How to talk about genocide ?

The news reporter Jean Hatzfeld has written several books on the genocide in Rwanda which left 800,000 dead in 1994. Interviewed by Colette Braeckman, he explains that prose, as opposed to journalistic writing, allowed him to "approach the reality of genocide. (...)  A journalist is first and foremost a go-between, someone who links those who experience events and the readers, who tries his or her best to answer questions that readers might ask. Facing a genocide, there is always a lapse of time during which readers do not want to hear anything, whether about the Shoah, the Armenian genocide, or Rwanda, for event is too unthinkable, too exceptional. The journalist is also disarmed ... . In literature, instead of asking oneself the questions that others pose, as a journalist does, you ask your own questions. In fact, you write for yourself, first and foremost. It is not the same approach."

» more information (external link, French)
More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Literature, » Print media, » Africa
All available articles from » Colette Braeckman, » Jean Hatzfeld

» To the complete press review of Monday, February 18, 2008