By Michael J. Kavanagh, for Slate.comGOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo—I'm writing from the Congolese
border
town of Goma, overlooking the expansive waters of Lake Kivu and,
in the near distance, the hills of Rwanda. Sunset here always seems to
promise a tomorrow in which the region's sad history of violence
might
pass.
But over the weekend the sadness deepened when we
learned that a plane crash robbed the region of one of its fiercest
advocates, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch.
If the Rwandan genocide was one
of the defining political crimes of the 20th
century—an event that made the international community rethink the way
it did business—Alison was its most important Anglophone
chronicler.
Even today, as many of the genocide's perpetrators still face
prosecution and others are being chased down here in Congo, she was one
of the essential voices explaining this unfolding.
For the
legion of journalists, diplomats, academics, and lawyers who work on
Central Africa, her loss is immeasurable. For the thousands of
Rwandese, Congolese, Burundians, and Ugandans
(and, I'm sure, many
others) for whom Alison fought to protect their good name from false
accusations, or to safeguard their freedom or their right to justice or
even life, the pain of her loss will
be still more acute.
Alison
and I first met briefly in the 1990s when I was still a student. Once I
began covering Rwanda and Congo as a journalist in 2003, we would talk
a few times
every year—often long, digressive, sparkling storytelling
sessions.
In November 2008, the last time we spoke, I called
her at home in Buffalo, N.Y., to see if she could clarify
some basic
history about Hutus and Tutsis in eastern Congo. She regaled me with
stories for more than two and a half hours. As I look through my notes,
I realize that it's the stories—the human,
humanizing stories about
life here in Central Africa—that I will miss most.
That
night, she retold one of her favorites about a set of Rwandan identical
twins who still can't agree
about whether they are Hutu or Tutsi. She
laughed about a time in 1994 when she was investigating massacres deep
in the Rwandan forest and she had to translate some vernacular Kinyarwanda
for erstwhile Tutsi rebel leader and current Rwandan President Paul
Kagame, whose language skills were still rusty after
a refugee
childhood spent in Uganda.
She reflected on the irony that
Kagame now barred her from entering Rwanda because her work had become
too critical of his authoritarian style.
"They broadcast my name
on the radio as an enemy of Rwanda," she told me. "What are they so
scared of? I'm just a little old lady." And she laughed her disarming,
charming
little-old-lady half-giggle, half-laugh.
You have to
have met Alison to understand the outrageousness of stories like this.
She was no more than 5 feet tall, with silver hair and glassy
blue eyes
and a slight limp in her gait. But she'd stood up to and stared down
some of history's most notorious criminals and had seen enough horrors
to, very literally, fill an 800-page book and
thousands of pages of reports.
Presidents and rebel leaders in the region feared her because they knew she was fearless.
The
most common criticism of Alison's work,
particularly on Rwanda, is that
it sometimes failed to take into account the unique political and
security needs of a country just emerging from conflict. The criticism
is not unfounded, but it misses
the point. The job of a human rights
worker is not the same as that of a politician who needs to make
unenviable compromises between security and justice. A human rights
worker is in the business of
giving voice to the voiceless, uncovering
injustice, and advocating for its redress. Alison Des Forges—brilliant,
indefatigable, and, above all, passionate—reveled in this.
As our last conversation ended, Alison laughed. "Isn't it so much fun to talk about Rwanda?"
She
asked me this almost every time we talked over the years, and it alwayssurprised me. Each time she said it with genuine glee, as if Rwanda was
her newest crush and not a country she'd been married to—faithfully—for
more than 40 years.
Here in
Congo, we journalists and
researchers and U.N. workers are already back on the job, puzzling over
the Rwandan army's mission to hunt down a rebel group led by wanted génocidaires.
But
we've lost one of our most important advisers, cheerleaders,
sources, and friends. And our work will be done with significantly less
joy. Michael J. Kavanagh has contributed to the BBC,
NPR, PBS, and Slate from Africa's Great Lakes region since 2004. He is currently in Goma with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.As featured on Slate.comSee all related videos, radio broadcasts and articles on the Pulitzer Center's "Roots of Ethnic Conflict"
project page here.
Rescue workers search for the bodies of some of at least 21 would-be immigrants that died when their makeshift boat overturned in rough seas on Sunday within metres of Cocoteros beach ...
