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In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front

Author	Judi Rever
Publisher	Random House of Canada
Publication date	March 2018
ISBN	978-0-345-81210-0

In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front is a 2018 non-fiction book by Canadian journalist Judi Rever and published by Random House of Canada; it has also been translated into Dutch and French. The book describes war crimes by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that occurred before, during, and after the Rwandan genocide (against Tutsi), based on hundreds of interviews and unpublished reports by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Rever supports the double genocide theory, classifying the RPF crimes as genocide against Hutu.

Although many of the crimes discussed in Rever's book were already known to specialists, the book is highly controversial. Praised for thorough investigation at considerable personal risk to the author, the book was also criticized for sensationalism and relying on unreliable sources. According to historian Gerald Caplan, the book "had an immediate, destabilizing influence on the world of orthodox Rwandan scholarship".

Background

Since 1994, a variety of scholars and other investigators have published studies unflattering to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), stating among other things that it started the Rwandan Civil War and is responsible for mass killings of Hutus.

Judi Rever is a Canadian journalist who has covered African affairs since the First Congo War, which she covered for Radio France Internationale. During her journalistic work, she reported on the RPF tracking down and killing Hutu in eastern Congo in 1997. At the time, US officials claimed that these Hutu were genocide perpetrators, but Rever found and interviewed malnourished women and children who told her about RPF massacres. She also wrote for The Globe and Mail, whose Africa correspondent, Geoffrey York, is a Kagame critic, and contributed the foreword to Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza's 2017 book Between 4 Walls of the 1930 Prison: Memoirs of Rwandan Prisoner of Conscience. While writing the book, Rever faced death threats against herself and her family. She separated from her husband and children to protect them from anonymous callers who repeatedly threatened to kill them.

Content

The truth, no matter what aid donors seem to believe, is that the RPF has never stopped the violence. Kagame killed before the genocide. He killed during the genocide. And he killed after the genocide. The West’s unbridled support only fed the regime’s sense of impunity. Journalists from outside the country rarely perceived the truth. And journalists inside the country could not report on RPF violence. If they tried, they faced injury or death.

In Praise of Blood describes war crimes in Rwanda and the DRC which according to Rever’s sources were committed by the RPF under the leadership of Major General Paul Kagame, the current president of Rwanda, during the 1990s. Based largely on interviews with Rwandan dissidents and army deserters living in exile in Europe and North America and confidential documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) leaked to Rever by anonymous sources, the book discusses three periods during which these crimes took place: The Rwandan civil war of the early 1990s, the genocide and its aftermath in Rwanda, and the subsequent wars in the DRC.

The book describes the RPF crimes against Hutu civilians as a genocide comparable in scale and cruelty to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. The book accuses the RPF of infiltrating the political parties and the extremist Hutu militia during the the early 1990s to sow mistrust, of creating fear with its incursions in northern Rwanda which caused hundreds of thousands of displaced people to gather in camps around Kigali, and finally to have shot down President Habyarimana’s plane on 6 April 1994 to use the ensuing chaos and mass killings to generate sympathy for its military campaign to seize power. The book suggests that during the genocide members of the RPF disguised as Interahamwe militia fueled and perpetuated the genocidal violence by participating in the killing of Tutsi civilians at roadblocks. RPF massacres of Hutu civilians described in the book include Byumba, Kibeho, Karambi, Gabiro, Gikongoro.

Rever writes that the RPF employed Nazi methods to secretly transport hundreds of thousands of Hutus to death camps in remote areas such as the Akagera National Park where they were killed and incinerated, leaving barely a trace. Her discussion of RPF crimes against Hutu refugees in the DRC draws in part from her personal experience. While suspects of the genocide against the Tutsi were tried and convicted by the ICTR, the crimes committed by the RPF have been left unpunished.

Publishing history

The book was published by Random House of Canada in March 2018 and in Dutch by Amsterdam University Press in 2018. A French translation of the book was originally to be published by Fayard in 2019, but this company withdrew after controversy. Subsequently Max Milo published it in 2020 as Rwanda: L’éloge du sang (Rwanda: In Praise of Blood).

