PHILIP GOUREVITCH

Philip Gourevitch, Tomorrow we wish to inform you that we will be killed with our families

Philip Gourevitch, Tomorrow we wish to inform you that we will be killed with our families

Introduction

The images are so disturbing they are difficult to watch. Two women kneel amid the bodies of those who have already been slain. They are at the side of a dirt road in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Their final moments are captured on video by a British journalist, one of only a few foreign reporters left in the country, who is recording clandestinely from the top of a building nearby.1 Remarkably, during a genocide that claimed as many as a million lives, this is one of the only times a killing is recorded by the media. In the footage, one of the women is pleading, first clasping her hands in front of her, as if in prayer, then throwing open her arms, appealing to the throng of men who are milling about nearby, holding machetes and sticks. Further along the road are the bodies of others who have been dragged out of their homes and killed. The woman continues to beg, but the men seem to be oblivious to her. A young boy dressed in a T-shirt strolls past, giving the women only a backward glance. At one point, you can see a man in the crowd clutching something in his left hand. It appears to be a radio.

Minutes go by and the woman continues to plead for her life. The other figure crouched beside her barely flinches. Men wielding sticks in one hand and machetes in the other move forward and begin to pound the bodies that are strewn around the two women, striking the corpses again and again. One man gives the bodies a final crack, as if driving a stake into the ground, then slings his stick over his shoulder and ambles off. All the while, the woman continues to wave her arms and plead. A white pickup truck approaches and drives through the scene. The windshield wipers are flopping back and forth. One of the men huddled in the back of the vehicle waves a hand at the woman who is kneeling on the ground. He taunts her with a greeting.

Hate Media In Rwanda

It is logical to begin with an examination of the evolution of hate media in Rwanda and the particular role played by radio station RTLM and the newspaper Kangura. Alison Des Forges, senior advisor to Human Rights Watch's Africa Division and the author of the definitive work Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Des Forges 1999), sets the scene with a broad historical overview of the development of hate media in Rwanda and the world's failure to deal effectively with the phenomena. French historian Jean-Pierre Chrétien, co-author of Rwanda: les Médias du Génocide (Chrétien et al. 1995), traces the evolution of RTLM in Rwandan society.

International Media Coverage Of The Genocide

Part Two turns to the other side of the equation ...