Kigali, 1994

"Are you a survivor of the genocide?"
"Sort of."

No one survives a genocide. Not even those alive today.

The above dialogue begins the account of French journalist/director Jean-Christophe Klotz as he returns to Rwanda ten years after to try to piece together the people and places that had captured him ten years earlier in his documentary "Kigali, des images contre un massacre" (Return to Kigali).

Klotz was one of the few journalists who stayed behind when the killings began around April 1994. Most foreigners, including embassy staff, and the majority of UN staff had retreated as the country descended into chaos. But he chose to stay behind, determined to show the world that this is a place not to be forgotten. Being a Frenchman, whose country of origin actively supported and armed the very government that instrumented the genocide, he was putting himself at risk. Yet his determination allowed him to see and shoots scenes and moments that otherwise would have been lost in history. Or better said, lost in a version of history rewritten later to safe the sorry face of the incomplacency of the world.

With the benefit of hindsight, Rwanda will never be forgotten. But in the ensuing three months till July 1994, while close to one million Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) were masscred in their own homes, the 'international community' wilfully chose to turn a blind eye and forget, if only temporarily, that one of the worst excesses of human inhumanity was taking place in a far away land in Africa.

The documentary is a cut and paste of filming taken as the events of the genocide unfolded, and of interviews conducted in the present with those that were there at the time. The journalist visited a church, where more than a hundred women and children sheltered in the belief and hope that the government-sponsored troops would spare the House of God. But they did not. Safe for the priest, and a handful lucky others, all other civilian refugees were murdered, some inside the congregation hall. The image the cross hanging above the ransacked altar, a symbolism portraying Christ who died for the sin of man, evokes a sickening sense of sardony, as sickening as the children outside drowning in the pool of their own red dye.

No where was safe. Not churches, not homes, not even schools, where even children stabbed their fellow classmates to death. Everywhere, in Kigali and throughout the country of barely 7 million, bones and rotting remains were strewn like garbage. Children played football with a skull, as government-sponsored (Hutu) militia-men raided and cleansed the country. "The Beast", the locals called it, wreaked destruction and death wherever its presence was seen and felt. Men were brutally severed and killed with machetes, screwdrivers, hammers and stones, children and babies were split into two and shot, and women and girls (as one put it) like "abandoned pets", were raped and abused. How can it all be put into words? How can you describe something that doesn't make sense, asks the representative of the ICRC (Red Cross).

The "international community" knew, but did nothing. Western correspondents retreated as the last westerners withdrew, citing instability as the reason. But as the cameras and reporters left, the massacres and horrible crimes against humanity did not leave, only intensified. The Canadian UN commander in Rwanda pleaded for intervention, a French envoy called the White House, the Elysée, Westminster and the UN in New York, explaining the situation. But no help came. Instead, they had no alternative to sit down with the very Rwandan government ministers who were clearly behind inciting and initiating the systematic and organised wiping out of the Tutsi population.

The world watched, and stayed silent. As silent as when Auschwitz took place, as one put it. As early as 1993, more than a year before the events, foreign journalists filmed mass graves being uncovered in Rwanda, and confirmed reports of systematic killings. At the same time the former Yugoslavia was experiencing its own massacres and despicable acts of inhumanity. April to July 1994 was only the unstoppable climax of the rampage and insanity in Rwanda. But the world stood by. And thereby is just as guilty for its inaction as those who acted in the name of ethnic purity and hatred. Hatred for "not what they (the Tutsis) had done, but for who they were".

Three months and close to a million deaths later, France gloriously led a UN mandate into Rwanda under Operation Turquoise. Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, then spokesperson for the French Cabinet, trumpeted France's role to end the killings and bring justice. Much bloated and much belated. As French troops moved in, the media swarmed back to Rwanda again. They filmed rows of cheering crowds wielding the French Tricolore and shouting 'Vive la France'. And the media filmed refugees pouring towards UN troop outposts, in dire need of protection and food. The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), who previously were fighting the government to prevent further massacres, now became demonised as the wrongdoers. Nobody bothered to check the facts, and the streams of refugees were taken for granted as victims fleeing their homes from the rebels. But in fact, many of the refugees were the very Tutsis, some of whom had been involved in the killings, fearing retaliation by the rebels, and now seeking protection of UN forces. Journalism can inform, but is also a powerful tool for political manipulation and deceit.

Suddenly the "international community" which for so many months sat by and wilfully watched hundreds of thousands massacred, were welcomed as saviours from afar, and glorified as the provider of aid and safe-haven. A travesty of the truth. A few months later, in November 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established, as a shining symbol of the "international community's" resolve to strike justice on those responsible for the "genocide and other systematic, widespread and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law". Justice late is better than justice undone.

But close to a million have been killed, and millions more have been traumatised. And this was in the glorious years of the 1990s when people celebrated the new post-Cold War peace and prosperity.

Could it have been prevented? Yes, if only we had cared a little more. If only we had bothered to find out what, and why as countless fellow men, women and children suffered and died.