Journalist and nonfiction writer Philip Gourevitch first visited Rwanda in 1995, a little under a year after the genocide that resulted in the deaths of more than 800,000.
He turned that experience into a best-selling book.
Gourevitch shared his experiences with the University Wednesday night when he read and discussed excerpts from his novels in the Multipurpose Room of the Rutgers Student Center on the College Avenue campus as part of the “Writers at Rutgers Reading Series.”
The author wrote “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families,” a novel on the Rwandan genocide that relays the stories of Rwandan citizens who were involved in the genocide.
“[Gourevitch’s] courage and creativity have shown that nonfiction can be a powerful agent for social change,” English professor Carolyn Williams said.
To conduct his research, Gourevitch visited prisons in Rwanda, which were just large rooms filled with people, he said.
“I was basically pushed inside a room filled with thousands of accused murderers, and not one guard. But the prisoners were surprisingly courteous,” he said.
While the accused killers showed him around their prison and spoke to him politely, not one of the thousands admitted to killing a single person, Gourevitch said.
“I talked to and interviewed both groups of Rwandans — the Hutus and the people they persecuted, the Tutsis,” Gourevitch said. “These people weren’t just killed by unknown members of the military. They were killed by their own neighbors, doctors, priests and friends.”
The Rwandan genocide did not receive much attention from governments or the media, he said.
“Rwanda is out of the world’s political and economic interests. … It’s a small country that often falls out of the conscious of journalists as well,” Gourevitch said.
Gourevitch felt the mass killing had to be understood, so he investigated how people were living in the aftermath of the genocide.
The Rwandan army began bringing the hundreds of thousands of people who fled the country home from the refugee camps set up in neighboring countries in the fall of 1996, and more than 600,000 people returned to the country over the span of two or three days, he said.
Gourevitch was curious to see how people would respond upon their return to Rwanda, he said.
One woman Gourevitch spoke with told him that her entire family — her husband, children and grandchildren — were killed by her own neighbor, and she was left to die, Gourevitch said.
Her family’s murderer had just returned to his home, and when she confronted him, he told her he was not responsible for his actions and asked her to pardon him, Gourevitch said.
Once he admitted his actions — which included the murders of more than 70 people — the man was sentenced to 11 years in prison and then released, Gourevitch said.
The author also discussed his third and most recent novel, “The Ballad of Abu Ghraib,” which contains interviews with military personnel who were accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners of war.
“Basically everyone has seen the pictures that were printed everywhere, with Lynndie England holding a leash around a naked prisoner’s neck,” Gourevitch said.
After interviews with England, Gourevitch realized the story was not exactly the same story many Americans may know, he said.
“One of the interesting things about [Gourevitch’s] work is that it investigates that ethical use of evidence and how things aren’t always really as they seem,” Williams said.
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