In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front

by Judi Rever

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345812100
Publisher:	Random House of Canada, Limited
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	1,142,056
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

JUDI REVER is a freelance print and broadcast journalist who started her career with Radio France Internationale before working for the wire service Agence France-Presse, reporting from Africa and the Middle East. Her reporting on Rwanda has been featured in seven front-page stories in the Globe and Mail over the past three years, and she has been named a country of origin information expert on Rwanda by the Rights in Exile Programme, which promotes the legal protection of refugees. Her work has also appeared in Foreign Policy Journal, Le Monde Diplomatique, Humanosphere, Digital Journal and the Africa Report.

Read an Excerpt

The UN documents leaked to me amount to historical vindication for Kagame’s victims. They also stand as a testament to the courage of young Tutsis who had been part of a brutal regime yet broke free, risking censure and death to tell the truth. Kagame has grossly miscalculated the mix of fury and shame that many of his men felt after committing acts of depravity. A soldier who was part of a mobile killing unit in Ngondore told me that before they were shot, dozens of Hutu men, women and children were tied up and forced to sit on the edge of a steep hill near a tea plantation, their backs facing the soldiers. He admitted that, day after day, it was the same operation: he and the other soldiers methodically unloaded their guns into the bodies of a total of two thousand civilians on that hill in April 1994. The memory of these executions has never left him.

In 1997 I went to Congo and met refugees in the forests south of Kisangani and in transit camps. I traveled to the equatorial town of Mbandaka then down to the capital, Kinshasa. Then I went back to Goma and crossed the border on foot to Gisenyi, Rwanda, before going through Ruhengeri to Kigali and its surrounding rural areas. That trip, in particular my foray into the Congolese jungle, was a crucible where I discovered a level of suffering that overwhelmed me. For a very long time, I doubted if I could ever truly tell the story of what I heard and saw.

It took me two decades to reorient myself, to shake down the emotions and observations from that trip. But I continued to speak to victims and observers of the violence that has gripped the region. Over the last five years I have devoted myself full-time to understanding the dynamics of Kagame’s violence prior to, during and after the genocide. What has inspired me throughout my reporting is the power of memory and the way it works to conquer fear. This book is a testament to the courage of some two hundred direct and contextual witnesses of RPF crimes, including officials who worked at the UN tribunal set up in the aftermath of the genocide. I am grateful to all those who shared their stories and let me into their profound inner world. As their testimony reveals, Kagame did not commit these crimes alone. He operated—still operates—with significant political cover. I continue to be astonished by all the ways he has got away with it.

Violence is never abstract for the victim or the perpetrator. In Praise of Blood puts a human face on the violence in Rwanda and Congo. It names those alleged to have orchestrated the most heinous of crimes. For reasons of safety, however, I cannot identify by their real names most of the witnesses who talked to me or provided me with documents for this book. Kagame remains a powerful, protected and dangerous figure.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Against the Grain 1

1 Kagame's Inner Station 7

2 The Rationale for War 30

3 Rwanda Digs In 45

4 Going for Broke 54

5 The Deep Structures of RPF Violence 64

6 Getting Away with Mass Murder at the Byumba Stadium 72

7 Kagame's Roving Death Squads 81

8 The Tutsi Fifth Column 106

9 Spinning Lies from Truth 123

10 Scenes from a Counterinsurgency 131

11 An Illegal Deal 153

12 The Consequences of Betrayal 166

13 The Assassination of Habyarimana 177

14 Becoming a Target 198

15 The Signs Were There from the Beginning 217

Conclusion: Remembering the Dead 229

Appendices

A Structure of RPF Violence from 1994 through the Counterinsurgency 237

B The Criminals of the Rwandan Patriotic Front 238

Acknowledgements 253

Notes 255

Index 271

Editorial Reviews

WINNER OF THE 2018 QUEBEC WRITERS' FEDERATION LITERARY AWARD: MAVIS GALLANT PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION

“Rever chronicles the largely unreported and cynically discounted view of the Rwandan genocide. A dogged reporter and skillful writer, Rever eschews what she calls the ‘Hollywood version of good guys and bad guys’ to meticulously document a chapter in recent history that is as complicated as it is dismaying. In making her case, she risks everything—her life included—to expose the crimes of Rwanda’s current brutal government. Rever’s harrowing narrative isn’t just a portrait of a tragic time; it also stands as an uncompromising prosecution of that period and its ongoing consequences. In Praise of Blood is an undeniably important story told by a remarkably brave writer.” —2018 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Jury

“Groundbreaking work that significantly changes what we know about the Rwandan genocide.” —The Globe and Mail

“In Praise of Blood explores how Washington helped obscure the full story of the genocide that devastated Rwanda during the 1990s and cover up the crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which has ruled the country ever since. Over the years, less valiant portraits of Kagame and the RPF have appeared . . . In Praise of Blood is the most accessible and up-to-date of these studies. . . . Kagame’s regime and its defenders have dismissed them all as propaganda . . . Rever’s account will prove difficult to challenge. She has been writing about Central Africa for more than twenty years, and her book draws on the reports of UN experts and human rights investigators, leaked documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and hundreds of interviews with eyewitnesses, including victims, RPF defectors, priests, aid workers, and officials from the UN and Western governments. Her sources are too numerous and their observations too consistent for her findings to be a fabrication.” —Helen Epstein, The New York Review of Books

“If [this book] doesn’t provoke indignation at Western support for such a despicable, criminal regime, nothing will. Indeed, apart from the outstanding documentation the book provides, its other great value is to provide insight into the process of researching it. Rever writes about the regime’s threats against her and the toll her investigations over many years took on her family and personal life. Reading it, I was reminded . . . truth-telling come with risks to physical and mental health.” —Hong Kong Free Press

“In Praise of Blood is compulsory reading for a world that has acknowledged only half the story of the Rwandan genocide. We owe a debt of gratitude to Judi Rever for risking her life to bring us the whole truth of that genocide in this great work of investigative journalism.” —Terry Gould, winner of the CJFE Tara Singh Hayer Press Freedom Award and author of Worth Dying For and Murder Without Borders
 
“This is an unflinching account of one of the most ruthlessly executed and cynically exploited human catastrophes of the twentieth century. If you thought you understood the genesis of the Rwandan genocide, think again. If you are confused by the origins of the ongoing carnage in the Congo and Zaire, mysterious murders in Uganda and South Africa, start reading now.” —Linden MacIntyre, award-winning broadcast journalist and Scotiabank Giller award-winning author of The Bishop’s Man
 
“In Praise of Blood will remain a work of reference on Rwanda for decades to come. Judi Rever exposes and meticulously documents a litany of crimes against Rwandans that forces loyal to the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, have killed many people to conceal. We are indebted to Rever’s courageous reporting in the face of great personal risk.” —Anjan Sundaram, journalist and author of Bad News and Stringer

From the Publisher