We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda

Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights

by Samuel Totten (Editor), Rafiki Ubaldo (Editor)

During a one-hundred-day period in 1994, Hutus murdered between half a million and a million Tutsi in Rwanda. The numbers are staggering; the methods of killing were unspeakable. Utilizing personal interviews with trauma survivors living in Rwandan cities, towns, and dusty villages, We Cannot Forget relates what happened during this period and what their lives were like both prior to and following the genocide. Through powerful stories that are at once memorable, disturbing, and informative, readers gain a critical sense of the tensions and violence that preceded the genocide, how it erupted and was carried out, and what these people faced in the first sixteen years following the genocide.

Genres: Rwanda

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2011

About the author

Samuel Totten is a genocide scholar, Professor of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, a Member of the Council of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem.

Samuel Totten earned a master's degree and a doctoral degree at Teachers College, Columbia University.[2]

In 2004, he served as an investigator on the U.S. State Department's Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project.

In 2005 he became one of the chief co-editors of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, the official journal of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS).[3]
In 2008 He served as a Fulbright Scholar at the Centre for Conflict Management, National University of Rwanda.

Between 2004 and 2011, he conducted research along the Chad/Darfur, Sudan border into the genocide perpetrated by the Government of Sudan in Darfur. Between 2010 and today he has conducted research into the genocidal actions of the Government of Sudan in the Nuba Mountains in the late 1980s to mid 1990s, and the crimes against humanity being perpetrated today (July 2011-ongoing through at least June 2012)
During the 2009-2010 academic year Totten served as the Ida King Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust and Education at the Richard stockton College of New Jersey.

In 2011, Totten was honored by Teachers College, Columbia University with The Teachers College Distinguished Alumni Award of 2011.

In December 2012-January 2013, Totten traveled throughout the war torn Nuba Mountains as he conducted research into both the genocide by attrition experienced by the people of the Nuba Mountains in the 1990s and the ongoing crisis today (June 2011-present). While there, Government of Sudan Antonov bombers dropped 55 bombs on civilian areas, resulting in deaths and grievous injuries.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Pat MacEwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the first half of 1994, Rwanda's fragile peace erupted in a full-blown genocide. Upwards of a million people were murdered by their neighbors and even their relatives, by drunken, jobless militiamen, by government soldiers, and possibly by soldiers of another nation entirely in support of the genocidaires. To outsiders, the differences between Hutu and Tutsi are far from obvious but I presume the same is true from their point of view when they look our way, at today's social divisions, mediated by baseball caps as much as anything else. The Rwandan explosion was not inexplicable, but it was unbelievably brutal. These interviews give us first-hand the memories and the grief and the anger of those who survived it in spite of an orchestrated and nearly successful attempt to rid the country of the enemy many perceived in every single Tutsi, down to the unborn. Those interviewed include those living in Rwanda's cities, towns, and villages, a cross section of the country's family structures, mixed marriages, teachers, farmers, students, orphans, widows and engineers. We get their opinions of the neighborhood gacaca courts used to adjudge an impossible number of 'lesser' offenders in bloody crimes which some estimates attribute to as much as 30% of the adult population of the time. The interviewees also share their continuing fear of people they once knew well, who turned on them and might try again. Gut-wrenching at times, but highly recommended, especially as a complementary study to similar work done on the views of the genocidaires themselves.

[Leone · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories are in the words of the survivors and they make for compelling reading. A picture of Rwanda pre-genocide and post genocide emerges as well as a glimpse of what happened during the three months of genocide. It is a realistic look at the effects of a genocide ideology and therefore, may not be as optimistic as some would like to hear. At the end, the reader is definitely left with, "now what?".....what can the world do now to help? One thing for sure, share the stories of survivors so they know they are not alone.