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Gourevitch, Philip. 1998. WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT TOMORROW WE WILL BE KILLED WITH OUR FAMILIES: STORIES FROM RWANDA. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 356 pp. No price indicated.
In May 1995 journalist Philip Gourevitch made his first journey to Rwanda. During this and subsequent visits he talked with people about the genocide which had taken place in Rwanda a year earlier. Led by a notion called Hutu Power, Hutu Rwandans killed about 75 percent of Rwanda's Tutsi population and an unknown number of Hutu unwilling to participate in the slaughter. Many have sought to relate the genocide to an invasion by the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front), an army consisting mainly of Rwandans who had taken refuge in Uganda after earlier massacres, or to the death of Rwanda's president Habyarimana in a plane crash on 6 April 1994. The author, however, shows that the massacres had been planned well before that and that these events only served as a starting point for the killings. He relates the genocide to a history of divisive colonial policies, the political context after decolonization, and, as of 1990, a carefully designed propaganda network inspiring hatred against Tutsi people. He also points out that the international community chose to ignore reports about the preparations and was, for various reasons, unwilling to react when the killings started.
The book is primarily concerned with the memory of the genocide....