How not to write about the
Rwandan genocide
Picture: Linda Melvern receiving a medal from the killer and dictator Paul KagameBY
https://africasacountry.com/author/susan-thomson
How Rwandan history is told—and who does the telling—is
important as it determines who is able to participate in conversations about
the past.
https://africasacountry.com/2020/09/how-not-to-write-about-the-rwandan-genocide
In late August, the Rwandan government abducted Paul
Rusesabagina, the hero of the Hollywood film, Hotel Rwanda. His
forcible return from Dubai to Kigali has put Rwanda and its ruling Rwandan
Patriotic Front back in the headlines. Rwanda’s government accuses Rusesabagina
of leading an armed struggle against it. Speaking at a press conference last weekend,
Rwandan president Paul Kagame told reporters that Rusesabagina had been brought
home on charges of treason, kidnap, and murder. One might expect a
representative of the Ministry of Justice to speak about Rusesabagina’s alleged
crimes. Not so in Rwanda, where the President sets the tone about who can speak
about who did what to whom during the 1994 genocide.
During the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina was a hotel manager, whose story
was the basis of the 2004 movie Hotel Rwanda, with Rusesabagina
portrayed by Don Cheadle. The film chronicles Rusesabagina’s central role in
saving more than 1,200 ethnic Tutsis at the infamous Hotel Mille Collines in
Kigali as fighting between government forces and Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF) raged close by. When “Hotel Rwanda” was released, the RPF
leadership praised the film, going so far as to send a contingent of government
officials to New York for its official launch.
In 2006, George W. Bush awarded Rusesabagina the Presidential Medal of
Honor, which raised hackles in Kigali. Rusesabagina used this international
acclaim to criticize the government, mostly in Western capitals. By the end of
2011, the RPF leadership had labeled Rusesabagina an ethnic ideologue and
genocide denier.
Fast forward to September 6, 2020 and a press conference, as reported by The New York Times, in
which Kagame framed Rusesabagina’s crimes as a denial of the RPF’s official
version of the 1994 genocide, “ … saying that other survivors from the Hรดtel
Mille Collines dispute [Rusesabinga’s] depiction as a hero.”
Previously, Rwandan officials have dismissed Hotel Rwanda as
“pure fiction” and accused Rusesabagina of “propagating lies and
misinformation” about the genocide, according to The New York Times.
The President’s allegations are a product of selective memory and an
ever-changing political climate that equates political criticism with denial of
the 1994 genocide.
Hotel Rwanda indeed provided Rusesabagina an international platform, which he
used to criticize the government’s post-genocide policies and practices. As I
wrote in my recent book, Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace (2018),
the RPF deploys the specter of a return of genocidal violence to manage
dissent. Rusesabagina is now considered an enemy of the state because of his
public criticism of the moral authority of the RPF government to remake Rwanda
on its own terms. The crafting of a particular image of Rwanda as peaceful,
stable, and a beacon of economic development, the RPF has long relied on
sympathetic journalists and academic scriptwriters to write its version of
events into the public record, a record which in turn provides the basis of
allegation of genocide denial and treason for critics such as Rusesabagina, as
well as for critics who lack international prominence. The history of the
genocide and how it is presented as a singular event driven by ethnic hatred is
hardly surprising, given the prominence of some writers for the RPF’s official
position.
The latest salvo is by British investigative journalist, Linda Melvern.
Her latest book, Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi (published
by Verso this year) is a regurgitation of the government line, rooted in a
selective reading of history that is deployed to reformulate who is a regime
critic. Melvern is no stranger to Rwanda. She has dedicated almost 25 years to
writing about the circumstances of the 1994 genocide. She authored A
People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (2000)
and Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide (2004). Melvern
has also acted as a consultant to the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda.
But, Intent to Deceive is based on a fallacy that
informs the indictment against Paul Rusesabagina and other critics like him:
That the winners and losers of the Rwandan genocide are settled history. How Rwandan history is told—and
who does the telling—is important as it determines who can participate in
conversations about the past, something Melvern overlooks as a critical part of
how societies recover from mass violence. The ways in which the history of the
Rwandan civil war and genocide is interpreted and recorded matters too, because
it raises necessary questions about the ways in which this past will be seen in
the future. As Melvern herself notes, there are always winners and losers
in how official histories are told, retold, taught, and memorialized.
In Rwanda, as in other divided societies and regardless of who holds
power, history has been interpreted and rewritten to suit the political agendas
of the protagonists—in this case, since 1994, the ruling RPF and its leader,
Paul Kagame. Political elites, whether in Rwanda or elsewhere, regularly and
creatively revise national histories to justify their policies and actions, and
to harden their grip on power, often acting without regard for the lives and
livelihoods of their citizens.
