For the greater part of last semester I spent most of my free time organizing a day’s worth of events for Human Rights Day. Most of that time was spent e-mailing or calling, repeatedly. It turns out this school prepares you with skills other than just reading and writing. Soliciting has now become my new strong suit. It seems that word has gotten out about my little event because since then I am no longer the one doing the contacting. One of the interesting people I’ve met lately is the humanitarian, photographer, and now published author, Lane H. Montgomery.
Raised in North Carolina during the civil rights era Lane has spent the last three decades documenting Genocide around the world. Her book, NEVER AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN…? Genocide: Armenia, The Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, captures in photo and essay the six major genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries.
We are lucky enough to be inviting Lane to campus this month. She will be presenting her book on campus Feb. 26th in Titsworth Lecture Hall at 7p.m. followed by a book signing. I spoke to Lane about her experiences and her new book.
Tell us about your book, NEVER AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN….? How did you become involved in the documentation of Genocide?
I think it was –in April ‘04 and the 10th Anniversary of the genocide at Rwanda. I was already in Africa working with an AIDS group for children and I received a call from the International Rescue Committee who I had worked with previously, and they suggested I go over to Rwanda at that time. All of the horror was still out in the open, as if it had happened only yesterday.
I was there in Rwanda for 4 or 5 days and there were tons of news correspondents everywhere, talking about the anniversary….sharing the horror stories of the sites they’d seen by day…it was everywhere you turned. You could not get away from it. Terry George, the Director of Hotel Rwanda was also there shooting the movie during this time (actually, they used some of my stills for that film).
The very first site I went to was about 30 miles outside of Kigali, the Capital. It was the Church at Ntarama where 5,000 parishoners were brutally killed and it was just as it had been left…when we opened the door of this church…the smell nearly knocked me down. I stared over the skeletons, some with hair still on them…unborn babies skeletons were still inside their mother’s legs…and all of them, all of them —-hacked up by machetes…high heels and ladies purses lay beside the bodies…remnants of clothing still clung to the bones. That was only the first site I saw. There were many others…too many. I later realized that I could actually put the viewer in the same room with this evil and make it impossible to ignore. Genocide happens again, and again and again…I had to do this book.
What started you on photography?
Focus is very important to me and has a lot of different meanings…I try to focus on the here and now, it’s hard to explain but it’s sort of grounding. I am very comfortable with a camera, less so with a digital but I’m learning.
The journey to create this book must have been life changing, is there a particular memory that stands out?
There are many memories that will never go away as in Bosnia when I went to visit the sites of the Srebrenica massacre and also to Sarajevo. Sarajevo had been a cultured, European city. Less than 10 years prior, this beautiful, lovely, city had played host to the 1984 Olympics…athletes representing different cultures and countries came from all over the world to peacefully compete. What I saw when I was there was an Olympic soccer stadium filled with tombstones. Sarajevo is now a city of graves and tombstones… (There is a picture of it in the book.)
And in Srebrenica 7,000 husbands and sons were killed in one night. They say that at night you can still hear the women weeping. While I was there a woman asked me to take her picture over the grave of her dead husband. Just as I got ready to take the picture, she told me they never found his head…it hit me with such force that it suddenly made me sick, and I thought, “Genocide can happen anywhere.” Walking the streets of Sarajevo, looking at the people, who survived 1994-95 genocide years – they looked like people I had grown up with…they could have been neighbors.
What do you think needs to be done and is there anything the average person can do?
One thing everyone can do is educate themselves. The next thing they can do is care enough to be vocal.
But for governments, I believe in a plan: First, an International Genocide Prevention Force, complete with air and all necessary tactical weaponry assembled and brought into any region where genocide is an immediate threat or is already underway. The level of arms and size of the force must be sufficient to stop the killings. Peacekeeping forces are pretty ineffective when there is no peace. Once the killing can be stopped, necessarily in a very short period of time (one million Tutsis were killed in fewer than 100 days in Rwanda —- and look at Kenya in just one month), diplomatic efforts must be initiated.
And lastly, there should be a court system in the country of the killings – not an outside court that has no ability to extradite the perpetrators. This court should have the authority to imprison and to enforce a trial. In order to prevent local corruption, the sentencing for the crimes needs to be monitored by a United Nations delegation made up of rotating representatives present at the trial. The need for outside transparency is imperative in any country that has withstood ethnic cleansing and genocide.
To end on a happy note, what’s your favorite animal and why?
A dog or a horse, I used to ride quite a bit as a girl and I loved it. Later in life, I had a dog, a Shitzu. I named him Heathcliff. I still miss him and a dozen or so years have passed. I still haven’t gotten another one.
To find out more and to get a signed copy of NEVER, AGAIN, AGAIN, AGAIN …? attend Lane’s talk Thursday February 26th 7 p.m. in Titsworth Lecture Hall.
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