Reception

The book was publicized in a media campaign and quickly received international attention. Caplan credits Helen Epstein's favorable two-part piece in The New York Review of Books for popularizing Rever's work. Caplan acknowledges that Rever’s book "... presses all of us to give the uglier aspects of the RPF’s record the prominence they deserve," but he concludes: "... there are too many unnamed informants; too many confidential, unavailable leaked documents; too much unexamined credulity about some of the accusations; too little corroboration from foreigners who were eyewitnesses to history." According to French sociologist Claudine Vidal, the book's publication revived efforts by "propagandists, researchers and activists" to prove that the RPF regime committed genocide, which is perceived as "the only way of gaining recognition of a mass crime and eliciting public outcry".

Political scientist René Lemarchand calls the book a "path-breaking inquest", "destined to become required reading for any one claiming competence on the Rwanda genocide". He praises Rever for thorough investigation and taking risks in order to gather as much information as possible. The book convinced scholar Filip Reyntjens of the accuracy of the double genocide theory, which he had previously rejected. Researchers Bert Ingelaere and Marijke Verpoorten refer to Rever's revival of the double genocide theory as based on "flimsy and mostly unverifiable sources". Political scientist Scott Straus, a critic of the double genocide theory, calls the book "irresponsible" and states that Rever's "title is unnecessarily provocative, her tone breathless and conspiratorial, and her account of 'there is a conspiracy of silence that I broke, even if it destroyed my family,' is misleading and narcissistic". Vidal writes that "Rever’s work blurs the line between investigation and indictment" and "reads like a prosecutor's closing argument". In particular, Rever describes massacres "in such a way as to classify them as genocide". Vidal states that there are no new revelations in the book, but that Rever accumulates more evidence for charges that have already been made in earlier publications.

In The New York Review of Books, Epstein writes that Rever's "sources are too numerous and their observations too consistent for her findings to be a fabrication." Le Soir journalist Colette Braeckman praises Rever for her on-the-ground investigation but criticizes her for examining only one side of the coin, concluding that she appears in the end to be an ally of the revisionists that preceded her. According to journalist Laurie Garrett: "As journalism and creative writing In Praise of Blood is excellent". The Lancet later published a letter critical of Garrett's review, which disputes the book's conclusions and accuses Rever of victim blaming.

Regarding the new allegations raised in Rever's book, genocide scholar Samuel Totten wrote to Caplan that Rever's book fails to answer many important questions, starting with: whether other researchers heard the same rumors and tried to investigate them, and if the ICTR heard any testimony related to them. Researchers Helen Hintjens and Jos van Oijen focus on Rever's claim that the RPF operated Nazi-style extermination camps without leaving any trace. Specialists they consulted, including the Netherlands Forensic Institute, concluded that the methods described by Rever "would certainly have left significant traces of mass murder", and a Belgian journalist who visited the site when it was supposed to be in operation did not notice anything unusual. On Rever's "infiltrations"-theory, that the RPF was pulling the strings of every relevant organization, they recall a comparable suggestion by the Rwandan ministry of defence published in 1991. Overall, they state that "Rever's book does little more than recycle... earlier denial narratives and sources".

During a promotional tour in Belgium which included speeches at three universities, a group of sixty scientists, researchers, journalists, historians and eye-witnesses such as Romeo Dallaire, published an open letter in Le Soir criticizing the universities for giving the impression that by promoting Judi Rever's book they supported her conspiracy theories and denial. An open letter which accused the book of genocide denial was published in Libération in 2020, signed by organizations such as Ibuka, an association of Tutsi genocide survivors, and SOS Racisme. Rever says she is not a genocide denier because she accepts that the killing of Tutsi was indeed a genocide, but she is a "revisionist" because she questions existing historical narratives. Investigative journalist Linda Melvern notes that in her acknowledgements, Rever thanks several defence lawyers and known genocide deniers for their help.

Awards

The book received the 2018 Quebec Writers' Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction and the 2018 Huguenot Society of Canada Award. It was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction

