Review of Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld

You watch helplessly as a machete hacks off your mother’s head. As her head topples to the ground and rolls to your feet, you brace yourself-for you are next. Jean Hatzfeld’s “Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak,” paints such a vivid picture of the Rwanda genocide that you can’t help but believe you are experiencing events in the book firsthand.

Numerous books have tried to explain the Rwanda genocide but none come close to Hatzfeld’s work. Scholars can only speculate about the issue but survivors like Hatzfeld’s interviewees are the real authorities on the subject.

In this French-English translated book, the award-winning French journalist made several trips to the Bugasera-one of the regions most devastated by the genocide. In the villages of Nyamata and N’tamara, he interviewed fourteen survivors of the genocide. From child farmers to school teachers, each person gives such heart breaking accounts of their experiences, that we are forced to mourn with them.

Although the author gives such a brief chronology of events in Rwanda pre-dating the genocide, some more knowledge of the country’s history is needed to understand the tragedy. In the 15^th century, the kings of Rwanda were Tutsis, who made up the minority of the population. They governed the Hutus, the nation’s majority who were mostly peasants. Although Tutsi kings enacted laws that benefited the entire population, they mostly passed laws that favoured their fellow Tutsis. This social hierarchy became even more pronounced when Rwanda became a Belgian colony. The colonists didn’t understand the complex monarchy of Rwanda; thus, they ignorantly framed the Hutu/Tutsi distinction as one of ethnicity rather than social hierarchy. So the Belgians showed favoritism to Tutsis by giving them high positions in social institutions. During and after Rwanda’s colonization, Tutsis and Hutus were engaged in violent conflict as they tried to assert supremacy over each other. Over the years, these conflicts escalated to the Rwanda genocide.

This genocide was the mass killing of about 800,000 Rwandans, most of them Tutsis (and some moderate Hutus), by two extremist Hutu militia groups-the Interahamwe and Impuzamugbi. The killing spree lasted from April 7^th, 1994 to mid May.

More than just a collection of first-person accounts, Hatzfeld’s book clearly interweaves the survivors’ narratives with his own vivid descriptions of his interviewees in the context of the scenes he encounters. This creative writing style captures the personalities of these people, making them even more endearing to the reader. In this excerpt, the author introduces a Tusi boy’s narrative by first describing his surroundings:

Within the church park, goats browse on bushes, watched over by a 12-year-old boy. He sits in the shade of a tree, a switch in his hand, a soccer ball at his feet…His name is Cassius Niyonsoba.

“Life Laid Bare” is an uninhibited platform for the survivors to tell the world about their dehumanizing ordeal. Horrific tales include a little Tutsi school boy’s experience:

…the Interahamwe burned little children in front of the door. I saw them with my own eyes turning and twisting from burning truly and completely alive.

Innocent Rwiliza, a Tutsi school teacher, gives a particularly chilling account of the survivors’ fight to survive:

“The more we died, the more we were prepared to die-and the faster we ran to win a moment of life. Even those who’d had their arms and legs cut off, they asked for water to last only one more hour…”

This book could easily have been sensational, only documenting horrors the survivors faced. But the author brilliantly avoids this by also focusing on how a lot of them have decided to live the rest of their lives to the fullest, letting time heal their wounds.

In a frank, fearless declaration Hatzfeld states the reason for his refusal to interview other kinds of witnesses but the survivors themselves. He did not interview foreigners because they (humanitarian officials and civilian and military professional aid workers) ran to safety as soon as the genocide started. Neither did he seek the testimony of many Hutus because they grabbed machetes-whether voluntarily or involuntarily-and slaughtered Tutsis. He did not even consider talking to foreign journalists who ignored the plight of survivors and instead, wrote sensational stories about Hutu “victims” who fled to the Congo for fear of reprisal from Tutsis.

Life Laid Bare” is a powerful, thought-provoking account of one of the most tragic events in history. It is a must-read for anyone who has ever wanted to know the truth about the Rwanda genocide.

By Ugochi Amuta