Dateline: 10/24/98
Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct an interview via email with Philip Gourevitch, author of the recently published book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. Mr. Gourevitch is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a contributing editor to the Forward. He has written numerous articles on Rwanda and other countries in Africa.
Human Rights Guide: When did you start writing about Rwanda?
Philip Gourevitch: The first Rwanda entry stamp in my passport is dated May 8, 1995 -- a year after the genocide was at its peak. So I wasn't there in 1994, during the massacres. In fact, at that time, I had no connection to the country, except as a newspaper reader who was wondering what the full story behind this immense program of political terror really was. The government sponsored extermination of Tutsis lasted a hundred days; in that time close to a million people were killed. And yet the news coverage of this bewildering event pretty much came to an end as soon as the blood had dried. I wanted to understand more -- about where the genocide had come from, how it had been implemented, and ESPECIALLY, about how Rwanda was coping with the aftermath: the prisons, the refugee camps, the psychic, political and economic economies of the survivors.
The genocide of 1994 left no Rwandan untouched. Now they were being asked to live together as one cohesive society. The challenges struck me as nearly impossible, and yet Rwandan could not afford the total hopelessness implicit in the idea of impossibility. So I went in 1995 to learn how Rwandans understood their ordeal, and how they were living with it. And I kept going back -- six times over the next two and a half years -- often for months at a time.
G: Rwanda is part of what is sometimes referred to as "Francophone Africa." Is France still influential in the region? Wasn't the French government supportive of Hutu Power, the group responsible for instigating the 1994 genocide? Has this hurt France's position in the region?
P.G.: Francophone Africa consists of all the countries where French is an official language, and France treats "la Francophonie" as a sort of post-colonial protectorate, freely meddling in the political and military governance of those countries. French policy has basically been that the Francophone countries are an extension of the motherland -- "chez nous."
As a former Belgian colony, Rwanda is a place where French is spoken, and before the genocide its Hutu dictatorship was heavily dependant on French patronage. French military and political backing created a protective bubble for the mobilization of the Hutu Power extremists who organized and presided over the genocide of 1994. France provided arms and diplomatic cover to the exterminators. France knew what its clients were about. So why did France pursue such an insane policy? To protect its sphere of influence -- and out of a policy that was radically indifferent to human welfare. During the genocide, as Hutu Power was supervising the massacre of an average of at least eight thousand Tutsis a day, France's socialist president, Francois Mitterand, remarked, "In such countries, genocide is not so important."
France's revolting conduct has caused it to lose much of its credibility in central Africa, especially after its attempt to shore up the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo/Zaire failed in 1996.
G: Hutu Power leaders fled Rwanda to the refugee camps in Zaire along with hundreds of thousands of civilians. What happened to Hutu Power after the camps were shut down? Is the organization still active?
P.G.: Yes -- the Hutu Power forces are still active, and their campaign to complete the genocide of 1994 by wiping Tutsis off the face of central Africa has continued, in varying degrees of intensity, without let up. When the camps were shut down, in November of 1996, more than a hundred thousand people from within them fled deeper into the Congo/Zaire, while the rest went home to Rwanda. Among those who fled and those who returned were sizable contingents of Hutu Power genocidaires. In Rwanda, massacres of Tutsis and of Hutus who reject genocide escalated steadily in the year following the return from the camps. In the Congo, Hutu fighters fought for Mobutu, and following their defeat tens of thousands of them fled to camps in neighboring states where they were once again housed in UN camps, and where they once again regrouped and rearmed. Today, in a bizarre and discouraging twist, the Hutu Power forces are fighting on behalf of Laurent Kabila, the new president of the Congo, and the threat of a resurgent Rwandan genocide is greater than it has been for several years.
G: You have referred to the international response to the genocide in Rwanda as "one of the most bewildering human spectacles of the century." Can you comment on this?
P.G.: Having done nothing to intervene to stop the genocide, the so called international community rushed to send humanitarian aid to the refugee camps controlled by the Hutu Power political and military machine. In the name of humanitarianism, the world knowingly fed, sheltered, and restored to fighting form a vast army dedicated to genocide. The political folly of such a cavalier handling of central Africa's affairs is truly bewildering.
G: You've mentioned before that the removal of Mobutu has signaled a change in the way African leaders interact with each other. Can you comment on this? Also, what do you think about events in Lesotho? Is intervention in Lesotho an example of this new interaction?
P.G.: Until very recently, wars in Africa were almost exclusively fought within states, and not between states. The principle of non-intervention in the "internal affairs" of other countries was considered sacrosanct on the continent. But the removal of Mobutu by a Rwandan-led pan-African alliance, backed by the military and political clout of as many as ten governments from around the continent, marked a radical shift in the way that African leaders dealt with African problems. The fall-out of that shift is still being played out in the Congo where a great trans-African war is now joined by at least half a dozen national armies, and as many semi-autonomous guerilla groups.
Yes, South Africa's intervention in Lesotho is consistent with the shift away from hands-off to hands-on relations between African states.
G: Violence in Rwanda continues today. Do see an end to the killing in Rwanda and in the region? What needs to happen?
P.G.: Yes, so long as tens of thousands of killers loyal to the Hutu Power program of genocide, remain at large and active in Rwanda and in neighboring states, there can be no trustworthy peace for Rwanda. Much of the country continues, gamely, to struggle toward recovery from the abyss of 1994, and Hutu Power remains dedicated to polarizing the country through terror. I do not foresee any end to the killing in the immediate future.
But I do not think it will go on forever. I do not think that genocide is either "inevitable" or "endemic" or "chronic" in Rwanda. It is a political program, and it is now a deeply entrenched political alternative amongst a radically brutalized population. Considering the enormity of the struggle against this utterly destructive strain in Rwandan society, and considering how much is at stake for all of humanity, one has to approach Rwanda's struggle not as simple good against evil, but as one of political improvement against political annihilation, and one has to give it a lot of time.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --