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Rwanda: Genocide Anniversary Reflections
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Apr 21, 2009 (090421)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Before the 10th anniversary, the international movement known as
Remembering Rwanda was motivated by a fear that the genocide was
being forgotten by the rest of the world. That concern has proved
premature. Rwanda is probably as well known today as any tragic
event very far from western countries, and causing direct harm to
none of them, can be. ... Yet at the same time, as in virtually
every other genocide, denial is alive and kicking." - Gerald Caplan
Take a look at Google Trends tracking of internet searches for
"Rwanda genocide" (http://www.google.com/trends?q=rwanda+genocide)
and you will see that the 15th anniversary of the genocide this
month produced only a modest spike in interest, compared to that 5
years ago on the 10th anniversary. Nevertheless, both the realities
of that past event and the present consequences loom large in
interpretation of African realities, particularly in the
continent's most intense conflict zones which still seem to cluster
to the west and north of Rwanda.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains brief reflections by Gerald
Caplan and Gerard Prunier, two engaged scholars who have written regularly on Rwanda, highlighting some
of these issues, along with links to reviews of recent books by both authors. Caplan's most recent book
provides a clear and concise analysis of continent-wide issues, in a series aimed primarily at upper secondary-school readers but
useful for others as well. Prunier's recent book, focusing on the Congo as well as Rwanda, has evoked strong critical as well as positive
reviews. The critics convincingly argue that, despite his extensive knowledge, Prunier has oversold his case
against the current Rwandan regime by mixing in a substantial dose of unreliable rumor with his usual
impressive array of better-documented details.
A wider range of views can be found in a Global Voices blog
roundup, available in French, Spanish, and Italian as well as in
English. See: "Rwanda: Fifteen Years after the Genocide" - April 14, 2009
http://globalvoicesonline.org or http://tinyurl.com/dguvet
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Rwanda, including references
to analytical reports released five years ago, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/rwanda.php
Also included below, a list of recent books noted on Rwanda. You
can also find these and other earlier works at
http://www.africafocus.org/books/central.php or
http://www.africafocus.org/books/central_uk.php or
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Many thanks to those of you who responded to the most recent appeal
for voluntary subscription payments to support AfricaFocus
Bulletin. If you haven't yet, and are able to do so, please help
AfricaFocus reach more people with reliable information on Africa.
Send in a check or pay on-line through Paypal or Google Checkout.
See http://www.africafocus.org/support.php for details.
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
Memory and denial: The Rwandan genocide fifteen years on
by Gerald Caplan
Pambazuka News, April 2, 2009
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/55324
[Caplan's most recent book is The Betrayal of Africa - see below.
He was among the professional staff who produced the Organization
of African Unity 2000 report Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide,
available in pdf format at:
http://www.africa-union.org/Official_documents/reports/Report_rowanda_genocide.pdf
or
http://www.aegistrust.org/images/stories/oaureport.pdf]
April 2009 marks the 15th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda of
most of its Tutsi population and of many Hutu who refused to
embrace violent extremism. Five years ago, the world marked the
10th anniversary of what almost the entire world regards as one of
the definitive genocides of the 20th century. Perhaps it was
somehow symmetrical that both the first and the last genocides of
the 20th century took place in Africa.
In 1904, soldiers representing Imperial Germany deliberately sought
to exterminate the Herero people of Namibia, then the German colony
of South-West Africa. Anxious to occupy the lands of the Herero,
the German colonial army came precious close to achieving its
grisly, racist goal. Before it ended, some three-quarters of 80,000
Herero were dead. Exactly 90 years later, the racists were powerful
Hutu extremists in Rwanda who conspired to annihilate the minority
Tutsi people, largely to avoid sharing power and wealth with them.
Like the Germans before them, the genocidaires in Rwanda were
remarkably successful in executing their plot. Before they were
defeated, about three-quarters of all the country's Tutsi had been
murdered, often in the most sadistic ways imaginable. Exact numbers
remain unknown to this day, but it is possible that as many as a
million Tutsi were killed in the 100 days of the genocide.
But very like South-West Africa, outside influences were key to
events in Rwanda. Had European missionaries not invented an
ideology that blatantly set Tutsi against Hutu, had the Belgian
colonial government not institutionalised this false ideology, had
the French government not offered all possible support to the Hutu
government of Rwanda in the years immediately leading to the
genocide, the genocide might never have happened. Once triggered,
it was the Security Council, urged on by the United States, that
refused to take a single step to stop the slaughter.
Before the 10th anniversary, the international movement known as
Remembering Rwanda was motivated by a fear that the genocide was
being forgotten by the rest of the world. That concern has proved
premature. Rwanda is probably as well known today as any tragic
event very far from western countries, and causing direct harm to
none of them, can be. Tragically, one of the forces that revived
the memory of 1994 was the conflict that began in Darfur, western
Sudan, in 2003. When the secretary-general of the United Nations
commemorated the 10th anniversary of Rwanda in 2004, his cry was
that Darfur must not be allowed to become 'the next Rwanda'.
And so Rwanda's international role was finally crystallised: It was
the latest acknowledged failure of the solemn, eternally repeated,
never heeded, pledge of 'Never Again'. Perhaps one day in the not
too distant future, Rwanda's invidious distinction will be replaced
by Darfur, and the international community will vow not to permit
'the next Darfur'.
At the same time as Rwanda was being turned into symbol of betrayal
by the international community, it was attracting the interest of
western filmmakers. This entirely unanticipated phenomenon has also
given the genocide a renewed lease on life, as it were. It is
probable that more feature-length films and full-length
documentaries have been made about the genocide than any other
contemporary international crisis save Iraq or the so-called 'war
on terror'.
Not all the films were of top quality and few bothered to show the
critical and malevolent role of western influence in Rwandan
history. The most popular film, Hotel Rwanda, the one that really
dragged Rwanda into mainstream western consciousness, had as its
hero a man who now trivialises the genocide. Nonetheless, his
story, overblown as it may have been, combined with the others, has
assured that the genocide in Rwanda is in little danger of being
forgotten.
The Deniers
Yet at the same time, as in virtually every other genocide, denial
is alive and kicking. Here is yet another common thread that binds
the people that suffered through what many consider the three
classic genocides of the 20th century - the Armenians, the Jews and
the Rwandan Tutsis. The bitter and apparently never-ending fight
against deniers, or revisionists, is a common cause among the
survivors of all these genocides, one that will be highlighted in
Rwanda in April 2009 as people from all over the world will gather
to mark the 15th anniversary of the genocide of the Tutsi -
Remembering Rwanda 15, or RR15.
If much of the world now remembers the genocide in Rwanda, the
battle against those who deny that genocide is much less familiar
though no less insidious than its Armenian or Holocaust
equivalents. The persistence of Holocaust denial remains a reality
everywhere in the world that anti-Semitism rears its head. In some
countries it attracts elites. In the west it is the preserve of a
lunatic fringe, and usually more an irritation than anything else.
But there is always a well-earned fear that it could explode into
something more ferocious, especially as anti-Semitism and
opposition to Israeli policies sometimes become difficult to
distinguish.
Denying the Armenian genocide is a decidedly more precise
phenomenon. It exists only when attempts are made to recognise the
genocide for what it is, either by resolutions of legislative
assemblies or through education. And unlike either Holocaust or
Rwanda denial, it is invariably orchestrated by the Turkish
government and its acolytes, most of them on that government's
payroll. By a terrible irony of realpolitik, among the most
steadfast collaborators of the Turkish government in its hardball
efforts to prevent recognition of the genocide is its close ally
Israel and some powerful Israel support groups throughout the
western world. Whether Turkey's unexpectedly vehement condemnation
of Israel's recent aggression against Gaza changes these equations
is still not at all clear.
