‘The Evil we saw in the Green Hills’ – The Representation of the Rwandan Genocide in Journalist and UN Worker Memoir Writing

Abstract

Over three months in 1994 at least 500,000 Tutsi in Rwanda were murdered in the first unequivocal genocide since the Holocaust. This thesis examines representations of the genocide in the memoirs of journalists and UN personnel (including civilian staff and peacekeepers) who were either in Rwanda as the genocide occurred, or visited in the aftermath. This thesis contributes to the study of life writing detailing human rights violations, work on the position of secondary observer witnesses to genocide and the discussion of how the Rwandan genocide has been interpreted in popular non-fiction. Overall, it contends that while these memoirs highlight the fraught, contradictory position of outside observers to genocide, they produce fundamentally warped accounts of the Rwandan genocide itself.