‘In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War II to be legally defined as genocide.’
In 1996, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist was one of sixteen scientists chosen by the United Nations to unearth the physical evidence of the Rwandan genocide. This was the first of seven UN missions Clea Koff undertook. In addition to Rwanda, she travelled to Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo.
In this, her moving and personal account of these missions, Ms Koff writes about the evidence she uncovered, the people she worked with, and who was prosecuted as a consequence. She writes about how people were identified: how sometimes science was assisted by personal belongings, including the clothing found on some bodies. She writes of the survivors: those who need to know that their loved ones have been found, and those who would prefer (for a time at least) to believe that their loved ones were missing, not murdered. Ms Koff also writes of the challenges the teams met as they did their work: the places they worked in were not always safe, and there was often a shortage of the equipment and supplies they needed.
What really comes across in Ms Koff’s account is the care with which she undertook her work and the respect shown to those whose bodies were recovered. While I can wish that the work undertaken by Ms Koff and the other scientists was not necessary, that acts of genocide no longer occurred, I am grateful for the way in which it was undertaken.
The best and the worst of humanity contained in one book.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Book 8 in my 2023 Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I’ve entered as a ‘Nonfiction Grazer’ and this book should be included under the heading of ‘Memoir’.
Tasmanian Bibliophile @Large 