We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
Authors: Philip Gourevitch
Tags: nonfiction, History
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high-profile archetype of the Rwandan Hutu génocidaire, and his imitators and disciples were soon legion.
Although he was a practicing member of Rwanda’s small Muslim community—the only religious community, according to one Christian leader, that “apparently behaved quite well, and as a group was not active in the genocide, even seeking to save Tutsi Muslims”—Ngeze’s true religion was “Hutuness.” His most famous article, published in December of 1990, was the credo of this newly crystallized faith: “The Hutu Ten Commandments.” In a few swift strokes, Ngeze revived, revised, and reconciled the Hamitic myth and the rhetoric of the Hutu revolution to articulate a doctrine of militant Hutu purity. The first three commandments addressed the stubborn perception, constantly reinforced by the tastes of visiting white men and Hutus with status, that the beauty of Tutsi women surpasses that of Hutu women. According to Ngeze’s protocols, all Tutsi women were Tutsi agents; Hutu men who married, befriended, or employed a Tutsi woman “as a secretary or concubine” were to be considered traitors, and Hutu women, for their part, were commanded to guard against the Tutsi-loving impulses of Hutu men. From sex, Ngeze moved on to matters of business, declaring every Tutsi dishonest—“his only aim is the supremacy of his ethnic group”—and any Hutu who had financial dealings with Tutsis an enemy of his people. The same held for political life; Hutus should control “all strategic positions, political, administrative, economic, military, and security.” Hutus were further commanded to have “unity and solidarity” against “their common Tutsi enemy,” to study and spread “the Hutu ideology” of the revolution of 1959, and to regard as a traitor any Hutu who “persecutes his brother Hutu” for studying or spreading this ideology.
“The Hutu Ten Commandments” were widely circulated and immensely popular. President Habyarimana championed their publication as proof of Rwanda’s “freedom of the press.” Community leaders across Rwanda regarded them as tantamount to law, and read them aloud at public meetings. The message was hardly unfamiliar, but with its whiff of holy war and its unforgiving warnings to lapsed Hutus, even Rwanda’s most unsophisticated peasantry could not fail to grasp that it had hit an altogether new pitch of alarm. The eighth and most often quoted commandment said: “Hutus most stop having mercy on the Tutsis.”
IN DECEMBER OF 1990, the same month that Hassan Ngeze published “The Hutu Ten Commandments,” Kangura also hailed President Mitterrand of France with a full-page portrait, captioned “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” The salutation was apt. Fighting alongside Habyarimana’s Forces Armées Rwandaises, hundreds of superbly equipped French paratroopers had kept the RPF from advancing beyond its first foothold in the northeast. Initially, Belgium and Zaire also sent troops to back up the FAR, but the Zaireans were so given to drinking, looting, and raping that Rwanda soon begged them to go home, and the Belgians withdrew of their own accord. The French remained, and their impact was such that after the first month of fighting Habyarimana pronounced the RPF defeated. In fact, the battered rebel forces merely retreated westward from the open grasslands of northeastern Rwanda to establish a new base on the jagged, rain-forested slopes of the Virunga volcanoes. There—cold, wet, and poorly supplied—the RPF suffered greater losses to pneumonia than to fighting, as they trained a steady trickle of new recruits into a fierce, and fiercely disciplined, guerrilla army that might have swiftly forced Habyarimana to the negotiating table, or brought him to outright defeat, had it not been for France.
A military agreement signed in 1975 between France and Rwanda expressly forbade the involvement of French troops in Rwandan combat, combat training, or police
Although he was a practicing member of Rwanda’s small Muslim community—the only religious community, according to one Christian leader, that “apparently behaved quite well, and as a group was not active in the genocide, even seeking to save Tutsi Muslims”—Ngeze’s true religion was “Hutuness.” His most famous article, published in December of 1990, was the credo of this newly crystallized faith: “The Hutu Ten Commandments.” In a few swift strokes, Ngeze revived, revised, and reconciled the Hamitic myth and the rhetoric of the Hutu revolution to articulate a doctrine of militant Hutu purity. The first three commandments addressed the stubborn perception, constantly reinforced by the tastes of visiting white men and Hutus with status, that the beauty of Tutsi women surpasses that of Hutu women. According to Ngeze’s protocols, all Tutsi women were Tutsi agents; Hutu men who married, befriended, or employed a Tutsi woman “as a secretary or concubine” were to be considered traitors, and Hutu women, for their part, were commanded to guard against the Tutsi-loving impulses of Hutu men. From sex, Ngeze moved on to matters of business, declaring every Tutsi dishonest—“his only aim is the supremacy of his ethnic group”—and any Hutu who had financial dealings with Tutsis an enemy of his people. The same held for political life; Hutus should control “all strategic positions, political, administrative, economic, military, and security.” Hutus were further commanded to have “unity and solidarity” against “their common Tutsi enemy,” to study and spread “the Hutu ideology” of the revolution of 1959, and to regard as a traitor any Hutu who “persecutes his brother Hutu” for studying or spreading this ideology.
“The Hutu Ten Commandments” were widely circulated and immensely popular. President Habyarimana championed their publication as proof of Rwanda’s “freedom of the press.” Community leaders across Rwanda regarded them as tantamount to law, and read them aloud at public meetings. The message was hardly unfamiliar, but with its whiff of holy war and its unforgiving warnings to lapsed Hutus, even Rwanda’s most unsophisticated peasantry could not fail to grasp that it had hit an altogether new pitch of alarm. The eighth and most often quoted commandment said: “Hutus most stop having mercy on the Tutsis.”
IN DECEMBER OF 1990, the same month that Hassan Ngeze published “The Hutu Ten Commandments,” Kangura also hailed President Mitterrand of France with a full-page portrait, captioned “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” The salutation was apt. Fighting alongside Habyarimana’s Forces Armées Rwandaises, hundreds of superbly equipped French paratroopers had kept the RPF from advancing beyond its first foothold in the northeast. Initially, Belgium and Zaire also sent troops to back up the FAR, but the Zaireans were so given to drinking, looting, and raping that Rwanda soon begged them to go home, and the Belgians withdrew of their own accord. The French remained, and their impact was such that after the first month of fighting Habyarimana pronounced the RPF defeated. In fact, the battered rebel forces merely retreated westward from the open grasslands of northeastern Rwanda to establish a new base on the jagged, rain-forested slopes of the Virunga volcanoes. There—cold, wet, and poorly supplied—the RPF suffered greater losses to pneumonia than to fighting, as they trained a steady trickle of new recruits into a fierce, and fiercely disciplined, guerrilla army that might have swiftly forced Habyarimana to the negotiating table, or brought him to outright defeat, had it not been for France.
A military agreement signed in 1975 between France and Rwanda expressly forbade the involvement of French troops in Rwandan combat, combat training, or police
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