We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

Stunning and heart wrenching

I picked this up on a whim one day and have since been glued to the pages. It not only brings to light the horrible things that people can do but also how some have survived them. Books like this need to be written, to be read, to show the rest of the world the horrors around them, maybe then people will start to change for the better and things like what happened in Rwanda will stop happening.

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STORIES FROM RWANDA contains many lessons applicable to strategic communications, stability operations, and peacekeeping. An outstanding account of the Rwandan Genocide.

WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW WE WILL BE KILLED WITH OUR FAMILIES, Philip Gourevitch, Picador Books, 356 pages.

The subtitle of this book is "STORIES FROM RWANDA," but this book is about much more than Rwanda. It is about European colonialism and racism. It is about Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is about non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations that operate under United Nations mandates and charters as well as United Nations peacekeeping. It is about strategic communications and it is about stability operations. The title comes from a letter from several Tutsi pastors begging a Hutu pastor to intervene with the local Hutu mayor on their behalf. They were killed with their families.

Gourevitch tell us his book is

"about how people imagine themselves and one another - a book about how we imagine our world. In Rwanda. . . the government had adopted a new policy, according to which everyone in the country's Hutu majority group was called upon to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. The government, and an astounding number of its subjects, imagined that by exterminating the Tutsi people they could make the world a better place, and the mass killing had followed."

Gourevitch demonstrates that the genocide was a government-planned affair and not the spontaneous uprising of Hutus against their Tutsi neighbors and in many cases, family members, as a result of the assassination of the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda in 1994. He interviews alleged and confessed perpetrators as well as survivors and gives us narrative (no photos, words being sufficient) tours of various massacre sites, refugee camps and prisons. This book could be viewed as a strategic communications coup for then President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Vice President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Though Gourevitch interviewed opposition leaders as well, these three national leaders came across as sincere, just and competent

The international community, with special emphasis on the United States, France, the United Nations and the NGO community did not come across as any of those. Gourevitch highlights the failure of key international actors to do anything to stop the genocide. He points out how French Operation TURQUOISE actually allowed for Hutu interahamwe militias to rearm and begin the genocide anew behind the French lines. He notes how the United Nations and NGO community and their donors failed to intervene effectively during the genocide and how they created and sustained huge refugee camps in Congo, all the while knowing that they were shielding not only bona fide refugees, but mass murderers as well.

In the final page, Gourevitch recounts the continued ethnic violence and continued hope in and for Rwanda:

"Rwandan television showed footage of a man who confessed to having been among a party of genocidaires. . . During their attack on the school in Gisenyi, as in the earlier attack in on the school in Kibuye, the students, teenage girls who had been roused from their sleep, were ordered to separate themselves - Hutus from Tutsis. But the students had refused. At both schools, the girls said that they were simply Rwandans, so they were beaten and shot indiscriminately."

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A reviewer

This book was amazingly well written and extremely insightful. The whole Rwandan Genocide can by seen and felt through the stories and accounts given by survivors. Gourevitch does an amazing job of capturing the attention of his readers in this book and holds their attention throughout. I was surprised by all the details he had but into the accounts and stories he told, holding nothing back. I really enjoyed his honesty and courage about these stories. I had never read anything on the Rwandan Genocide before, but this book helped me to understand it more and spark my interest in learning more about the genocide. It was a great read from start to finish.

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A Riveting and Haunting Account!

This book provides a thoughtful, in-depth look at a horrendous human tragedy that was essentially ignored as it unfolded and sadly remains overlooked and misunderstood to this day. Gourevitch's courage, passion, and determination to chronicle the events surrounding and fueling the Rwandan genocide is absolutely remarkable. He faces the most difficult of tasks: to explain the inexplicable...to describe the indescribable...and perhaps most importantly, to make us think about the unthinkable. He admirably accomplishes all of these tasks with great insight and understanding. He takes us on an amazing, humbling, and often disturbing journey through the killing fields of Africa. He skillfully explores the destructive impact of political and economic greed and general hedonism on the human condition. I believe most readers will come away from this compelling account with a novel perception of themselves and their place in the world around them.

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A true story

In this well researched and beautifully written book about the genocide in Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch did a brilliant job not only in telling us about the genocide, but also in making us understand the intricate history of the land that made the genocide possible and the aftermath of the genocide. The book moved me from the opening to the last pages. What I particularly liked about this work by Gourevitch is the fact that it is easy for a non-African or non-Rwandan mind that has no knowledge of Rwanda to understand the story. The analysis was perfect and the criticism deserving.

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Great historical account

This is a great historical account of the Rwandan genocide. I've been interested in the genocide for a few years now, but never knew/understood the outer-workings of surrounding countries and what affect they had on the genocide.

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Amazing

I read this when I was a sophmore in high school, three years ago, and it still makes me hurt to think about the stories I read. It inspired me to care more about what goes on beyond the U.S. borders, and I was also inspired by it to write a fictional piece about the Rwandan Genocide for a contest in which I became a semi-finalist. A very powerful piece in so many ways.

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Wonderful but so sad

I have to admit that I only knew about Rwanda because of Gorillas in the Mist but after reading the first page of this book I was hooked. Not only it is beautifully written but it makes you think about what horrible things we are capable of doing as human beings. It should be a must read for everyone.

