A L F R E D O   J A A R

I am obsessed with information.

I knew about the events in the former Yugoslavia, but I also followed what was happening in parts of Africa. If the loss of a single life is important, what was happening in Rwanda was more important, since what took place there was a genocide, the third genocide in our century. I noticed a terrible lack of reaction on the part of the international community, and that concerned me very much. I have always had the sense that the world has abandoned Africa. What was taking place in Rwanda interested no one, because Rwanda is a small and very poor country, with no strategic interest for the great powers. Approximately one million people died between April and June of 1994. And, just to give you an example of the lack of solidarity and reaction, the magazines Time and Newsweek did not devote a cover story to Rwanda until

August 1, 1994 - 5 months after the massacre had begun, and a full two months after the end of the genocide. Even then, these magazines spoke only about the massive exodus of Rwandan refugees. There was no mention of genocide, and we are speaking of a million people: For a nation of eight million inhabitants, this is equivalent to having twenty-five million dead in a matter of months in the United States. This was a truly terrible event, so I decided to travel to Rwanda to document it and see what was happening there with my own eyes.