This article analyzes the conflicting interpretations of famine, relief aid, development assistance, and human rights by the Ethiopian and American governments, and the complexity of each government's policy and motives. It argues that in the 1970s and 1980s, the Carter and Reagan administrations faced the moral and political dilemma of assisting people in Ethiopia who were in desperate need with-out strengthening the hostile Ethiopian government in the process. And the government of Ethiopia had to make the difficult choice of accepting American aid on American terms at a period in Ethiopian history when doing so was politically suicidal. That America provided the aid and Ethiopia accepted it exemplifies the conduct of international relations in which human dignity compels nations to accommodate one another even within the boundaries of their mutual antagonism.

Une tragédie n'exclut pas l'autre

et il n'existe aucune hiérarchie dans la souffrance.

(One tragedy does not cancel out the other,

and there is no hierarchy in suffering.)

Calixthe Beyala (2005)

There can be no reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi without

justice, and no justice without truth. This proposition holds true

for all three states of former Belgian Africa.

René Lemarchand (1998)

The title of Marie Béatrice Umutesi's book, Fuir ou mourir au Zaïre: Le vécu d'une Réfugiée Rwandaise—or in its English version, Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaïre—might prove confusing for some readers on at least two counts. Because the name Rwanda will forever be associated in our memory with the horror of the 1994 genocide, one might surmise that this is the story of a Tutsi survivor taking refuge in neighboring Zaire, as in previous massacres in 1959, 1963, and 1973. But then again, considering the disastrous wars that have raged in that country for the last decade, one might conclude that Umutesi's book tells the story of a Rwandan refugee caught in the crossfire between competing forces, Rwanda versus Uganda and their proxies within the former Zaire. Both assumptions would be only half true. The missing half in both inferences is that the ordeal of this refugee and her cohort originated in the Rwandan conflict that began in 1990 and culminated in the genocide four years later. Shrewdly orchestrated and largely perpetrated by the Tutsi-dominated regime that took power in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide, the slaughter of these Hutu refugees has been concealed behind a curtain of silence on the part of the international community. In the drama that unfolds in Umutesi's book, Zairian territory is the unwitting, albeit highly significant, theater of the cynically suppressed story of the disappearance of nearly a quarter million Hutu refugees from Rwanda at the hands of shadowy “rebels.”

In this remarkable book, Marie Béatrice Umutesi recounts what she saw and experienced in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide, and as a refugee in Zaire after the genocide. With its intense local level perspective, her study provides fresh insights into the Rwanda genocide and its antecedents, the massacre of Rwandan refugees during the war in Zaire of the mid-1990s, and the utter failure of the international media to understand what was happening there on the ground. Eschewing extremism of all sides, Umutesi records the experiences of ordinary people buffeted by violent events and broader political dynamics they could not control. She is a perspicacious observer—astute, courageous, engaged, and compassionate. One of the remarkable features of this narrative, however, is how little Umutesi appears in this text; it is about her experiences, to be sure, but not about “her.” It is as a testimonial to the times and the human experiences of those times that this tale has such force.

The initial chapters of Surviving the Slaughter recount Umutesi's experiences as a student in the 1970s and mid-1980s and (having completed her university education) as a young adult managing rural development programs. Ethnic distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi held litde importance for Umutesi and her friends while she was growing up. Instead, as a Hutu from the north, she found that regional tensions among Hutu were important during the 1980s, under the Second Republic of Juvenal Habyarimana, when she witnessed regionalism in high school and college in Rwanda. Only later, when studying in Belgium, did ethnic distinctions and discrimination between Hutu and Tutsi come into play. The examples she describes show both the contingent nature of ethnic categorization and identities in Rwanda, and the importance of politics in shaping their salience.

Without minimizing the horrors of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the book by Marie Béatrice Umutesi, Fuir ou mourir au Zaïre (“Running Away or Dying in Zaïre,” L'Harmattan, 2000), published under the English title Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire” throws a much needed light on the plight of Rwandan refugees in Kivu from the time they fled Rwanda, many of them as ordinary, peaceful citizens. If we want to understand the events that continue to unfold in the region, and if we want to improve the aid humanitarian agencies provide, we need to consider Umutesi's story—a story in which distant international organizations, with their own views and objectives, took actions that had deleterious consequences for ordinary people.

While some refugees pursued dubious policies in the camps, people of good will went on helping others while they all were in exile. Their collective support systems helped them retain their dignity under the worst of circumstances and, when their fragile safe haven came under attack, helped them endure a hell that seemed at times unendurable. Telling the complete history, as Jan Vansina helped to do in his recent book (2004), and putting ordinary people back into the picture, are the surest ways to avoid lethal stereotypes and quick categorizations that hinder our understanding of complex situations and produce simplifications that contribute to more injustice.