew a pack of hundreds of reporters to the Rwanda-Zaire border. Goma was again the world’s leading international story—and nothing was happening.