The above photo, taken by Keith, is a survivor and soldier of the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) standing guard during “peace negotiations” with the United Nations (UN) in the eastern Congo.
To be clear, a lot of Rwandans were murdered during “the 100 days” of April 1994. Probably hundreds of thousands more than the official account.
That’s not where the myth(s) are found.
The myth(s) are a multilayered consequence of US-backed propaganda and international confusion resulting from deliberately skewed reporting.
Put another way, the mainstream narrative is that the Hutu-led government orchestrated an ethnically-driven genocide of Tutsis (with a few moderate Hutus thrown in for good measure). We are told that around one million “cockroach” Tutsis were murdered by the Hutus after the aircraft carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down on 6 April.
Except that, well, it’s nonsense, and Hotel Rwanda is a propaganda piece.
For example, Hutus—not Tutsis—made up the majority of those slaughtered.
What actually happened was a multipronged, violent coup d’état backed by various international interests including Uganda and the United States. A genocide was one limb of the entire body. A Western-backed civil war was another limb.
Paul Kagame, coincidentally, has been the president ever since.
Conversation
At around 36 minutes, he says that the Inyenzi launched a series of attacks against the Juvenal Habyarimana Hutu-majority government in the 1960s. This is an error. He meant to say the Grégoire Kayibanda Hutu-majority government.
Keith Harmon Snow, a former lecturer at the University of California, is an award-winning photojournalist and war correspondent.
He has spent a considerable amount of time in various African countries—including Rwanda and Uganda—and has a profoundly deeper knowledge of Rwanda’s history, politics, and culture.
Photography
Here are some of Keith’s harrowing—but beautiful—photos from his time in Central Africa.
The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.
Malcolm X
