A Correction Regarding The Post "Genocide: Fergal Keane's Account"

My instinct that Fergal Keane was, in the chapter 'Limits' shielding his reader from the true horrors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide have been proved correct, for in the following chapter 'Valentina', his descriptions are far more shocking.

He describes in thorough detail the events in the (predominantly Hutu) town of Nyarubuye, where a corrupt leader (Mr. Gacumbitsi) promises the Tutsis protection if they gather in the church, before ordering the slaughter. Horrifying. But two factors make this an effective piece of writing.

Firstly, this particular narrative is personalised through familiarisation with a girl called Valentina. Suddenly the people being massacred in the church have names, relations, souls. I shall spare the gory details.

Secondly, the truly shocking parts are told to us in quotation marks by Valentina. They are presented as her words. She is eight years old, with her head hacked open as she has to live among the rotting corpses of the church for four weeks. If she leaves, Gacumbitsi will slaughter her, she being the only Tutsi to survive in the Nyarubuye church massacre. Believe me, I have spared you the gory details.

Half way through the chapter, Keane goes through a transformation from journalist to philanthropist. He is deeply moved by the state he finds Valentina in. She is couped up in a makeshift clinic, her hand bandaged where she no longer has fingers, and something else I cannot bring myself to describe. He is deeply saddened. he wouldn't be human if he wasn't angry by what he saw.

But he gives her no chance. She will die. There aren't the treatments there in rural Rwanda to save her. She will die.

Two and a half years later, Keane is back in Rwanda, and he heads straight for Nyarubuye. The miracle of miracles has happened -- Valentina was taken to the capital where a foreign doctor carried out the procedure to save her life. By the end of the day, he has met up with her again. By the time he has to leave, she is sad to see him leave. He says he will stay in contact, and he does. He still keeps in touch with Valentina, who by now is a beautiful young women, with high hopes of becoming a doctor herself.

If every foreign journalist who had covered war zones kept in touch with every injured women or child they came across, they would have more friends than anyone else in the world. it is a fact that John Simpson, probably the most experienced and most travelled of any BBC hack ever, has tried to not get 'involved' with the stories he covers, but he still has friends scattered across the face of the Earth. Fergal Keane's pleasure in seeing Valentina go from being needy survivor to aspiring doctor emphasises no reasonable man's occupation can ever get the better of him. Humanity always comes before work.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

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