Genocide: Fergal Keane's Account

Fergal Keane's account of the Rwandan genocide in his book 'All Of These People: A Memoir' is deeply moving. He gives clear, blunt, details of the atrocities he witnessed, but I still get the impression his chapter 'Limits' is heavily censored. Either his publishers, Harper Perennial, or he himself has made the conscious decision to try and shield the public from the grotesque horrors of those three months in 1994.

Towards the end of this, the nineteenth chapter, he asks: In a place consumed by genocide is it possible to be a good man and a bad man at the same time?

It is my opinion that a man is more likely to be both under genocidal circumstances than under 'normal' circumstances. I (thankfully) have never witnessed a murder or a genocide, and I have never been to a place where a genocide has occurred, but it strikes me than human nature is naturally positive. Everybody is born with goodness in their heart. Everybody has a soul, uncorrupted by acts of inhumane horror. But when you place said person in a cathedral of killing, which the city of Butare certainly was in 1994, giving in to the Devil becomes easier. It is definitely easier if there are people above you threatening pain or even death on you if you do not do as they say.

As Keane says, there are stories of Nazi SS Officers letting individual Jewish persons go free, and the same happened throughout Rwanda. The odd Tutsi was spared in Butare. My initial reaction was that every Tutsi, regardless of gender or age, should be spared. But it has just occurred to me that I am thinking under 'normal' Western ideals, based on rational behaviour. When a human being is in the situation where he is ordered by his boss to kill, yes kill someone else, and failure to do so will result in his death, then the letting go of someone takes on a new symbolic meaning. For me, it underlines my inherent belief that there is humane good in everyone. For others, it is simply an act of humanity, if a soldier doesn't slice an orphan's neck open.

I think everybody will agree that the situation where a soldier is ordered to strike a machete through the throat of another human being, regardless of sex, age, sexuality or whether they are wearing a military uniform or not, should never arise. It is a sad fact or civilisation that it has. It is a sad fact that it will happen again.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright