The Media and the Rwanda Genocide
Author: Allan Thompson
Publisher: IDRC
Published: 2007-01-20
Total Pages: 480
ISBN-13: 0745326250
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExplores the role of the media in the Rwandan genocide -- within the country and beyond.
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Tested to the Limit
Author: Consolee Nishimwe
Publisher: BalboaPress
Published: 2012-06-27
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 1452549591
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“If there is one book you should read on the Rwandan Genocide, this is it. Tested to the Limit—A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Pain, Resilience, and Hope is a riveting and courageous account from the perspective of a fourteen year- old girl. It’s a powerful story you will never forget.” —Francine LeFrak, founder of Same Sky and award-winning producer “That someone who survived such a horrific, life-altering experience as the Rwandan genocide could find the courage to share her story truly amazes me. But even more incredible is that Consolee Nishimwe refused to let the inhumane acts she suffered strip away her humanity, zest for life and positive outlook for a better future. After reading Tested to the Limit, I am in awe of the unyielding strength and resilience of the human spirit to overcome against all odds.” —Kate Ferguson, senior editor, POZ magazine “Consolee Nishimwe’s story of resilience, perseverance, and grace after surviving genocide, rape, and torture is a testament to the transformative power of unyielding faith and a commitment to love. Her inspiring narrative about compassionate courage and honest revelations about her spiritual path in the face of unthinkable adversity remind us that hope is eternal, and miracles happen every day.” —Jamia Wilson, vice president of programs, Women’s Media Center, New York
From War to Genocide
Author: André Guichaoua
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Published: 2015-12
Total Pages: 479
ISBN-13: 0299298205
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA definitive account and analysis of the evolving genocidal violence in Rwanda in 1994, and of the judicial, political, and diplomatic responses to it.
To Save Heaven and Earth
Author: Jennie E. Burnet
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2023-01-15
Total Pages: 377
ISBN-13: 1501767127
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn To Save Heaven and Earth, Jennie E. Burnet considers people who risked their lives in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsi to try and save those targeted for killing. Many genocide perpetrators were not motivated by political ideology, ethnic hatred, or prejudice. By shifting away from these classic typologies of genocide studies and focusing instead on hundreds of thousands of discrete acts that unfold over time, Burnet highlights the ways that complex decisions and behaviors emerge in the social, political, and economic processes that constitute a genocide. To Save Heaven and Earth explores external factors, such as geography, local power dynamics, and genocide timelines, as well as the internal states of mind and motivations of those who effected rescues. Framed within the interdisciplinary scholarship of genocide studies and rooted in cultural anthropology methodologies, this book presents stories of heroism and of the good done amid the evil of a genocide that nearly annihilated Rwandan Tutsi and decimated the Hutu and Twa who were opposed to the slaughter.
Eyewitness to a Genocide
Author: Michael Barnett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2012-05-03
Total Pages: 240
ISBN-13: 0801465125
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy was the UN a bystander during the Rwandan genocide? Do its sins of omission leave it morally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand experiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN's involvement in Rwanda. In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the author documents, the UN was increasingly aware or had good reason to suspect that Rwanda was a site of crimes against humanity. Yet it failed to act. Barnett argues that its indifference was driven not by incompetence or cynicism but rather by reasoned choices cradled by moral considerations. Employing a novel approach to ethics in practice and in relationship to international organizations, Barnett offers an unsettling possibility: the UN culture recast the ethical commitments of well-intentioned individuals, arresting any duty to aid at the outset of the genocide. Barnett argues that the UN bears some moral responsibility for the genocide. Particularly disturbing is his observation that not only did the UN violate its moral responsibilities, but also that many in New York believed that they were "doing the right thing" as they did so. Barnett addresses the ways in which the Rwandan genocide raises a warning about this age of humanitarianism and concludes by asking whether it is possible to build moral institutions.
Cockroaches
Author: Scholastique Mukasonga
Publisher: Archipelago
Published: 2016-10-25
Total Pages: 170
ISBN-13: 0914671545
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMukasonga unsparingly resurrects the horrors of the Rwandan geocide while lyrically recording the quieter moments of daily life with her family—a moving tribute to all those who are displaced, who suffer. Mukasonga’s extraordinary, lyrical, and heartbreaking book … is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about the endurance of the human spirit and who hopes for a better world. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Los Angeles Review of Books Scholastique Mukasonga’s Cockroaches is a compelling chronicle of the author’s childhood in the years leading up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In a spare and penetrating tone, Mukasonga brings to life the scenes of her family’s forced displacement from Rwanda to neighboring Burundi. With a view made lucid through time and pain, Mukasonga erodes the distance between her present and her past, resurrecting and paying homage to her family members who were massacred in the genocide, but also, in movingly simple language, the beauty present in quiet, daily moments with her loved ones. As lyrical as it is tragic, Cockroaches is Mukasonga’s tribute to her family’s suffering and to the lingering grip of the dead on the living.
A People Betrayed
Author: Linda Melvern
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2024-07-25
Total Pages: 425
ISBN-13: 1350409669
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFollowing thirty years of research, including research into recently declassified government archives, this newly revised and expanded edition of Linda Melvern's classic of investigative journalism reveals how policymakers continue to refuse to properly acknowledge their responsibilities under international law. The new edition includes copious new material reckoning with the information that came to light during the 2022 trial of Félicien Kabuga, the alleged financier of the genocide. This new evidence feeds not only into a revised chronology and a wholly new section on the build-up to the genocide, but also into a new appendix that lists the six major genocide memorial sites in Rwanda along with now-incontrovertible details of the massacres that occurred there. Throughout it all, Melvern reveals in unmatched detail the scale, speed, and intensity of the unfolding genocide, and she exposes the Western governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening if only they had chosen to act. What emerges is a shocking indictment of how Rwanda was ignored in 1994 and of how it is misremembered in the West today-an indictment that renders all the more poignant Melvern's accounts of the unrecognised heroism of those who stayed on during the violence, from volunteer peacekeepers to NGO workers.
Sacrifice as Terror
Author: Christopher C. Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-09-13
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 1000181308
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the early months of 1994, it became clear that the government of Rwanda had not acted in good faith in signing peace accords with its adversary, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Acts of government-sponsored violence grew more frequent. The author of this book, who at that point was conducting fieldwork in Rwanda, on several occasions found either himself or the Rwandans accompanying him threatened with, or sustaining, bodily harm. Finally, active hostilities between the antagonists escalated on April 7, 1994, just hours after the Rwandan President's plane was shot down. During the author's evacuation from Rwanda in the months following, he interviewed many survivors. This book, the outcome of the author's experiences during the conflict, is an attempt to understand the atrocities committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which nearly one million people, mostly of Tutsi ethnicity, were slaughtered in less than four months. Beyond this, the author shows that political and historical analyses, while necessary in understanding the violence, fail to explain the forms that the violence took and the degree of passion that motivated it. Instead, Rwandan ritual and practices related to the body are revelatory in this regard, as the body is the ultimate tablet upon which the dictates of the nation-state are inscribed. One rather bizarre example of this is that Hutu extremists often married or had sexual relations with Tutsi women who, according to the Hamitic hypothesis, were said to be sexually alluring. Their mixed-race offspring were not exempt from the genocide. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in light of the recent resurgence of violence, the author advances hypotheses about how the violence in Rwanda and Burundi might be transcended.
A People Betrayed
Author: Linda Melvern
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Published: 2014-04-10
Total Pages: 319
ISBN-13: 1783602708
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEvents in Rwanda in 1994 mark a landmark in the history of modern genocide. Up to one million people were killed in a planned public and political campaign. In the face of indisputable evidence, the Security Council of the United Nations failed to respond. In this classic of investigative journalism, Linda Melvern tells the compelling story of what happened. She holds governments to account, showing how individuals could have prevented what was happening and didn't do so. The book also reveals the unrecognised heroism of those who stayed on during the genocide, volunteer peacekeepers and those who ran emergency medical care. Fifteen years on, this new edition examines the ongoing impact of the 1948 Genocide Convention and the shock waves Rwanda caused around the world. Based on fresh interviews with key players and newly-released documents, A People Betrayed is a shocking indictment of the way Rwanda is and was forgotten and how today it is remembered in the West.
The Rwanda Crisis
Author: Gérard Prunier
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 442
ISBN-13: 9780231104098
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the spring of 1994 the tiny African nation of Rwanda exploded onto the international media stage, as internal strife reached genocidal proportions. But the horror that unfolded before our eyes had been building steadily for years before it captured the attention of the world. In The Rwanda Crisis, journalist and Africa scholar Gérard Prunier provides a historical perspective that Western readers need to understand how and why the brutal massacres of 800,000 Rwandese came to pass. Prunier shows how the events in Rwanda were part of a deadly logic, a plan that served central political and economic interests, rather than a result of ancient tribal hatreds--a notion often invoked by the media to dramatize the fighting. The Rwanda Crisis makes great strides in dispelling the racist cultural myths surrounding the people of Rwanda, views propogated by European colonialists in the nineteenth century and carved into "history" by Western influence. Prunier demonstrates how the struggle for cultural dominance and subjugation among the Hutu and Tutsi--the central players in the recent massacres--was exploited by racially obsessed Europeans. He shows how Western colonialists helped to construct a Tutsi identity as a superior racial type because of their distinctly "non-Negro" features in order to facilitate greater control over the Rwandese. Expertly leading readers on a journey through the troubled history of the country and its surroundings, Prunier moves from the pre-colonial Kingdom of Rwanda, though German and Belgian colonial regimes, to the 1973 coup. The book chronicles the developing refugee crisis in Rwanda and neighboring Uganda in the 1970s and 1980s and offers the most comprehensive account available of the manipulations of popular sentiment that led to the genocide and the events that have followed. In the aftermath of this devastating tragedy, The Rwanda Crisis is the first clear-eyed analysis available to American readers. From the massacres to the subsequent cholera epidemic and emerging refugee crisis, Prunier details the horrifying events of recent years and considers propsects for the future of Rwanda.
