INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM Bea Gallimore

Genocide in Rwanda: Media, Memory and Denial

For the past 18 years, survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and their supporters have marked its anniversary with various public ceremonies, private observances, and rituals. These anniversary commemoration events dignify the dead and have brought some solace to the survivors. But with the passage of time, we also find it necessary to use this period of observance to seek answers to the questions about why the genocide happened and how we can prevent it from happening again in Rwanda or elsewhere. The first step on this journey to find answers, or at least explanations, is to systematically analyze the processes of memorialization, the history and narrative of the genocide in Rwanda, and the forces and actors who shape that narrative. In 2012, the University of Missouri added to its usual commemoration event a three-day academic symposium during which 13 scholars and practitioners from North America, Europe, and Africa examined themes around memory, media, and genocide denial. The participants described how the various modes of representation, testimony, and physical memorials are used for remembering and preserving history. They provided insight into how individuals prepared and perpetrated genocide and described the actions undertaken afterwards to deny that the genocide occurred. They also examined the attempts by institutions and governments to deny their hand in the genocide that would include having created the ideology of genocide, and their participation in or facilitation of the slaughter. The analysis addressed the role of the indifferent

bystander as well, including the continued silence by the Catholic Church regarding the Rwanda genocide, viewed by many as a form of genocide denial. By focusing on memory and denial, the symposium strove to be a force against forgetting -- to fight obliviona fate deemed worse than death. The symposium served not only to keep alive the memory of those who perished, but to keep them out of oblivion-- that darkest of places where the perpetrators would like to send them even after their death. When the military and militiamen killed the Tutsi in 1994, they also killed the cows of the victims and destroyed their houses, as if to erase all trace of them, all physical evidence of their existence. The perpetrators goal was physical extermination. The agents of denial currently aim to annihilate our memory of the victims -- to create a reality as if they had never lived, had never died, had never even existed. In minimizing and negating the Genocide of the Tutsi, deniers seek to wound and to destroy the psyche of survivors whose existence they would like to ignore despite the fact that their ideology of hate and the denial of their crimes reaffirm the presence of this targeted ethnic group. This symposiums purpose collectively refutes genocide denial and the ideology of extermination. The scholars and practitioners who presented their research and interventions provide empirical evidence and field experience demonstrating that the victims and survivors of genocide do matter, that they are valued, and that they are deserving of the dignity to which all human beings are entitled. This special issue of the International Journal of Conflict and Reconciliation presents the work of selected participants at the symposium. Their research focuses on the discourse of genocidethe historical narrative of how genocide ideology developed, how the ideology is being perpetuated, and the ongoing attempts to deny that the genocide occurred. In their analyses of genocide rhetoric, the contributors explore common themes such as the language of genocide

denial in the media, the inclusion of bias and stereotyping in the narrative of contemporary social discourse, and the appeal to the complexity of ethnic hatred and division in Rwandan society as a reason for not understanding the genocide. Their discussions demonstrate the need for even more research about the writing and re-writing of the history of genocide in Rwanda, including the history of genocide ideology. Selected Papers: A Synopsis Tim Horner examines the role of Catholic social teaching in the genocide. He does so by analyzing the relationship between the Catholic tradition of social justice and the development of Hutu Power ideology during in 1950s. Horner argues that this connection can be seen by comparing two papal encyclicals (Rerum Novarum (1896) and Qudragessimo Anno (1936)) with the most influential document to come out of The Hutu Power Movement: The Hutu Manifesto (1957). Horner traces the development of genocide ideology by analyzing The Hutu Manifesto in the light of the two extremely influential documents in the Catholic social justice tradition tracing an influence leading from the Catholic tradition to the Manifesto used by Hutu extremists for almost four decades, until 1994. Horner shows Horner shows how the Hutu power movement borrowed from Catholic social teaching to undergird, legitimize and empower itself. The Catholic influence leading up to the genocide started with Father Levensque, who arrived in Rwanda from Quebec to carry out another Quiet Revolution by fostering European socio-religious tensions of the 1950s in Rwandan soil. Catholic priests similar in orientation to Levensque brought the gospel with a focus on social justice issues in Rwanda. By the time of the Hutu movement, this body of teaching was already woven into the education and ethos of the Rwandan seminaries and clergy. The embodiment of that Catholic ethos was Gregoire

