Augustin Cyiza: un homme libre au Rwanda (review)

Much has been written on Rwanda over the last dozen years, but the focus has almost exclusively been on the violence that has shaken the country since the early 1990s. Depicting the genocidal horror that engulfed hundreds of thousands of lives during the spring of 1994 has been a particularly recurrent theme. A separate body of narratives has also emerged from the Rwandan diaspora in the West, pushing for more international recognition of the "hidden" facets of the Rwandan tragedy, namely the atrocities committed by the current government's army both in Rwanda and in the Congo. Augustin Cyiza: Un homme libre au Rwanda is one of the rare attempts to shift the spotlight of postgenocide Rwandan publications from raw portrayal of violence to the lives and actions of brave men and women who resisted that violence, while highlighting the challenges they faced in the process.

Trained as a jurist, Cyiza was a former officer in the Rwandan army under the Habyarimana regime who had courageously opposed the genocide—indeed, he had protected people during the genocide. After the genocide Cyiza served for a time as vice president of the Supreme Court and president of the Cassation Court in Rwanda. Widely respected as an outspoken advocate for human rights, Cyiza in 2003 was seen by many as potentially a credible opposition candidate to the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front in elections scheduled for mid-2003. But he disappeared in April of that year; the police said he had fled to Uganda. When it was later revealed that Cyiza had been taken by a commando of the Rwandan army and never seen again, the human rights activists who unveiled this uncomfortable truth themselves had to flee the country. This book, consisting of the narrative of Cyiza's life by others, is powerful testimony to both Cyiza's courageous life and his mysterious death—and the link between the two.

At first glance, the book appears as a simple compilation of testimonies honoring an extraordinary Rwandan whose disappearance shocked the public conscience. However, those closely following political developments in Rwanda for the last two decades may see the significance of these testimonies at a higher level. This was a man who was humiliated and physically attacked by the government as he advocated for peaceful alternatives. This portrait serves as an act of rehabilitation for the past, a warning to the present, and a call for action for the future.

The first and most important task that the book accomplishes very successfully is the rehabilitation of an advocate of peace. From more than twenty detailed testimonies, we retain the picture of a nonviolent man who constantly had to face the harshness of suspicion and the burden of being misunderstood. But that is the lot of most wise people working in hostile environments, and Cyiza was certainly aware of that. A man of principle, he is presented to the reader as one who had apparently adhered to Gandhi's line of resistance: "You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind." After his forcible disappearance, those to whom his courage had substantially appealed owed him the simplest of duties: a recognition of his struggles. Their testimonies constitute, among other things, an expression of that recognition. They also serve as a powerful atonement for the humiliation he underwent at the hands of those who undervalued the measure of his integrity. As a rehabilitative tool, the book has infused Mr. Cyiza's life with meaning and given dignity to the work of all those who, like Cyiza, put their lives on the line while pursuing a peaceful cause.

Finally, the book is no less significent for what is implied for the future than for what is expressed outright about the past. As Cyiza himself rightly noted, "the war in Rwanda is far from over. It has only changed its face." Those who engineered his disappearance did so...