References

1. ^ Caplan 2018, p. 168. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFCaplan2018 (help)
2. ^ Epstein, Helen (2018). "The Mass Murder We Don't Talk About". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
3. ^ Braeckman, Colette (30 September 2020). ""L' Eloge du sang", une enquête fouillée mais controversée sur les crimes commis au Rwanda". Le Soir Plus (in French). Retrieved 10 November 2020. Cite error: The named reference "Braeckman" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
4. ^ Hintjens, Helen M.; van Oijen, Jos (2020). "Elementary Forms of Collective Denial: The 1994 Rwanda Genocide". Genocide Studies International. 13 (2): 146–167. doi:10.3138/gsi.13.2.02.
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9. Rever, Judi. "Bio". Judirever.com. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
10. Rever 2018, p. 220. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFRever2018 (help)
11. Boisbouvier, Christophe (25 June 2018). "Judi Rever :«Je ne nie pas le génocide des Tutsis au Rwanda en 1994»". Radio France Internationale. Retrieved 17 October 2019.
12. Rever 2018, p. 3, 71, 106, 114, 228-230. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFRever2018 (help)
13. ^ Moloo, Zahra (10 April 2019). "The crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front – review". Africa is a country. Retrieved 10 April 2019.
14. Rever 2018, p. 3, 58, 60, 62, 71, 76, 143, 178, 182, 193, 230. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFRever2018 (help)
15. ^ Caplan, Gerald (2018). "Rethinking the Rwandan Narrative for the 25th Anniversary". Genocide Studies International. 12 (2): 152–190. doi:10.3138/gsi.12.2.03.
16. ^ Melvern, Linda (2018). "Moral Equivalence: The Story of Genocide Denial in Rwanda". Journal of International Peacekeeping. 22 (1): 190–198. doi:10.1163/18754112-0220104012.
17. Off, Carol (2 April 2018). "Feature interview with "In Praise of Blood: the crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front" author Judi Rever". CBC. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
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19. Lemarchand, René (25 June 2018). "Rwanda: the state of Research". Violence de masse et Résistance – Réseau de recherche. Sciences Po. ISSN 1961-9898. Archived from the original on 19 November 2018. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
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23. ^ Vidal, Claudine (10 July 2018). "Debate: Judi Rever will not let anything stand in the way of her quest to document a second Rwandan genocide". The Conversation. Retrieved 10 November 2020. Cite error: The named reference "Vidal" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
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25. Rever, Judi (2018). De waarheid over Rwanda: het regime van Paul Kagame (in Dutch). Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 978-94-6372-360-2.
26. "Judi Rever's disputed book on Tutsi genocide to be published in France". The Africa Report.com. 10 July 2020. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
27. Rever, Judi (2020). Rwanda : L’éloge du sang: L’inconnu (in French). Max Milo. ISBN 978-2-315-00987-9.
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30. Lemarchand, René (25 June 2018). "Rwanda: the state of Research". Violence de masse et Résistance – Réseau de recherche. Sciences Po. ISSN 1961-9898. Archived from the original on 19 November 2018. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
31. Reyntjens, Filip. "Un " second génocide " au Rwanda : retour sur un débat complexe". The Conversation. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
32. Reyntjens, Filip. "De dubbele genocide van 1994". De Standaard (in Flemish). Retrieved 10 November 2020.
33. Ingelaere, Bert; Verpoorten, Marijke. "How trust returned to Rwanda, for most but not for all". African Arguments. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
34. Straus, Scott (2019). "The Limits of a Genocide Lens: Violence Against Rwandans in the 1990s". Journal of Genocide Research. 21 (4): 504–524. doi:10.1080/14623528.2019.1623527.
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41. Melvern, Linda (2020). Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-78873-328-1.
42. "The Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction – Quebec Writers' Federation". Quebec Writers' Federation. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
43. "OHS Huguenot Award Recognizes Judi Rever for In Praise of Blood" (PDF). Ontario Historical Society. 19 June 2019. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
44. "Judi Rever | Writers' Trust of Canada". Judi Rever | Writers' Trust of Canada. Retrieved 10 November 2020.

Sources

• Caplan, Gerald (2018). "Rethinking the Rwandan Narrative for the 25th Anniversary". Genocide Studies International. 12 (2): 152–190. doi:10.3138/gsi.12.2.03.

Further reading

• Rever, Judi (2018). In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Random House of Canada. ISBN 978-0-345-81210-0.
• Rever, Judi (2020). "The Legacy of RPF Violence and Why Rwandan Refugees Refuse to Return". Repatriation, Insecurity, and Peace: A Case Study of Rwandan Refugees. Springer. pp. 37–51. ISBN 978-981-15-2850-7.
• Robertson, Tim (2018). "Cows for peace: The aftermath of the Rwandan genocide". Meanjin. 77 (4): 194.

External links

• Interview about writing the book

• 2018 non-fiction books
• Books about Rwanda
• Canadian non-fiction books
• Rwandan Patriotic Front
• Random House books