We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Ou... by Philip Gourevitch

Dear brothers and sisters, our friends, we have managed today to find enough power to run a computer and connect to the internet. In October of last year, a group of Moadamiya residents hooked a generator to an old computer and managed to send a message to the outside world. Two decades later a terrible echo of the Mugonero letter could be heard from Moadamiya, a besieged town on the outskirts of Damascus. The next morning, the Sabbath, the seven signatories to the letter along with 3,000 other Tutsis seeking refuge at the Seventh-day Advent Church were beset by a mob and murdered. We believe that, with the help of God who entrusted you the leadership of this flock, which is going to be destroyed, your intervention will be highly appreciated, the same way as the Jews were saved by Esther.

We therefore request you to intervene on our behalf and talk with the Mayor. We wish to inform you that we have heard that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. We wish you to be strong in all these problems we are facing. In a tragic episode that gave Gourevitch’s book its title, a group of community leaders huddled as the tide of violence approached Mugonero, western Rwanda, and penned a letter seeking protection. His work captured in intimate detail not only the gruesome action of machetes but also victims’ unheeded appeals for help. Philip Gourevitch had the terrible duty to chronicle the spasm of genocidal violence that visited Rwanda twenty years ago.

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Ou... by Philip Gourevitch