Kayibanda, the chief author of the Manifesto, who would become Rwandas first president. Kayibanda was trained in a Catholic seminary and was editor of Kinyamateka, a Catholic newspaper. However, Kayibandas sole concern was for social justice for what he deemed to be the oppressed Hutu. Those who espoused the ideals of Catholic social teachings did not oppose the introduction of identity cards in Rwanda that listed the ethnicity of each person. Nor did they challenge the European construct of race, implicitly carrying with it a judgment of hierarchy that sowed the seeds of division in Rwanda. Horner argues that race and class had become synonymous in Rwanda with the European influence of scientific racism and the Hamitic myth that gave it a religious veneer. When the Popes encyclical spoke of governments duty to help the working class in Rwanda this was seen as an unambiguous mandate to stand up for the masses, who were overwhelmingly Hutu. This concern is expressed in The Hutu Manifesto. Horner found that, Without knowing it, Pius XI provided a cipher through which Rwandas discontent could be interpreted within a religious framework. Quadragesimo Anno puts a divine spin on social justice. Horner points out that the encyclicals were contextualized by an historical reference to a feudal system in Rwanda, providing another example of how thoroughly colonists had reinterpreted Rwanda into European historical models. This faulty narrative was used to import the Western notion of land ownership into Rwanda as one of the central tenets of the Catholic social justice movement put into motion by Rerum Novarum. According to Horner, The Hutu Manifesto co-opted this vision from the social justice movement and applied it to Rwanda. The idea of private ownership was not simply an endorsement of a cultural shift, it was the divine order.

In the context of European politics during the time that Rerum Novarum was written, the Catholic Church saw atheistic socialism as enemy number one and its condemnation was firmly associated with the social justice movement. Because the Tutsi elite was closely associated with the colonial government, Tutsi ownership of land was thought to manifest socialism. The fear of socialism, which was so closely tied to atheism, was then imposed wholesale onto Rwandan society. Tutsis were accused of being communists and targeted for suppression in The Hutu Manifesto. In the context of the Belgian colonial legacy, the concept of distributive justice described in Rerum Novarum was interpreted as a mandate for a democratic, or Hutu dominated society serving the common good. This synthesis of distributive justice, the common good, and the right for private ownership of land came together in The Hutu Manifesto in very practical yet revolutionary ways. What The Hutu Manifesto was proposing was nothing less than a complete overhaul of Rwandas centuries old land use traditions. The Hutu Movement used this distorted narrative to create the image of a victimized majority who now had God on their side in the fight for political liberation. Horner concludes that the churchs quest for social justice in Rwanda caused it to fall in league with Hutu extremists who systematically distorted the teaching of the Church to maintain and increase their political power. The Churchs support for the Hamitic Hypothesis that united science and religion on the issue of race was not only a convenient interpretation of Catholic social teaching, but also a toxic mixture that allured Catholic bishops, priests, and nuns into complicity and in some cases active participants in the genocide. Dominique Payette analyzed the news reporting by three major daily newspapers in Quebec, Canada about the extradition of Rwandan genocide fugitive Leon Mugesera, who fought

