Webster University The Commemoration of Genocide against the Tutsi (Kwibuka 22) April 11th, 2016 Ambassador Jean Pierre KARABARANGA FIGHTING GENOCIDE IDEOLOGY (AND DENIAL) Professor Dr Jean Paul VAN MARISSING, Director of Leiden Campus, Dr Islam QASEM, Director of Academic Affairs, Professors and Students, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good evening! I would like first of all to thank you all here for your presence this night at this Kwibuka22 event. I want to thank Webster University management for giving us this opportunity to share with this community our history, our memory and our journey of rebuilding our nation. I can see that most of you are still young; therefore I would like to give you a short background to the Genocide against Tutsi of Rwanda in 1994 that we commemorate this year for the 22nd time. 1. Background: GENOCIDE AGAINST TUTSIS IN 1994 Back to 22 years ago, from the 7th April in 1994, Rwanda experienced a genocide in which more than one million Tutsis of Rwanda were murdered savagely and systematically exterminated in just 100 days, meaning 10,00 every day. Indeed, from April 7th, 1994 and during 100 days innocent lives were destroyed. The victims were targeted and killed for only one reason: being born Tutsis and… others because they opposed the killings or tried to hide the Tutsis. The victims were hunted down and killed with unprecedented excesses of cruelty and without any exception: babies, young boys and girls, teenagers and elders, disabled people, teachers, doctors, nurses, priests and pastors, Muslim sheikhs were killed without pity. Every Tutsi was a target. The victims were savagely tortured and assassinated in horrible conditions such as: collective rapes, rapes in presence of their children, profanation of women’s dead bodies, people burned alive, people beaten to death by traditional weapons like machetes, people thrown in ditches and/or buried alive, babies thrown alive in rivers etc. …. The massacres that occurred were systematic and particularly horrific. The victims were hunted down even in their final refuge - orphanages, hospitals, churches, bushes or wetlands. No one was spared. It was the darkest chapter in Rwandan and African history. It was the fastest, killing spree of the 20th C. These massacres were done and happened in a broad daylight: openly and publicly, while the international community did nothing to prevent it or to stop it. The very few who survived were and some are still deeply traumatized. A large number was left with physical and psychological wounds. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE? Often people ask how such horrible massacres can take place in such efficient horrible way. First, the only reason that made that to happen, at a so large scale and in a so short time, is because a huge number of people got involved in the killings (more than 1 million people – records from Gacaca Courts). The genocide happened because normal people and simple peasants, normal teachers and students, members of religious order, normal men and women, mayors, government officials (like me and many of you here) responded to calls made by a genocide regime and became killers. Foreigners did not do the killings. Killings were done mainly by neighbours, by (so called) friends, by people, with who they played football together, by people with who they shared every thing during their childhood, by their own leaders who had the responsibility to protect us. This is the reality. This is what happened. And then, people ask again how a huge number of people can get involved in such killings, in such terrible tragedy. The answer is simple, cruel and horrific. All this happened because it was well planned and was well prepared in a total impunity. It all started by putting in place a genocide ideology by a group of extremists leaders who were leading the country in the period preceding the genocide. In other words, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis may have shocked the world in its scale and atrocity, but it was not a sudden or unpredictable eruption of savage violence. And the role or the failure of the international community: In Rwanda the whole world has been warned at many occasion by many people, including NGOs, UN peacekeeping officers, such as Gen Romeo Dallaire and many others but nobody, nobody took it serious. Only the RPF fought alone, against the Genocide regime and defeated it and stopped the genocide. M. Hassan Kakar, explains it as follows: “For genocide to happen, there must be certain preconditions. Foremost among them is a national culture that does not place a high value on human life. A totalitarian society, with its assumed superior ideology, is also a precondition for genocide acts. In addition, members of the dominant society must perceive their potential victims as less than fully human: as "pagans," "savages," "uncouth barbarians," "unbelievers," "effete degenerates," "ritual outlaws," "racial inferiors," "class antagonists," "counterrevolutionaries," and so on. In themselves, these conditions are not enough for the perpetrators to commit genocide. To do that - that is, to commit genocide - the perpetrators need a strong, centralized authority and bureaucratic organization as well as pathological individuals and criminals. Also required is a campaign of vilification and dehumanization of the victims by the perpetrators, who are usually new states or new regimes attempting to impose conformity to a new ideology and its model of society”. 2. GENOCIDE DEFINITION To make my presentation clear, allow me, now to try to define this word: ”GENOCIDE”. After the Holocaust, which had been perpetrated by the NAZI of Germany and its allies prior to and during World War 2, in 1946, the first session of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that "affirmed" that genocide was a crime under international law. The CPPCG (The International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). Art 2 defines it as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". The specific intent to destroy a group is unique to genocide. A plan for genocide doesn’t need to be written out. An act of genocide may arise in a culture that considers members of another group less than human, where killing members of that group is not considered murder. This is the culture of impunity characteristic of genocide societies. 3. GENOCIDE IDEOLOGY: Understanding and Fighting Genocide Ideology The choice of this year’s theme for commemoration of the Rwanda Genocide is aptly titled: “Fighting Genocide ideology”. The theme gives us with an opportunity to reflect on the real or perceived causes of genocide. These perceived or real causes of genocide provide the foundation for the peddling of genocide ideology by extremists in our society. In Rwanda the genocide took place because a horrific genocide ideology was developed and taught in families, in schools, in public places, in the media (Kangura & RTLM) and for decades. Tutsi were entirely excluded from the political process, and discriminatory policies were put in place in all fields. Tutsi children were denied entry into secondary school on the basis of their ethnicity; quota systems shut their parents out of government jobs, including the military. The privileges of citizenship, and the protection of the state, were non-existent for the Tutsis years before genocide. In the final stage the media, both public and private, eagerly propagated the idea that Tutsi descent were enemies within - even less than human - and that to kill them was an act of patriotism, even a duty. In other words, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis may have shocked the world in its scale and atrocity, but it was not a sudden or unpredictable eruption of savage violence. What then is genocide ideology? There many complicated ways of defining an ideology, but I have chosen a simple one. An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. Taking from there we can say that, a genocide ideology is a collection of ideas with the “intent to systematically eliminate a cultural, ethnic, linguistic, national, racial or religious group”. Genocide as an ideology needs to be discussed and understood before it can be successfully fought. Dr. Obote Odora at the AU commemoration of the genocide in 2007: Genocide is an extermination or destruction of the other who has been part of a whole but is now being separated and targeted as an enemy (and man’s gut reaction to the enemy, as we have learnt through history, is to eliminate the enemy). So the genocide idea or ideology begins with the process of identification and stigmatization of the ‘other’ that is, labelling of the ‘other’ and eventually the separation of the ‘other’ from the rest of ‘us’. The process of separation begins when political leaders start to brand a section of their own population as the ‘other’, ‘these people’, ‘enemy of the State’, ‘enemy of the people’, ‘security risk’, ‘rebels sympathiser’, ‘accomplice’, ‘cockroaches’ ‘inyenzi’, or similar derogatory remarks. Cultural or racial branding like ‘atheist’, ‘communist’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Christian’ or ‘white’, ‘black’ or ‘Arab’ have also been known to have been used. The cumulative process of segregation of the ‘other’ is initiated by the political leadership and disseminated through various means including addressing the public at political rallies, teaching students at schools, universities and other institutions of learning and indoctrinating the general public including party militants through the radio and television broadcasts; and dissemination of disinformation and propaganda through print and electronic media. The ‘other’ is presented by ‘us’ as dangerous, unreliable, and, like a dangerous virus, must be destroyed. The separation of ‘us’ from the ‘other’ or ‘them’ is through racial or ethnic segregation, which may then result in internment, killings, or exile. The result of the separation of ‘us’ from the ‘other’ by the political leadership is the process through which Genocide Ideology evolves. It becomes easy, and even necessary for ‘us’ to massacre ‘them’ without any sense of guilt or remorse. This is what happened In Rwanda. The genocide against Tutsis that happened in 1994 was the last stage of genocide actions that started early in 1959 with the publication of the “10 commandments of Hutus” by a young group of an extremist wing led by Mr Kayibanda Gregoire, the 1st President of Rwanda and by the killings of more than 15,000 Tutsis. This continued in 1961, 1963, 1964, 1969, 1973 and 1990, 1992 and 1994. During this trial period (30 years) we noted that the organizers of killings, at different times, were awarded and promoted to higher position of responsibility by successive governments instead of punishing them. Meaning that impunity for killings of Tutsis prevailed. We noted also that the same people or some of their descendants were instrumental in the genocide in 1994. It’s why the same people or their descendants are today at the forefront of the denial of the genocide against the Tutsis or simply they are attempting to write a new false narrative of what happened and again the entire world is witnessing it passively. Again today impunity for actions of genocide denial prevails across the world. To address, at an early stage, the causes of genocide ideology, it is important to understand how the ‘ideology’ of genocide becomes part of the dominant discourse of a society where the ‘other’ is terrorized by the ‘us’ into silence. The hand of the State is never far from any genocide or mass killings. The State plays a major role, either as active participant or silent supporter, accomplice or collaborator. To commit the crime of Genocide, considering the scope and magnitude of mass murder that is required for it, also needs a monopoly of arms, of propaganda, of terror, of resources, of power. Only the State in modern history possesses such resources. To that extent, without the participation, complicity, collaboration or corroboration of the State, it is most unlikely that any group of individuals can commit the crime of genocide. In Rwanda, when the plane of the former President was shot down, the same evening the extremist killed the interim Prime Minister and other higher government officials who could assume the interim power of the country. Secondly, the put in place an interim new extremist government, excluding opposition parties and replaced all moderates military commanders and all moderates governors of Provinces and Mayors by extremists ones. Dr. Mahmood Mamdani persuasively argues: ‘that genocidal violence may not be understood as rational; yet, we need to understand it as thinkable. Rather than run away from it, we need to realize that it is the ‘popularity’ of the genocide that is its uniquely troubling aspect.” In Rwanda, more than 1,000,000 people were involved and convicted in Rwanda with different level / categories from (from 1 – 6). It is mass participation in genocide that makes Mamdani (When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University Press, 2001) reflect on the absurdity of the “popularity” of genocide, whether it is the Hutu/Tutsi (or others, the Hindu/Muslim tragedy) and further wonder whether genocide “can be explained as simply a State project.” This is a very real concern. The problem is that without the participation of the majority of the population as perpetrators, (the killing of Hutu by Hutu as when Hutu nationalists killed ‘moderate’ Hutu as RPF collaborators), it may not be possible for the State to “successfully” execute genocide. Without the role of the ordinary person in the commission of genocide, whether as a cog in the wheel of genocide, or as a passive participant, such a role must be recognized and addressed as well. Therefore, the direct or passive participation of the population is essential to the success of genocide and a major component of the State’s strategy. THE GENOCIDAL PROCESS Prevention of genocide requires a structural understanding of the genocidal process. Genocide has eight stages or operational processes. The first stages precede later stages, but continue to operate throughout the genocidal process. Each stage reinforces the others. A strategy to prevent genocide should attack each stage, each process. The eight stages of genocide are classification, symbolization, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, extermination, and denial. In 1996 Gregory STANTON the president of Genocide Watch, presented a briefing paper called "The 8 Stages of Genocide" at the US States Department. In it he suggested that genocide develops in following eight stages that are "predictable but not inexorable" Classification All cultures have categories to distinguish between “us” and “them,” between members of our group and others. We treat different categories of people differently. Racial and ethnic classifications may be defined by absurdly detailed laws: • the Nazi Nuremberg laws, • or apartheid racial classification laws in South Africa. • 10 Hutu commandments in Rwanda (non official) In Genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda In 1932, Belgian colonial power, separated people into three main groups, the Tutsi, the Hutu, and the Twa. The Tutsi’s were people who owned a lot of cattle, and the Hutu’s were everybody else. The Twa’s were small groups of hunters that lived in Rwanda. Symbolization There is of use symbols to name and signify our classifications. We name some people Hutu and others Tutsi, or Jewish Christian or Muslim. Sometimes physical characteristics - skin colour or nose shape - become symbols for classifications. After the process has reached later stages (dehumanization, organization, and polarization) genocidal governments in the preparation stage often require members of a targeted group to wear an identifying symbol or distinctive clothing - e.g. the yellow star. The Khmer Rouge forced people from the Eastern Zone to wear a bluechecked scarf, marking them for forced relocation and elimination. In Genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda The Hutu’s and Tutsi’s had a very small difference in appearance. The Hutu regime, however, made everybody wear cards, or I.D.’s that made it easier to tell who was who. Dehumanization Classification and symbolization are fundamental operations in all cultures. They become steps of genocide only when combined with dehumanization. Denial of the humanity of others is the step that permits killing with impunity. The universal human abhorrence of murder of members of one's own group is overcome by treating the victims as less than human. In incitements to genocide the target groups are called disgusting animal names - Nazi propaganda called Jews "rats" or "vermin";." The targeted group is often likened to a “disease”, “microbes”, “infections” or a “cancer” in the body politic. Bodies of genocide victims are often mutilated to express this denial of humanity. Such atrocities then become the justification for revenge killings, because they are evidence that the killers must be monsters, not human beings themselves. In Genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda Dehumanization Rwandan Hutu hate radio referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches”, as pests, as something less than human. Organization Genocide is always collective because it derives its impetus from group identification. It is always organized, often by states but also by militias and hate groups. Planning need not be elaborate: Methods of killing need not be complex: Tutsis in Rwanda died from machetes, the Government ordered and imported huge numbers in containers of machetes (documented in UN reports; The social organization of genocide varies by culture. It is always organized, whether by the Nazi SS or the Rwandan Interahamwe. Death squads may be trained for mass murder, as in Rwanda, and then force everyone to participate, spreading hysteria and overcoming individual resistance. In Genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda Organization. There was a lot of organization in the genocide. The Government had well staged plans on attacking the Tutsi’s. They also used a lot of propaganda to enforce their attacks and they had weapons that were ordered to be shipped in at certain times. Polarization Genocide proceeds in a downward cycle of killings until, like a whirlpool, it reaches the vortex of mass murder. Such massacres are aimed at polarization, the systematic elimination of moderates who would slow the cycle. The first to be killed in a genocide are moderates from the killing group who oppose the extremists: the Hutu Supreme Court Chief Justice and Prime Minister in Rwanda. Extremists target moderate leaders and their families. The centre cannot hold. The most extreme take over, polarizing the conflict until negotiated settlement is impossible. In Genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda Polarization The government used the plane crash with the president as a good excuse to blame the Tutsi’s. They wanted everyone to think that the Tutsi’s killed the Hutu President. Preparation Preparation for genocide includes identification. Lists of victims are drawn up. Houses are marked. Maps are made. Individuals are forced to carry ID cards identifying their ethnic or religious group. Identification greatly speeds the slaughter. In Rwanda, identity cards showed each person's ethnicity. In the genocide, Tutsi’s could then be easily pulled from cars at roadblocks and murdered. Hutu militiamen conducted crude mouth exams to test claims of Hutu identity. Preparation also includes expropriation of the property of the victims. It may include concentration: herding of the victims into ghettos, stadiums, or churches. In its most extreme form, it even includes construction of extermination camps, as in Nazi-ruled Europe, or conversion of existing buildings – temples and schools – into extermination centres in Cambodia. Transportation of the victims to these killing centres is then organized and bureaucratized. In Genocide against in Rwanda Preparation Organizations derived by Hutu’s militia planned all attacks on the Tutsi’s perfectly. They identified their victims with the I.D. cards that they had given out prior. Extermination The seventh step, the final solution, is extermination. It is considered extermination, rather than murder, because the victims are not considered human. They are vermin, rats or cockroaches. Targeted members of alien groups are killed, often including children. Because they are not considered persons, their bodies are mutilated, buried in mass graves or burnt like garbage. In Genocide against Tutsi’s in Rwanda: Extermination - The attack on the Tutsi’s had been all planned out and once the signal was given the genocide started. Millions of lives were lost over this one hundred day battle. Children were killed with the excuses that RPF’s commanders who were fighting the genocidal regime, had fled the country in 1959 when they were babies. Denial Every genocide is followed by denial. The mass graves are dug up and hidden. The historical records are burned, or closed to historians. Even during the genocide, those committing the crimes dismiss reports as propaganda. Afterwards such deniers are called “revisionists.” Others deny through more subtle means: • by characterizing the reports as “unconfirmed” or “alleged” because they do not come from officially approved sources; • by minimizing the number killed; • by quarrelling about whether the killing fits the legal definition of genocide (“definitionalism”); • by claiming that the deaths of the perpetrating group exceeded that of the victim group, or that the deaths were the result of ci vil war, not genocide. In fact, civil war and genocide are not mutually exclusive. Most genocides occur during wars. Today we are at this very stage. A lot of actions across the world are conducted in that objective. In Genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda: Everybody tried to deny the obvious fact that it was genocide. They used the excuse that it was a simple civil war in Rwanda. Even today 22 years later the same people still deny the genocide. Professor LINDA MELVEREN said in her remarks at Kwibuka22 in UK: “The promotion of denial of the genocide of the Tutsi comes from certain former defence lawyers from trials at the ICTR, from journalists and authors and academics in senior positions in European and US universities. The génocidaires, the fugitives and their supporters maintain a continuing and pernicious influence on opinion. This is what they claim: The genocide of the Tutsi is an invention of the victims to gain moral high ground. The death toll is an exaggeration by an order of magnitude. The ‘official story’, which was the basis of the prosecution case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is wrong. The killing was a ‘spontaneous uprising’ and there was no conspiracy to murder.” 4. PREVENTION OR FIGHT AGAINST GENOCIDE IDEOLOGY PREVENTION A full strategy for preventing genocide should include attack on each of genocide's operational processes. Classification may be attacked either through devaluation of the distinctive features used to classify (e.g. amalgamation of regional dialects and accents by exposure to mass media, standardized education, and promotion of a common language) or through use of transcendent categories, such as common nationality (NDUMUNYARWANDA POLICY) or no more mention of ethnicity in ID. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STAGE TO FOCUS ON IF WE WANT TO FIGHT THE GENOCIDE IDEOLOGY. WE HAVE TO CONCENTRATE ON THE BEGINNING. Symbolization can be attacked By legally forbidding use of hate symbols or ethnic classification words. In cultures that reject negative symbolization, resistance can be a powerful preventive tactic. In Denmark, the popular resistance to Nazi classification and symbolization was so strong that the Nazis did not even dare to impose the yellow star, and Danish “fishermen” smuggled ninety-five percent of Danish Jews to safety in Sweden. Dehumanization should be opposed openly whenever it shows its ugly face. Hate radio stations should be shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Direct incitements to genocide should be outlawed. Incitement to genocide is not protected speech. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished. Impunity breeds contempt for law, and emboldens genocidists, who can literally get away with murder. Organizations that commit acts of genocide should be banned, and membership in them made a crime. Freedom of association in a democratic society should not be misconstrued as protecting membership in criminal organizations. Similarly the Interahamwe and other genocidal hate groups should be outlawed, and their members arrested and tried for conspiracy to commit genocide (like the FDLR). The UN should impose arms embargoes on governments or militias that commit genocide. Polarization can be fought by providing financial and technical aid to the moderate centre. It may mean security protection for moderate leaders, or assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d'état by extremists should be immediately opposed by targeted international sanctions on their leaders. Preparation: Identification of victims considerably speeds genocide. When ID cards identify victims' ethnic or religious group, or when victims are forced to wear yellow stars, the killing is made efficient. As soon as such symbolic markers are imposed, a Genocide Watch should be declared and diplomatic pressure should demand their abolition and impose targeted sanctions on regime leaders. When death lists are drawn up, the international community should recognize that genocide is imminent, and mobilize for armed intervention. Those identified should be given asylum, and assistance in fleeing their persecutors. Extermination whether carried out by governments or by patterned mob violence, can only be stopped by force. Armed intervention must be rapid and overwhelming. An intervention force without robust rules of engagement, such as UNAMIR in Rwanda in April, 1994 or UNPROFOR in Bosnia, is worse than useless because it gives genocide victims false hope of security in churches or unsafe "safe areas", delaying their organization for self-defence. Denial, the final stage of genocide is best overcome by public trials and truth commissions, followed by years of education about the facts of the genocide, particularly for the children of the group or nation that committed the crime. Is this the case today? No, as I said, people around the world, are still active in denying the genocide in total impunity. Second, trials of genocide suspects are too slow and in some countries they are not even indicted. The black hole of forgetting is the negative force that results in future genocides. When Adolf Hitler was asked if his planned invasion of Poland was a violation of international law, he scoffed, "Who ever heard of the extermination of the Armenians?" Impunity - literally getting away with murder -- is the weakest link in the chains that restrain genocide. In Rwanda, Hutus were never arrested and brought to trial for massacres of Tutsis that began years before the April, 1994 genocide. The strongest antidote to genocide is justice. In conclusion, I want to say few things that we used in Rwanda after the genocide and allowed us to raise from the ashes of the genocide and progress from an almost failed state to a modern country. Rwanda today is ranked among the most fast growing economy globally and the most stable and secure country in Africa. To make that happen we made 3 main choices: • To stay together: uniting our people. No more discrimination. • To be accountable for our people and our selves • To think big: Being ambitious in making our country one the best in Africa Rwanda today is a success story showing that if right policies are in place, any society can overcome any tragic situation. If Rwanda did it, any other society can do it. Also I want to say that good knowledge of conditions that lead to genocide is important and can be used to fight genocide ideology. The history should be used to educate younger generation. The past must lay the foundation for a brighter future. That is the reason why every year, like here today, we have a commemoration event. We need to keep the memory alive if we have to fight future tragedies. I thank also the management and the Webster University for allowing us Rwandans at the Webster University to organize this event and we look forward to future cooperation in other fields. I MUCH FOR YOUR ATTENTION. BIBLIOGRAPHY * This article was originally written in 1996 and was presented as the first Working Paper (GS 01) of the Yale Program in Genocide Studies in 1998. Gregory H. Stanton is the James Farmer Professor of Human Rights, The University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia; President, Genocide Watch; Chairman, The International Campaign to End Genocide; Director, The Cambodian Genocide Project; Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars. https://umuvugizi.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/2662725/ Bytwerk, Randall L. (2001). Julius Streicher: Nazi Editor of the Notorious Anti-Semitic Newspaper, Der Stürmer.New York: Cooper Square Press. Guttenplan, D. D. (2001). The Holocaust on Trial. New York: W. W. Norton. Gaudreault-DesBiens, Jean-François (2000). “From Sisyphus’s Dilemma to Sisyphus’s Duty? A Meditation on the Regulation of Hate Propaganda in Relation to Hate Crimes and Genocide.” McGill Law Journal 46(121): 122. Schabas, William A. (2000). Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tsesis, Alexander (2002). Destructive Messages: How Hate Speech Paves the Way to Harmful Social Movements. New York: New York University Press.
© Copyright 2026 Paperzz