Rwanda is a different case
For one thing, in much of the English-speaking world, denialism has
been very much a fringe phenomenon, largely peddled by a motley
coalition. There are anti-American left-wingers who are perversely
convinced that Rwandan president Paul Kagame, in their eyes the
evil genius behind the conflict (they deny it was a genocide), was
an American stooge. There are those who have ties of some kind with
the defence at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Sometimes these are the same people. They are still largely unknown
to most English-speakers who have seen the movies, or admire
General Romeo Dallaire (another American puppet, in the twisted
view of the deniers) and have no reason to doubt that a genocide
actually was carried out.
Naturally the small band of leading deniers are well-known to the
Rwandan diaspora community, which is not only wounded by the
denials but fails to understand why their lies are given any media
attention at all. At least as ominously, the deniers' reach and
influence has been spreading, metastasising like a malignant
cancer, thanks to the anarchy of the blogosphere and to the embrace
of the deniers' arguments by a small but influential number of
left-wing, anti-American journals and websites.
Google Rwanda and you're quite likely get a deniers' rant featuring
the tiny band of usual suspects - French Judge Bruguiere, former UN
Rwanda chief Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, Robin Philpot, former
Australian investigator Michael Hourigan, American academic
Christian Davenport - each enthusiastically citing the others as
their proof that the entire so-called genocide was really an
American imperial plot. That there is no evidence for this
assertion, that every single reputable scholar who has studied the
genocide has categorically disagreed with it, carries no weight
with this incomprehensible band of true believers. At the same
time, the harsh criticisms of the present Rwanda government by
respected human rights advocates has unhappily provided a certain
illogical legitimacy to the deniers' pernicious cause.
Thanks to the reach of Hotel Rwanda, which has been seen by more
people than all other Rwanda films combined, many ordinary
English-speakers are likely to know of only one Rwandan, Paul
Rusesabagina, and to believe him a hero of the genocide, a
righteous man who saved Tutsi lives at great personal risk. That he
now is the most prominent person in the world claiming Kagame's
rebels were as deadly as the genocidaires, that he insists Rwanda
today is comparable to Rwanda during the 100 days, and that he
openly works with known genocidaires and western deniers against
the Kagame government, is still not grasped by his western
admirers. That's why the uncritical adulation in which he is held
and his own fierce determination to spread his message makes him a
serious threat that should not be underestimated.
In Europe and in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec,
genocide denial is more mainstream. In large part this is due to
longstanding ties between the pre-genocide francophone Hutu elite
and assorted government and church officials in western Europe and
Quebec. But as elsewhere, deniers in these areas reflect a
miscellany of motives. A number are former genocidaires themselves,
some being protected by political and religious allies of the old
regime, others walking free and peddling their poison. All of these
Rwandans and non-Rwandans cherish a fantasy of someday reviving
'Hutuland' and the 'demographic democracy' that prevailed from 1959
to 1994, in other words, a Hutu dictatorship based exclusively on
Hutu constituting a large majority of the population.
Others have acted on behalf of the defence at the ICTR
(International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda). Some simply cannot
abide Kagame and his inner circle of former Ugandans. A few are
well-known non-Rwandan academics, taking every advantage to
disparage the Kagame government while consciously cultivating a
generation of Rwanda-hating Congolese. The harm being done will be
felt throughout the Great Lakes region for decades.
So the final assault common to the classical genocides of the 20th
century - the denial that it ever happened - continues to be an
ugly shared reality for all those touched by the Armenian genocide,
the Holocaust, and the genocide of the Rwandan Tutsi. The 15th
anniversary of the final genocide of the 20th century and of the
millennium provides an opportunity to unite all those affected by
the three of them in a sustained and systematic counter-attack
against deniers of all kinds.
It also moves us into the new century/millennium. It should
pre-empt the many friends of the Government of Sudan from
insisting, as the al-Bashir government routinely does, that the
crisis in Darfur is very much the responsibility of its own
victims.
