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Overview
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: | 9780345812117 |
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Publisher: | Random House of Canada, Limited |
Publication date: | 03/13/2018 |
Sold by: | Random House |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 304 |
File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
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