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Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity

Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families (1998), writes that the civil war in Rwanda in 1994 produced few heroes. However, in the midst of the horror, Gourevitch points out that Paul Rusesabagina the quick-witted and courageous Hutu hotel manager of the Hotel des Mille Colline, a luxury hotel in central Kigali owned by Sabena airlines, managed to save more than a thousand people. Many people who were slated for death wound up at this hotel. They were fortunate enough to find refuge in what was one of the only safe places in Rwanda. Two medical doctors Odette Nyiramilimo, her husband Dr Jean Baptiste Gasasira and their children ended up at this hotel. Many Tutsis were kept safe there. Gourevitch describes how Rusesabagina spent his days buying lives of Tutsis with liquor, reasoning, persuading, so that each band of killers who came to the hotel to take out various Tutsis on their lists for killing somehow ended up going away. Rusesabagina would then stay up until four in the morning using the one phone line, which the Hutu power authorities had not managed to cut off, as they did not know its number. He would send faxes to Bill Clinton, ring the French Foreign Ministry, ring the King of Belgium, and tell them what was going on. Gourevitch says that although Rusesabagina may not have seen what he did as heroic, he still saved many lives. Something that almost everyone else was unable or unwilling to do. None of the people who took shelter at the hotel were killed during the genocide and none were killed at a small number of other sites under foreign protection, like the hospital in Kigali run by Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Perhaps these sanctuaries could not have been replicated so successfully elsewhere. But certainly it would have been right to try. In 2000, Rusesabagina was the recipient of the Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity and was running a transport company in Brussels Belgium, and is still exceptionally modest about what he did. Best Regards, David S. Fick, Author of Entrepreneurship in Africa: A Study of Successes (March 2002)

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Beautifully Written

Philip Gourevitch writes with a beauty and clarity that few reporters do. As he embarks to explain the events that surrounded the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Gourevitch not only tells the offical story, but highlights the historical roots of the ethnic conflict and relays the personal stories of Rwandans. In short, this is a multilayered and comprehensive work. Furthermore, he puts a human face on an incomprehensible series of events. Gourvetich is particularly good at telling us how Rwandans feel about what happened rather than providing us with a purely western perspective. This book is highly readable and suitable for those who may know nothing about the event. I highly recommend it. It is very moving and beautifully written.

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an excellent book

The interesting title of this book caught my eye, and the few sentences on the back cover made me realise that I was ignorant of major and horrific events that I should have known more about. I completed the book within a couple of days of buying it - I couldn't put it down. I've been discussing it with everyone I talk to, and thoroughly recommend it. The book has been an incredible eye-openner to me. Not only the subject matter, but the fact that I had to read a book to learn the basic truths of the genocide in Rwanda, and the west's disgraceful participation in it. Why weren't these important details provided by our journalists, TV news shows, and political commentators at the time?

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A Must Read For Any Student Of War Crimes

As I read this book, I felt similarly to how I felt a few months earlier, when I had read a book chronicling the conflict in Bosnia. Only with this book, I felt it twice as much. Prior to reading this book, I knew embarrassingly little about Rwanda. What little bit I did know was wrong ¿ I thought Rwandans had merely endured a civil war. But as I read the book, I began to realize that what went on in Rwanda was full-blown genocide. I couldn¿t help but think of how many times I have heard people say that we can never let anything like the Holocaust happen again. And yet, as evidenced by what transpired in Rwanda, it has happened again and the rest of the world should be ashamed of our reaction, or lack thereof. For anyone who wants to learn about what happened in Rwanda during the 1990¿s, this book provides a comprehensive analysis. As the book¿s subtitle implies, Gourevitch¿s book is generally taken from his many travels in Rwanda and his countless interviews with people he met. I found the scope of the people he interviewed to be quite impressive, and many of their stories both powerful and shocking. But while a good portion of the book focuses on the experiences of individuals Gourevitch met who lived through (and even participated in) the genocide, he presents their stories in such a way that he also gives a great deal of analysis to the historical and political background of Rwanda. Moreover, he also manages to focus a great deal on the psychology of the genocide, and of the irony that many Western countries, rather than trying to help put a stop to the genocide, were actually helping the culprits at the expense of the victims. Bottom line¿any person who studies war crimes should read this book.

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Impressed as a former visitor to Rwanda

I was impressed with the scope of the book. I'm glad to have been able to find out about a lot fo the things that happened in Rwanda. I too was struck by the sheer beauty of the country. People in America can't understand the reasons for what happened to the people in Rwanda. I'd like to personally thank the writer for opening my eyes.

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Reliving the genocide

This book describes real stories of real people in the genocide. It is a very sombre book that describes to the world the very sombre Rwanda, that was, in 1994 and still is today. It is very well written and I believe quite accurate. I think it is a must read for all Africans, because Rwanda is our problem. This book is a good place for anyone interested in Rwanda to start or to build on because it explains the past, present and future of Rwanda. Gourevitch does an excellent job especially with the background history and Rwandan culture that he brings out in the first few chapters. This book aslo brings out important evidence that Africans can't possible rely on western governments to come in understand and solve African problems. They don't really care.

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Important

This is an important book for everyone to read as it dispels a lot of myths about what when on in the refugee camps in Goma, Zaire in the mid-90s. What most of the world didn't know was that all of the humanitarian aid that was being poured into Goma was being used to harbour killers who had fled Rwanda. These people in the camps participated in what was probably the worst genocide of an ethnic group the world has ever known, including the Holocaust. It is tough to read this and realize that the Western world was not only duped, but that we didn't pay that much attention to it anyway. Read this book and it will change your perception of 'ethnic cleansing.' What we vowed would never happen after the Holocaust happened right there in central Africa. God help the Rwandans.

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Unbelievable

I read this book in two sittings, it has changed my perspective on not only the way western governments treat 3rd world countires that have no economical value. It also provides a view at humanity and human nature.

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