Gerald Caplan, The Betrayal of Africa. Toronto, Canada: Groundwork
Books, 2008. 144 pages.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0888998244
". . . a small book for such a large continent with such huge
issues, but this is no superficial primer for neophyte travelers
and liberal do-gooders. . . . Caplan and his publishers have
produced a book that is popularly written in style, designed with
tables and maps that illustrate superbly the basic concept that
history does count. . . The Betrayal of Africa nicely explodes
stereotypes that are still used today to justify economic and
political exploitation. . ." - AfricaFiles, Hugh McCullum
[http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=17923]
Gerard Prunier, "Rwanda's Ghosts Refuse to be Buried"
[Excerpts only. For full article see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7981964.stm]
The ghosts still wander in the hills above the Great Lakes, both in
Rwanda itself and in the neighbouring Kivu provinces of the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Like most ghosts, they are very much alive.
They are the survivors of a horror they will never manage to forget
- those the Rwandans call "bapfuye buhagazi" or "the walking dead".
These are the girls who had abortions after being raped by the
interahamwe (the Hutu militia which carried out the killings), the
widows, the mothers who saw their children slaughtered before their
eyes, the children who grew up after seeing their parents die, the
killers haunted by remorse and the killers who feel no remorse at
all.
The ghosts are also the bystanders who pretended there was nothing
they could do, the innocents later unjustly accused of murder, the
guilty perpetrators who fear discovery and those who are known and
who are blackmailed, the Hutu refugees who never came home and who
still live in DR Congo, the Tutsi refugees from the Congo who fled
the massacres there and who still linger in Rwandan camps, the
madmen and the broken women.
In many ways, the perpetrators of the genocide have succeeded.
They have managed to encase the whole country in a gigantic airless
bubble where everybody pretends that life goes on but where, in
many ways, it actually stopped on 7 April 1994.
The perpetrators have never apologised. In fact, no truth and
reconciliation commission based on the South African model has been
offered to them, where the real perpetrators are actually present
and can be cross-examined.
The substitute is the largely artificial structure of the gacaca
courts - set up by the Rwandan government based on a system of
community justice.
...
The perpetrators have also imposed their ethnic logic on the new
regime - described by some as a dictatorship - where any mention of
the word "Tutsi" or "Hutu" is strictly forbidden by law.
This means that any lucid examination of the relationship between
Tutsi and Hutu before, during and after the genocide is now
impossible.
It is like discussing an infectious disease without being allowed
to use the words "germ" or "contagion".
Rwanda is now locked into an ideological straight-jacket providing
a relentless and official interpretation of history from which all
shades of meaning have been sanitised.
Belated atonement
Which brings us to the second lot of ghosts - those who live far
away from the Great Lakes in the Western world.
Guilt has kept the West fixated on the genocide:
- Guilt of the Belgian colonisers who were vaguely suspected of
having contributed to this mess through their old colonial policies
- Guilt of the French government which had supported some of the
worst excesses of the Hutu regime beyond the normal limits of
political alliance
- Guilt of the Americans who had refused to use their capacity for
military intervention when it was called for
- Finally guilt of the international community when the United
Nations compounded its initial blindness by displaying a massive
case of multilateral cowardice.
In response, and much like in the case of the Holocaust in Europe,
there has been a pronounced move towards belated atonement in the
West.
The result has been predictable. Governments from London to
Washington have rallied to the new regime of President Paul Kagame
without looking too closely at its behaviour.
A backlash of this is a rancid wave of revisionist literature -
casting doubts on the scale of the genocide - that has begun to
wash ashore, particularly in France and French-speaking Africa.
...
Gerard Prunier, Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide,
and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. Oxford University
Press, 2008. 576 pages. (UK editions 2009)
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0195374207
or
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1850656657
Review by Andrew Rice in The Nation, April 20, 2009
[Excerpts only. for full review see
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/rice]
...
