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

by Philip Gourevitch

“Humanity’s struggle to conquer nature,” the pygmy said fondly. “It is the only hope. It is the only way for peace and reconciliation—all humanity one against nature.” He sat back in his chair, with his arms crossed over his chest, and went silent. After a while, I said, “But humanity is part of nature, too.” “Exactly,” the pygmy said. “That is exactly the problem.”

“Every survivor wonders why he is alive,”

“Everyone was called to hunt the enemy,” said Theodore Nyilinkwaya, a survivor of the massacres in his home village of Kimbogo, in the southwestern province of Cyangugu. “But let’s say someone is reluctant. Say that guy comes with a stick. They tell him, ‘No, get a masu.’ So, OK, he does, and he runs along with the rest, but he doesn’t kill. They say, ‘Hey, he might denounce us later. He must kill. Everyone must help to kill at least one person.’ So this person who is not a killer is made to do it. And the next day it’s become a game for him. You don’t need to keep pushing him.” At Nyarubuye, even the little terracotta votive statues in the sacristy had been methodically decapitated. “They were associated with Tutsis,” Sergeant Francis explained.

“we got so used to running that when one wasn’t running one didn’t feel right.”

Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy. —RALPH ELLISON Invisible Man

In March of 1957, a group of nine Hutu intellectuals published a tract known as the Hutu Manifesto, arguing for “democracy”—not by rejecting the Hamitic myth but by embracing it. If Tutsis were foreign invaders, the argument went, then Rwanda was by rights a nation of the Hutu majority. This was what passed for democratic thought in Rwanda: Hutus had the numbers. The Manifesto firmly rejected getting rid of ethnic identity cards for fear of “preventing the statistical law from establishing the reality of facts,” as if being Hutu or Tutsi automatically signified a person’s politics.

Plenty of more moderate views could be heard, but who listens to moderates in times of revolution?

the Rwandan revolution had, in fact, “brought about the racial dictatorship of one party” and simply replaced “one type of oppressive regime with another.” The report also warned of the possibility “that some day we will witness violent reactions on the part of the Tutsis.” The Belgians didn’t much care.

when we judge political power, we need to ask not only what its base is but also how the power is exercised, under what circumstances, toward what ends, at what price, and with what success.

we seem to have a hard time taking seriously the notion that places where mass violence and suffering is so widespread that it is casually called “meaningless” might also be places where people engage in meaningful politics.