Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Women in Africa and the Diaspora) [Paperback]

Marie Beatrice Umutesi (Author)

Book Description

Series: Women in Africa and the Diaspora | Publication Date: October 5, 2004

    Though the world was stunned by the horrific massacres of Tutsi by the Hutu majority in Rwanda beginning in April 1994, there has been little coverage of the reprisals that occurred after the Tutsi gained political power. During this time hundreds of thousands of Hutu were systematically hunted and killed.
    Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire is the eyewitness account of Marie Béatrice Umutesi. She tells of life in the refugee camps in Zaire and her flight across 2000 kilometers on foot. During this forced march, far from the world’s cameras, many Hutu refugees were trampled and murdered. Others died from hunger, exhaustion, and sickness, or simply vanished, ignored by the international community and betrayed by humanitarian organizations. Amidst this brutality, day-to-day suffering, and desperate survival, Umutesi managed to organize the camps to improve the quality of life for women and children.
    In this first-hand account of inexplicable brutality, day-to-day suffering, and survival, Marie Béatrice Umutesi sheds light on a backlash of violence that targeted the Hutu refugees of Rwanda after the victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1994.  Umutesi’s documentation of the flight and terror of these years provides the world a veritable account of a history that is still widely unknown. After translations from its original French into three other languages, this important book is available in English for the first time. It is more than a testimony to the lives and humanity lost; it is a call for those politicians, military personnel, and humanitarian organizations responsible for the atrocious crimes—and the devastating silence—to be held accountable.


“Umutesi’s tale, told with honesty and eloquence, is a tribute to the human spirit, a searing indictment of the agents who perpetrated these horrors, and a reproach to those who turned away.”—Catharine Newbury, African Studies Review

“Restores a human dimension that has been lacking in the history of the genocide and massacres in Rwanda.”—Danielle de Lame, African Studies Review

“A vivid account of the grueling nightmare experienced by tens of thousands of Rwandan civilians whom the world had deliberately forsaken. . . . An outstanding call for justice.”—Aloys Habimama, African Studies Review

 “A towering work. . . . An epic for our times, a tale to ponder for the lessons it conveys, testimony so powerful and moving that it reaches an unintended literary greatness.”—Jan Vansina, African Studies Review

“Of all the current books and films ten years after the Rwandan genocide, none is more effective than Surviving the Slaughter . . . . This book carries one along, often as if running with the refugees.”—Anne Serafin, Multicultural Review

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I have been through Hell, have known horror, and now that I have escaped... I give testimony to what I have seen." So begins Umutesi's personal account of the bloody ethnic confrontations between Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda and neighboring Zaire, culminating in the 1994 slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutus. A Hutu often "taken for a Tutsi," sociologist Umutesi fled to Zaire in 1994 and spent two years in the refugee camps, witnessing the destruction of the camps and the subsequent ethnic massacres of Hutu refugees by Rwandan soldiers and Zairian rebels. Her tone encompasses both a sociologist's objectivity and a sufferer's anguish, describing malnutrition and famine, cholera and dysentery, panic and brutality. There were two genocides, this book argues, with barbaric acts committed by and against Hutus and permitted by an international community that "seemed more interested in gross acts of war than in the plight of the people being killed every day, of those who were hiding in the ceilings, woods, ditches, and swamps." Acts of kindness and heroism occur, but this is painful, bitter reading. Umutesi is unable to answer the question with which she began—"What led us to this extremity?"—but her compelling account of that extremity is a valuable historical document.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Umutesi helps us better understand the fear that has fueled a history of violence between both Tutsi and Hutu. -- Aili Mari Tripp, series editor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (October 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299204944
• ISBN-13: 978-0299204945
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #732,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > History > Africa > Republic of the Congo
  • #52 in Books > History > Africa > Democratic Republic of Congo
  • #90 in Books > History > Africa > Rwanda

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tale of Disposable People, December 7, 2004

By 

Robert R. Marble (El Paso, TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Women in Africa and the Diaspora) (Paperback)

I love this book but I am sickened by its content. I'm willing to bet that few people reading "Surviving the Slaughter" have ever had a bad year that adds up to just one day of Marie Beatrice Umutesi's many bad days depicted in this memoir. This is the story of the incredible hardship and endless courage and stamina of a lone woman who, miraculously, lived to tell her tale.

Why didn't we in the USA know more about this genocide? In New York City I am surrounded by the "survivors" of the WTC attack on 9/11/01 and constantly assaulted by their self-serving weeping and wailing. If one half the population of New York City had died on 9/11/01 the numbers would begin to equal the slaughter of this one genocide in Rwanda. Reading this book definitely gives the reader a context within which to judge the relative impact and importance of current events.

Having read my share of translations I must tip my hat to Julia Emerson for bringing this memoir to the attention of the English speaking world by making such a clear, readable and intelligent translation.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of incredible courage and humanity, November 3, 2004

By 

J. Emerson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Women in Africa and the Diaspora) (Paperback)

This is the tragic and triumphant autobiography of a Rwandan Hutu woman who, after living for a couple of years as an internally displaced person in Rwanda and then surviving the horrific conditions in the camps that were - illegally - set up in by the UN in Zaire within shelling distance of the Rwandan border and further down the road in the death camp at Tingi Tingi, decided, along with tens of thousands of others to try to escape from the murderous attacks of Kagame's RPF, UN bounty hunters and Kabila's troops by taking to the roads in an effort to find a way out of the country. She took around ten children, none of them her own, with her and tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep them alive during months of trekking through trackless tropical forests during the rainy season, walking barefoot on blistering roads, eating whatever they could scavenge in the deserted villages along the way.

We have heard a lot about the tragedy of the Tutsi genocide in 1994. What we haven't heard, partly because the press has been manipulated by the current Tutsi regime in Rwanda and partly because the U. S. continues to count on Kagame to keep our access open to the minerals in Congo - particularly coltan, which is used in cell phones and computers - is that as many Hutu as Tutsi have been killed both before and after 1994. Books like "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" by Philip Gourevitch were highly misleading and only served to reinforce the mistaken view that all Hutu were genocidal and all Tutsi innocent victims, and as a result the world has let at least 750,000 innocent Hutu be slaughtered while their killers enjoy impunity. And that is not even counting the 3,000,000 Congolese who have died.

The first chapters of the book give an overview of the history Rwanda and life in the camps, and the rest of it deals with Umutesi's trek across Zaire. It is even handed, understated, immensely powerful and very timely. It was published in French, Spanish, Catalan and Dutch before being translated into English.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful rendition of surviving the the Rwanda ordeal., March 7, 2010

By 

Joseph V. Tomocik - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Women in Africa and the Diaspora) (Hardcover)

Hutu refugee Marie Beatrice Umutesi recounts her escape from Rwanda into and through Zaire on a path to safety and freedom.

You have to read this narrative to get a glympse of how absolutely powerful and mesmerizing it is.

I have read many books dealing with the Rwanda genocide; this one hit me hardest!

I offer deep thanks and a hearty congratulations to Marie Beatrice Umutesi and all involved in creating this biting/rivitting/human book.