Educational Media Reviews Online

In 1982 Hissein Habre seized power in Chad to establish a brutal dictatorship based on one party rule and the iron fist of the Division of Documentation and Security (DDS), his own political police, that was to last until he was deposed in 1990.

During the Cold War era, Africa’s Pinochet got financial, material, and technical support from a number of nations, the United States and France at the top of the list.

The opening scenes show survivors of his prisons baring their scars, and telling heartrending accounts of their past and present sufferings. One man describes having all his finger and toenails ripped out, and thrown into a barrel already full of others’ nails. Another recounts prisoners returning to the cells from torture, staggering around and babbling gibberish, a needle having been driven into their brains. Another, of being dragged by the neck behind a truck. There are women grieving disappeared husbands, struggling to care for their children alone. Many confess to being suicidal were it not for their families, and a remarkable number display incredible faith in God, despite their sufferings. Perhaps they feel nothing else left to rely upon.

After Habre was deposed in 1990, and fled Chad, mass graves were revealed, and a national inquiry commission declared that 40,000 people had died in his prisons.

One of the key figures of the documentary is Dohkat Clement Abaifuta. Imprisoned for four years, he was forced to bury the dead there. A one man truth and reconciliation commission, he was a founder of the Association of Victims of the Crimes of the Hissein Habre Regime, and instrumental in ultimately bringing Habre to justice.

Having spent 25 years living a cushy life in Senegal, Habre was finally arrested and jailed in Dakar in 2015, and charged with war crimes, torture, including sexual slavery and rape, and crimes against humanity. In May 2016, clad head to toe in immaculate white robes, he was dragged from the court after conviction to spend the rest of his life in prison. He declared the trial a parody of justice, illegal, and lawless. In April 2017 his conviction was upheld on appeal.

This film is at times very hard to watch, yet I would recommend it as required viewing in high school classrooms. An Official Selection for Special Screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, it had its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival the same year.