a 15 year battle to stay in Canada where he had fled in 1993 to avoid prosecution in Rwanda. Mugesera is infamous for speeches and writings that were instrumental in popularizing genocide ideology and that made a public call to exterminate the Tutsi and send their corpses to Ethiopia via the rivers of Rwanda that are tributaries of the Nile. Mugeseras statements characterize the racist propaganda of the pre-genocide Hutu Power Movement and genocide ideology that were central to the symposium debate and that is reflected in many of the papers presented in this special issue. Payette reports about the negative portrayals, stereotypes, and prejudice against Africa, and Rwanda specifically, in the media narratives that she analyzed. The analysis of news reporting about Africa in the Qubec media points to what she calls an Afro-pessimism. The process of selection, framing and production of the informative narrative about Africa create a media-driven depiction that is significantly different from Africa's social and political reality. Among these prejudices was the reporting by the Quebec media that Rwandan courts were incapable of providing Mugesera with a fair trial and that he would be subjected to torture and inhumane conditions during detention. The use, or misuse, of language was another method of minimizing and negating the genocide in the news reporting analyzed by Payette. She found that journalists framed the story about Mugesera using the word deportation rather than extradition to accommodate the views of Canadians who wanted to deny that their country sheltered a genocide fugitive. The media used the word deportation, a highly symbolic choice that evokes images of the forced removal of Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust. The word is symbolic in Canadian history because of the deportation of the Acadians by the British Government between 1755 and 1762. The media focus on deportation masked the reason for Mugesera being in the news,

minimized the seriousness of the charges against him as an alleged genocide perpetrator, and simultaneously reinforced the narrative of genocide denial. Payette found that the Quebec media also invoked the supposed complexity of the genocide in Rwanda to avoid objective and accurate reporting about the legal issues surrounding Mugeseras extradition. The Canadian journalists argued that because of the complexity of the genocide, they could not choose one narrative over another nor call for Mugeseras extradition. Payette argues that in the discussion of the supposed complexity of the Rwandan genocide, what is being expressed here is precisely the rhetoric of denial. She criticizes the media for not living up to its claim of being an industry unique in its distance from dominant ideologies within society. Her research found that the Quebec media relied on simplistic event-driven news stories about what was already known in order to conform to and reinforce their readers' desires and expectations. This failure is particularly damning because the media claim to demystify ideologies through the production and dissemination of presumably objective and transparent information, within which the realities of society or the world are presented authentically, in their entirety. Payette concluded that the media succeeded in getting the public to believe that Mugesera would be imperiled should Canada return him to Rwanda to face trial. This may be a form of Canadians denying their governments responsibility for admitting Mugesera into the country to visit and then eventually reside. Payette found the ambiguous treatment by the Qubec press to represent an important victory for genocide deniers like Peter Erlinder and Paul Rusesabagina, both of whom spoke against the extradition of Mugesera. She believes that the coverage of the genocide in Rwanda is not only lazy, but is manipulated. More importantly, Payettes findings

demonstrate how prejudice and Western media bias assault the truth and memory thereby leading to genocide denial. In his article on Freedom of Expression, Media Manipulation, and Denial of Genocide in Rwanda, Tim Gallimore, the former spokesperson for the prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), discusses Rwandas laws prohibiting genocide denial and genocide ideology. His analysis explores the tension between freedom of expression as a human right in post-genocide Rwanda and the governments attempt to prevent genocide denial and the reoccurrence of attempts to exterminate the Tutsi. Facing the continuing threat of genocide, as manifested in the ideology and actions of those who continue to deny that genocide occurred in 1994, Rwanda promulgated laws prohibiting genocide ideology; denying, negating, minimizing, justifying or approving of genocide; and prohibiting discrimination and sectarianism. Gallimore outlines the campaign of genocide denial to manipulate Western human rights organizations and mass media that severely criticized Rwanda for adopting the laws against genocide denial and genocide ideology. The genocide deniers argued that the Rwandan laws violate freedom of speech and amount to media censorship and political suppression. Like Horner, Gallimore traces the development of genocide ideology in Rwanda, but he focuses on the role of political parties and the mass media in promoting the message of extermination. Gallimore argues that, the ideology of Hutu power can be seen as a backlash against the historical dominance of the Tutsi under colonial rule. Therefore, the first political party in Rwanda was one of exclusion, discrimination and divisionism. The post-colonial Rwandan State was always anti-Tutsi and an ideology of hate, exclusion and discrimination developed as sanction for violence against the minority Tutsi population. With the founding of

