MEMORY AND DENIAL: THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE FIFTEEN YEARS ON
Gerald Caplan
AllAfrica.com
April 22 2009
Pambazuka News
55324
April 2, 2009
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:
s/reports/Report_rowanda_genocide.pdf
or
http://w ww.aegistrust.org/images/stories/oaureport.pdf]
A pril 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
Relevant Links Central Africa Conflict, Peace and Security Human Rights
Rwanda 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.
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
[ D=17923]
Gerard Prunier, "Rwanda’s Ghosts Refuse to be Buried"
[Excerpts only. For full article see
]
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.
Relevant Links Central Africa Conflict, Peace and Security Human Rights
Rwanda 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)
195374207 or
656657
Review by Andrew Rice in The Nation, April 20, 2009
[Excerpts only. for full review see
]
…
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 | go directly to review at
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
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. …
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