Melvern leads the reader into believing that denial of the 1994 genocide
is so wide-spread and so pernicious that it represents a threat to the
stability of the current Rwandan government. In Melvern’s telling, the violence
of 1994 was committed only against the minority Tutsi population. There is no
denying genocide, in the legal, political and social meaning of the word,
occurred in Rwanda in 1994; and scholars generally agree on the intensity and
scale of the event. But scholarship also demonstrates there was mass violence
committed against civilians of all ethnicities, including the Hutu majority and
tiny Twa minority, in the broader context of civil war (1990-1994), during the
genocide, and from 1994-1999, as the new government, led by the RPF rebel group
turned ruling party, left no stone unturned in securing the country. I do not
write the preceding sentence to deny or diminish the horrors of the 1994
genocide. Quite the opposite. Unlike Melvern, I fully acknowledge other mass
crimes took place in Rwanda before, during and after the 1994 genocide.
Recognizing the human costs to Rwandans of all ethnicities—Tutsi, Hutu and
Twa—so that their suffering can be addressed, repaired and memorialized is
vital to the long-term prospects for peace and stability in the region.
Instead, Melvern misleads her reader. She systematically rewrites the
history of the Rwandan genocide to sublimate the human rights abuses of the RPF
government, in both Rwanda and the region. In other words, Melvern fails to
disclose that speaking of RPF atrocities or abuses is to deny the genocide of
the Tutsi. It may be that Melvern’s deception comes from a place of worry.
After all, as Tutsi survivors of the 1994 genocide know all too well, genocide
denialism is sadly part of the socio-political landscape in Rwanda and beyond.
Melvern correctly notes that the rhetoric of denial is the last of Gregory
Stanton’s 10 distinct stages of genocide, in which
perpetrators deny their acts of genocide and do all they can to cover up
evidence of their crimes.
Melvern’s concern is literal denial that genocide occurred in Rwanda.
Rigorous scholarship dismisses this possibility, with most treading carefully
to affirm genocide in Rwanda, to honor survivors and in recognition that
the genocide continues to live in them, to paraphrase
the anthropologist Jennie E. Burnet. To suggest otherwise is to insult
survivors of the genocide. Indeed, there can be no denying that a handful of
ethnic Hutu political elites, as well as some scholars and pundits, either relativize the violence of the
1994 genocide or flat-out deny it ever happened. Where Melvern’s analysis
flounders is assuming all instances of genocide denial in contemporary Rwanda
are forms of literal denial, without due regard to multiple periods of
systematic and widespread violence against civilian populations in Rwanda and
in the region, throughout the 1990s, at the hands of multiple actors. Melvern
thus conflates literal denial with the politics of genocide denial, unable to
distinguish between denial to avoid individual culpability and denial intended
to rewrite Rwanda’s history of political violence to suit the ruling RPF.
To be sure, defense lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda—a court established in November 1994 to try genocide crimes—regularly
employed minimizing or denialist language in defending their clients. Such
denials are best contextualized as part of the accused’s right to legal
defense. More critical in Melvern’s case is equating literal cases of genocide
denial with the politics of denialism, led by the RPF leadership and their
supporters, who use the phrase “genocide denier” to suss out its critics and
manage political opponents. In 2008, the RPF revised the constitution to
legally call the events of 1994 “the genocide against the Tutsi.” This naming
formalized Tutsi as the sole victims of the genocide and Hutu as the lone
perpetrators. It also framed the RPF as the sole heroes of genocide, as the
only military force capable of ending the violence, in the face of a withering
United Nations peacekeeping force.
Whether ordinary Rwandan or foreign
writer, anyone who questions the RPF’s account of the genocide, or
who seeks to broaden the conversation to lives lost, before or after the
genocide, is likely to be accused of genocide denial. Since 2012, the label of
“genocide denier” has been used to control domestic political opponents, Hutu or Tutsi alike, who wish to commemorate all
lives lost during the 1994 genocide, or if they publicly criticize the RPF,
President Kagame or government policy.
Yet, as Melvern tells it, people in the global North widely accept a
version of Rwandan history in which perpetrators of the 1994 genocide “have
tried to alter the story, diminishing the death toll, claiming the killing was
in self-defense, and blaming the victims.” As such, her purpose in
writing Intent to Deceive is to set the record straight on
what we in the global North think we know about the 1994 genocide. To do so,
she portrays the sensationalist idea of a double genocide, in which Hutu were
also targets of genocide, committed by the RPF, as both widely-accepted and
widely-believed beyond Rwanda’s borders. Nothing could be further from the
truth. A cursory search of news stories, best-selling books, and academic
scholarship demonstrate that the dominant version of Rwandan history in the
global North is that Hutu extremists took control of the government and pursued
a genocide against Tutsi, opposition political party members, and anyone
opposed to the genocide, regardless of ethnicity.