the political parties in the 1990s, that history of violence and impunity coalesced into the genocide ideology of extermination. Gallimore outlines the role of Leon Mugesera as a government propagandist linked to extremist Hutu leaders who used hate media, especially radio, to spread Hutu Power ideology and to incite the Rwandan public to kill. He also discusses the ongoing campaign by multiple groups and individuals worldwide to deny the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, including the defense attorneys at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). These lawyers are leading the campaign of denial despite the judicial notice issued by the Tribunal declaring that genocide against the Tutsi occurred in Rwanda in 1994. Gallimore analyzes the deniers techniques, including the argument that there was no conspiracy to commit genocide, charges that there was a double genocide, and blaming the victims for their fate. He concludes that deniers use these revisionists and trivialization strategies to rewrite the history of the Tutsi Genocide by offering alternative narratives about what happened in 1994 and who was responsible. Like Payette, Gallimore found that, the genocide denial campaign of the ICTR defense attorneys and others has also manipulated the Western mass media, philanthropic foundations, and policy advocacy organizations, and collectively serving as a venue for the deniers to continue spreading their propaganda and genocide ideology. He accuses the deniers of abusing the freedom of expression in Western countries and using human rights as a cloak for their denial campaign, while they simultaneously criticize the Rwandan laws aimed at preventing the reoccurrence of genocide. Gallimore criticizes what he sees as a double standard in the arena of international human rights, which have long accommodated Holocaust denial laws but have heavily criticized the similar Rwandan laws against genocide denial. He argues that Rwandas laws against genocide

denial fit within this international regime for protecting human rights, including the right of vulnerable minority populations to be free from threat, intimidation, and extermination. He also reports recent incidents in South Africa, Australia, Spain, and the United States where national laws against threatening speech have been upheld when challenged on freedom of expression grounds. Gallimore stresses that in light of the practice in numerous Western countries that have for so many years been prosecuting and punishing those who deny the Holocaust or threaten vulnerable populations, the double standard is even more obvious considering that these countries have constitutions that are the most protective of freedom of speech. Under the emerging responsibility to protect doctrine, expression that incites violence can be banned. Based on this doctrine, the Rwandan government is upholding its responsibility by outlawing and punishing genocide ideology, genocide denial, and genocide minimization under its domestic laws. Gallimore argues that these laws should be viewed as an important component of the responsibility to prevent reoccurrence of genocide and the responsibility to rebuild the society after the 1994 genocide within a context that supports human rights for all. Genocide Denial Law and Its Limitations Gallimore argues that genocide denial has serious consequences and the laws against genocide denial in Rwanda and in other countries should be seen as an important component of the responsibility to prevent reoccurrence of genocide. However, I would like to add that some forms of genocide denial are very subtle, hard to identify and therefore escape the laws reach. In Rwanda, such forms of denial are even more difficult to detect because they emanate from the politics of unity and reconciliation that have served as the main pillar of a peaceful post-genocide society.

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To understand the process by which these forms of denial are embedded in many of the perpetrators testimonies, it is important to understand the politics of unity and reconciliation in Rwanda. In March 1999, the government established the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission to mobilize Rwandans to reconcile and to reunify a society that had been torn apart by war and mass atrocities committed primarily by civilians. One Rwandan scholar of conflict resolution, Anastase Shyaka, states these challenges in the following rhetorical questions: Will it (National Unity and Reconciliation) be able to rebuild Rwandans wounded hearts and restore the unique identity which has been so far mislabeled? Will it, throughout its mission, succeed in reconciling and creating new positive relationships, which are mutually beneficial to Rwandans? (Shyaka 2005) To foster unity and reconciliation among the people of Rwanda, it was imperative that Rwanda deconstruct the subsequently constructed and manipulated identities under the bad governance characterized by division, discrimination, human rights abuse and acts of violence, in order to build a nation where everybody has a right to belong. The post- genocide Rwanda chose the pre-colonial homogenous identity in which Twa, Hutu and Tutsi were all Rwandans before they were divided into the so-called racial, ethnic and tribal groups. Despite the good will of the Rwandan government, putting this idealized homogenous identity into action was not, and is still not, an easy task. In the course of more than sixty years, the ethnic divisions imposed by colonial powers had become progressively a part of the Rwanda collective memory and crystallized even more so by the genocide in 1994. For Tutsi, the genocide became a shared final fate that sealed their cohesion, a state difficult to change for the sake of unity and reconciliation.

