Quotations


“We will squash the infestation. We will kill the coachroaches.”
Hutu Power Radio

"The most horrible and systematic human massacre we have had occasion to witness since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis.
British Philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1964. 

"Seldom in history has a once-dominant group suffered so terrible a reversal of fortune as the Tutsi of Rwanda.
British Historian Robin Hallett, 1974.

"If the pictures of tens of thousands of human bodies being gnawed on by dogs do not wake us out of our apathy, I do not know what will."
Undersecretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan in 1994. 

"Rwanda is clinically dead as a nation.
Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Los Angeles Times, 11 May 1994.

"The horror of Rwanda is too high a price to pay for a very vaporous and whimsical notion of what constitutes inviolable territorial boundaries.
Nigerian Nobel Literature Laureate Wole Soyinka, Los Angeles Times, 11 May 1994.

"All notions of sovereignty with respect to Rwanda should be completely forgotten and we should just go in and stop the killing.
Nigerian Nobel Literature Laureate Wole Soyinka, Los Angeles Times, 11 May 1994.

"The OAU [Organisation of African Unity] was nowhere to be found … during the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis, the OAU was furiously doing the watutsi* in Addis Ababa [Ethiopia].
Ghanaian Economist George Ayittey, in Africa in Chaos, 1998. 
Watutsi is a synonym of Tutsi, but also the name of a dance.

"The whole world failed Rwanda…"
Words attributed to UN staff members under Secretary-General Kofi Annan, reported by Philip Gourevitch in Annals of Diplomacy: The Genocide FaxNew Yorker, 11 May 1998.

"In such countries, genocide is not too important…
Words attributed to French President Francois Mitterand, reported by Philip Gourevitch inReversing the Reversals of WarThe New Yorker, 26 April 1999.

"The international community must hand them – and the sooner the better. The crime was capital and the punishment must be capital.
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, from a speech at the 'Conflict in Africa Conference', Arusha, Tanzania, as reported in New Vision, 11 February 1998

These are real quotes about Rwanda Genocide found by Junwhee Ahn.