In The Rwanda Crisis (1995), Prunier was reasonably sympathetic
toward Kagame, but in Africa's World War he casts Rwanda's
president as the villain, apologizing in an endnote for wanting "to
believe in the relative innocence of the RPF." His sense of
disillusionment matches that of a number of Great Lakes
specialists, such as the late Alison Des Forges of Human Rights
Watch, who by the end of her life was banned from entering Rwanda
because of her strident criticism of the RPF. The title that
Columbia University's Mahmood Mamdani gave his book on Rwanda, When
Victims Become Killers, sums up the overall turnabout in the
narrative. Prunier makes it clear he's determined to revise
previous judgments. ...
...
Kagame is not afraid to invoke the legacy of the genocide to
silence international criticism, and that has proven to be an
effective tactic. ... Prunier intends for his book to be a
corrective. "The RPF calculated that guilt, ineptitude, and the
hope that things would work out would cause the West to literally
let them get away with murder [in the Congo]," he writes. "The
calculation was correct."
...
Yet even Prunier is not averse to repeating conspiratorial rumors,
some of them first advanced by the very writers he elsewhere
dismisses as crackpots, so long as those stories advance his
argument that Kagame was the malevolent mastermind of Congo's
destruction. ... [There is] a pattern of argument that recurs
throughout the book: Prunier introduces substantiated charges,
proceeds to eye-popping allegations and then barrels off the deep
end. His zeal undermines his cause. ...
Review by Thomas P. Odom in Small Wars Journal, January 2009
http://smallwarsjournal.com | go directly to review at
http://tinyurl.com/dhgs7c
Odom's own 2005 book detailing his experiences as U.S. military
attache in Congo and in Rwanda in the early post-genocide period is
Journey Into Darkness: Genocide In Rwanda
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?158544457X
[excerpts}
...
A tale of dark conspiracy woven with incompetence made me wonder if
there was indeed a fictional Congo with an eastern neighbor,
Rwanda, out there. Prunier's writings suggest there has to be a
parallel universe. Certainly there are elements of recognizable
truth involved in Prunier's tale if you have the regional expertise
to recognize them. Without a firm grounding in the region,
however, one risks being fooled ...
To be more direct, let me just say that as a participant in some of
the events described in this book, I found numerous errors of
fact, doubtful analysis, and dubious sourcing, I am disappointed
to say the least because I looked forward to reading the book as a
follow on to Prunier's earlier works on the Rwandan tragedy. In
contrast to those efforts, this book is neither good history nor
good journalism. Good history relies on analysis of facts,
personal accounts, public documents, and at least makes a stab at
balanced analysis. Journalism implies writing without an agenda.
Prunier sets the tone for this work by his dedication to Seth
Sendashonga, the exiled former Interior Minister who was
assassinated in Nairobi in 1998. Sendashonga, Hutu member of the
Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), fled Rwanda after a falling out with
then Vice President Paul Kagame. In exile, Sendashonga pandered a
story of RPF killings that challenged credibility. ...
Recent Books on Rwanda
After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction,
and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond by Professor Philip Clark
and Zachary Kaufman. Columbia University Press (2009) Hardcover,
428 pages http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1850659184
or http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0231700822
The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide by
Jean Hatzfeld Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2009) Hardcover, 256
pages http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1846686865
or http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0374271038
As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda by Catherine
Claire Larson Zondervan (2009) Paperback, 288 pages
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0310287308
Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda by Lee Ann Fujii
Cornell University Press (2009) Hardcover, 212 pages
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0801447054
The Bishop of Rwanda by John Rucyahana Thomas Nelson (2008)
Paperback, 256 pages
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1595552375
Justice on the Grass: Three Rwandan Journalists, Their Trial for
War Crimes and a Nation's Quest for Redemption by Dina
Temple-Raston Free Press (2008) Paperback, 320 pages.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0743284291
Led By Faith: Rising from the Ashes of the Rwandan Genocide by
Immaculee Ilibagiza Hay House (2008) Hardcover, 264 pages
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1401918875
The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda by Scott
Straus Cornell University Press (2008) Paperback, 273 pages
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0801474922
Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of France's Role in the Rwandan
Genocide by Andrew Wallis I. B. Tauris (2007) Hardcover, 256 pages
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1845112474
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
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