This approach has a long pedigree, in particular among the political
opponents of the current government, especially opposition figures living in
exile (including Rusesabagina as well as Kayumba Nyamwasa and Victoire
Ingabire), many of whom feature in Melvern’s book as powerful and looming
figures, waiting in the shadowy wings for the right time to reclaim power in
Rwanda. She also puts in her sights the American courts, the French state, and the BBC-sponsored documentary “Rwanda’s Untold Story” as evidence of the
double genocide thesis. Legal and scholarly evidence to support a claim of a
double genocide is non-existent, yet the analysis in the second half of the
book rests on this unsubstantiated claim. Melvern’s text is rooted in such
intrigues without compelling evidence. It is as if she has willfully overlooked
decades of careful scholarship, legal proceedings, policy opinions, and
personal testimony from Hutu and Tutsi survivors of the genocide, all of which
make up the body of knowledge. As such, Intent to Deceive is
better read as a political tract than the product of serious journalism.
To be fair, a handful of Rwandan political opponents do deny the
genocide, offering up an interpretative denial, claiming the mass violence of
1994 was part of a civil war, and as such, could not possibly amount to the
crime of genocide. Furthermore, the so-called “double genocide hypothesis” has
been popularized by a few fringe academics, journalists, and members of a small and impotent
Hutu Power clique. These individuals are center-stage in Melvern’s text,
occupying her attention for much of the 264-page book. She suggests their
intent to deceive is a political strategy, but she fails to illustrate how they
might actually challenge the ruling RPF.
As my scholarship, and that of fellow political
scientists Lee Ann Fujii and Scott Straus demonstrates, Rwandans
themselves know that their Tutsi brethren were targeted in acts of genocide in
1994; they also know that they, too, were subject to war crimes and crimes
against humanity throughout the 1990s. Yet, they cannot speak of these harms or
lost loved ones. Rwandans living in Rwanda during the 1990s know that multiple
forms of killing occurred at the hands of different actors—including militias,
members of the armed forces loyal to the genocidal government, members of the
the-rebel RPF, as well as enthusiastic ordinary people. Those who survived the
genocide understand that there were different modes of violence of varying
intensity and scale at different times, including during the Rwandan civil war
(1990-94), during the genocide (1994), or after (1994-1999). Rwandans
understand that multiple actors committed multiple acts of killing. They used
to use the Kinyarwanda and French phrases “amarorerwa yo muri 94/les รฉvรฉnements
de 1994” (the events of 1994) and “muri 94/en 1994” (in 1994) to describe
everything that happened in 1994, not just the genocide (itsembabwoko/le
gรฉnocide). Some also use the language of war to describe the civil war and
genocide period (intambara/la guerre). Today, it is illegal to speak in these
terms, meaning most Rwandans now comply with using “the genocide of the Tutsi”
(jenoside ya korewe abaTutsi muri 1994). Despite this complexity, Melvern
describes the genocide in a singular way that functions outside of the
experience of many Rwandans who survived the genocide, yet in footstep with the
RPF’s version of events.
In my experience, and that of many other academics and journalists,
Rwandans themselves know that they cannot speak of anything more than the
violence they experienced or witnessed between April and July 1994. As Beatrice told me in 2017:
We used to speak of
the genocide and massacres as a way to respect all lives lost. Now we must
speak exclusively of the genocide against the Tutsi. How will Rwanda heal and
move forward if some of us cannot speak of our harms? Without frank
conversation, how can a middle ground be found? It can’t exist because the
government won’t allow it. Instead, those of us who question the official
narrative are considered [Hutu] extremists.
Ordinary Rwandans like Beatrice, who question the government’s genocide
narrative, are enemies of the state, guilty of wishing to honor and remember
the loss of their loved ones in violence that occurred before, in parallel to
or after the 1994 genocide. Whether wittingly or not, Melvern’s analysis
collapses Rwanda’s complex history of political violence—including in 1994—into
a few pithy sound bites based on Tutsi victims and Hutu perpetrators.
This is certainly not unique to post-genocide Rwanda. Political leaders
of all stripes regularly manipulate history for their own political ends. The
US has a long and storied tradition of declaring war based on public falsehoods
that are then rewritten to legitimate the leadership of the day. (President
Donald Trump’s deceitful and self-serving response to the ongoing COVID-19
pandemic is hardly unique.) A key difference is the role of investigative
journalists who actually seek to hold the US president and his cronies
accountable. When the American government seeks to politicize history, the
institutions of the state are equipped (although not always willing) to push
back, while academics and journalists stand ready to analyze and assess
government excesses. Such journalism is not allowed in Rwanda, for questioning
the RPF’s version is itself a form of genocide denial and punishable by law.
Melvern and others, such as Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of the
UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda in 1994, who willingly participate in the
government’s efforts to elevate the RPF’s political project as historical fact,
legitimate a revised history of state elites, of heroes and villains, of good
guys and bad ones. It is shameful that Linda Melvern’s Intent to
Deceive denies the experiences of so many Rwandans who have lived through
so much. We must be wary of writers who uncritically or, in Melvern’s case,
willingly accept the violence of the RPF as the price of peace. Rwandans from
all walks of life, of all ethnicities, deserve better from foreign
interlocuters.
