A League of Nations mandate grants Belgium control of Rwanda.
1931.
Identity cards indicating the bearer’s ethnicity are introduced. They will be in use until 1994.
1961.
Hutu political parties triumph in the country’s first legislative elections. Rwanda is declared a republic.
1973.
Major General Juvénal Habyarimana overthrows the country’s first president in a coup d’état. Habyarimana will win elections allowing him to hold the presidency for the next twenty years.
1990.
The Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) organized at the Ugandan border achieves its first military victories against Habyarimana’s troops.
1994.
April 6, 8:00 p.m. The Hutu president Habyarimana is assassinated when his plane is shot down over the Kigali airport.
April 7, early morning. The first assassinations of key democratic figures, among whom is the Hutu prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. Interahamwe militias invade Kigali neighborhoods. The genocide begins and will last for one hundred days. Tutsi-led RPF troops immediately begin to press into the interior of the country.
July 4. The RPF takes central Kigali.
October 3. The United Nations Security Council adopts a report classifying the massacres committed in Rwanda as genocide. According to current estimates, between eight hundred thousand and nine hundred thousand Rwandans were killed during the genocide.
1996.
November. RPF troops carry out deadly attacks on Hutus encamped in the Kivu region of eastern Congo, forcing the return of two million Hutu refugees to Rwanda.
2001.
The Rwandan government establishes the gaçaça courts.
IN NYAMATA
1994.
April 7–8. Clashes between Hutus and Tutsis erupt, permanently dividing the two communities on the hills.
April 11. After four days of uncertainty, soldiers from the military base at Gako along with interahamwe militias begin systematic killings in the streets of Nyamata. On the hills, the local authorities muster farmers to carry out attacks on Tutsis.
April 14–15. Nearly five thousand Tutsis taking refuge in the church in Nyamata are massacred by machete. A similar number are killed in the church in Ntarama, among whom Ernestine Kaneza.
April 16. Organized hunts for Tutsis begin in the marshes and forests where Tutsis have sought refuge.
May 14. RPF troops finally reach the hills and begin searching the marshes for survivors. Fifty-one thousand corpses, out of a Tutsi population of fifty-nine thousand, are strewn in Nyamata’s marshes, forests, and churches.
1996.
The Hutu refugee population returns to the hills from the Kivu region. Many killers and interahamwe are swiftly imprisoned at the penitentiary in Rilima, around twenty kilometers from Nyamata. Among the first to be tried, Joseph-Désiré Bitero, the leader of the interahamwe, receives the death penalty.
2001.
Trials begin for members of the Kibungo Hill gang, who receive prison sentences ranging from twelve to fifteen years.
2003.
A presidential decree frees forty thousand prisoners, including all the members of the gang except for Joseph-Désiré Bitero and Élie Mizinge.
2006.
The gaçaça courts open in Nyamata, lasting until 2010. During the trials, Ignace Rukiramacumu will be sentenced to three years of work reeducation (travaux d’intérêt général) and Fulgence Bunani to life imprisonment for the murder of Ernestine Kaneza.
ALSO BY JEAN HATZFELD
The Antelope’s Strategy
Machete Season
Life Laid Bare
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jean Hatzfeld was born in Madagascar in 1949, and was for many years an international reporter for the French daily newspaper Libération. He is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, including Life Laid Bare, Machete Season, and The Antelope’s Strategy. He lives in Paris. You can sign up for email updates here.
A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Joshua David Jordan translates twentieth- and twenty-first-century prose and poetry from the French. A specialist in the work of Henri Michaux, he teaches French literature and language at Fordham University. In 2015, he received a French Voices Award for his translation of David Lapoujade’s Aberrant Movements: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
MEMORY
The Marshes
Jean-Pierre Habimana
At the Market
Immaculée Feza
Fishing on the Akagera
Idelphonse Habinshuti
A Pile of Cassava
Nadine Umutesi
In Rilima
Fabiola Mukayishimire
Sidesaddle on a Bike-Taxi
Ange Uwase
Hanging Around on Main Street
Fabrice Tuyishimire
The House with the Crimson Roof
Sandra Isimbi
Ernestine’s Murder
Jean-Damascène Ndayambaje
THE PARENTS
Mother Courage
Jacqueline Mukamana
Mama Nema’s Veranda
Innocent Rwililiza
Sacks of Beans at Alphonse and Consolée’s Place
Alphonse Hitiyaremye and Consolée Murekatete
Sylvie’s Temple
Sylvie Umubyeyi
Claudine’s Mudugudu
Claudine Kayitesi
THE FUTURE
Nadine Umutesi
Idelphonse Habinshuti
Jean-Damascène Ndayambaje
Ange Uwase
Immaculée Feza
Fabiola Mukayishimire
Fabrice Tuyishimire
Sandra Isimbi
Jean-Pierre Habimana
Notes
Chronology of Events in Rwanda and in the District of Nyamata
Also by Jean Hatzfeld
A Note About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2015 by Jean Hatzfeld
Translation copyright © 2018 by Joshua David Jordan
All rights reserved
Originally published in French in 2015 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris, as Un papa de sang
English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2018
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71544-1
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