09:47 am
Alison Des Forges
All unexpected deaths are tragedies, and the victims of the crash of Continental Flight 3407 in Buffalo all deserve our thoughts and prayers. As it happens, however, I had met one of those who died: Alison Des Forges, an extraordinary human rights advocate who, through her work with Human Rights Watch, chronicled and documented the genocide in Rwanda.
I only met Alison on two, maybe three occasions. Michael Kavanaugh at Slate, who knew her much better than I did, describes her better than I ever could:
If the Rwandan genocide was one of the defining political crimes of the 20th century—an event that made the international community rethink the way it did business—Alison was its most important Anglophone chronicler. Even today, as many of the genocide’s perpetrators still face prosecution and others are being chased down here in Congo, she was one of the essential voices explaining this unfolding.
For the legion of journalists, diplomats, academics, and lawyers who work on Central Africa, her loss is immeasurable. For the thousands of Rwandese, Congolese, Burundians, and Ugandans (and, I’m sure, many others) for whom Alison fought to protect their good name from false accusations, or to safeguard their freedom or their right to justice or even life, the pain of her loss will be still more acute. . . .
“They broadcast my name on the radio as an enemy of Rwanda,” she told me. “What are they so scared of? I’m just a little old lady.” And she laughed her disarming, charming little-old-lady half-giggle, half-laugh. . . .
[Alison] was no more than 5 feet tall, with silver hair and glassy blue eyes and a slight limp in her gait. But she’d stood up to and stared down some of history’s most notorious criminals and had seen enough horrors to, very literally, fill an 800-page book and thousands of pages of reports.
Presidents and rebel leaders in the region feared her because they knew she was fearless.
She is one of many who work quietly behind the scenes to bear witness to the world’s great crimes. And while they’re all extraordinary, she was one of the finest. It is a tragic irony that, after facing danger on numerous occasions, she would die in the crash of a plane while flying home.
The greatest tribute you could offer is to make a donation to Human Rights Watch in her name. And if you don’t already own it, please get a copy of her masterwork: Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda.
It’s not easy reading. It never is. But for those who died and survived in Rwanda — and for those, like Alison, who had the courage to tell the story — we must not let time and distance diminish our memory of what happened there. That’s what Alison would want, much more than any focus on her or her work.
Photo: Human Rights Watch