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It is also important to recognize that in the course of genocide, Hutu perpetrators killed their own humanity. In many testimonies given after the genocide, survivors referred to the perpetrators as beasts, or would simply use pronouns referring to animals by shifting from the human noun class to the animal noun class when describing the perpetrators. This unconscious grammatical strategy served as a defense mechanism to protect the survivors own humanity. In order to regain the humanity lost during the long dehumanization process before and during the genocide, survivors needed to distance themselves from the perpetrators. On the other hand, innocent Hutu in general had to endure the shame that has befallen their group. In his book of poetry and memoir, Icyaha kuri bo, Ikimwaro kuli jye, (A Sin to Them and Shame on Me), and the film based on it, titled The Long Coat, the artist and filmmaker Edouard Bamporiki talks about the shame of the Hutu, felt especially by the younger generation. In an interview with journalist Maggie Ziegler of Peace Magazine, Bamporiki talks about some Hutu who, out of shame, changed their identity when they migrated from the village to the city. He said, You knew him as a Hutu but in conversation between him and others, far from his family, he says, I am a survivor (Ziegler, 2013, p. 16). These are some of the challenges that the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission has had to face. On the issue of cohabitation between perpetrators and survivors, Rwandan President Paul Kagame told The New York Times journalist, Philip Gourevitch that "we'll never make the survivors happy. We'll never have full justice, but we can't simply punish the perpetrators indefinitely. We need them as part of the society, and we need to recycle them as members of society and make them good, where the previous leadership made them bad" (PBS News Hour, May 4, 2009).

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During the Ingando civic education camp sessions organized by the Unity and Reconciliation Commission, perpetrators learn that they are not intrinsically bad people but that bad leadership corrupted them and that these leaders masterminded the genocide; the perpetrators simply followed orders. These teachings somehow seem to alleviate their shame and guilt and help them to regain their humanity. Confessions also allow perpetrators to feel better about themselves. In reconciliation villages where survivors and perpetrators live side-by-side and work in the same cooperative under church leadership, they are told that they committed these heinous crimes because of an evil spirit. It is not surprising to hear the following statements in perpetrators testimonies: we were possessed by the devil, the devil made us do it and more. Others talk about bad leadership as the root cause of their crime. Despite peaceful cohabitation and the apparently truthful confessions, personal responsibility seems to be missing from their testimonies. This formula helps perpetrators regain their humanity because it allows them to deny the full responsibilities of their acts. The abstract concepts -- bad leadership or a remote force such as the devil, -- serve as what the French thinker Rene Girard calls a scapegoat, an evil against which the community can unite in order to put an end to a permanent threat of violence (Girard, 1989 and 1972). This concept is accepted in many traditional societies, including Rwanda. The real issue of denial resides in the narrative recounting the crimes committed. In June 2012, I attended the closing ceremony for the Gacaca courts, the system of community justice inspired by tradition and reestablished in 2001 in Rwanda, in which the audience was invited to hear a perpetrator and a survivor give their testimonies. A man, around the age of 40 stood up and recounted his crimes as follows. During the genocide, a group of militiamen came and told

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us to follow them so that they can show us how to get rich and we followed them. In the first house, I killed a woman and a child. In the next house, I stole the case of soda, and in the following house, I killed eight people and now I live peacefully in a reconciliation village with this woman standing with me whose arm I cut off. What struck me in this testimony was the impassible face of the perpetrator as he gave his account of the facts in chronological order, placing the crime of stealing in the same linear progression and with the same degree of gravity as homicides, without showing any emotion or even a grain of remorse. This was not a court testimony but a testimony showing the process of justice and reconciliation in the post-genocide society. It seemed that through this reconciliation process, the crime of genocide has become trivialized and subtly denied. I observed another compelling example of trivialization of the crime of genocide among a group of perpetrators living side-by-side with survivors in a village of peace and reconciliation near Nyamata. I was interpreting the perpetrators testimonies for a group of American students visiting Rwanda in June 2013. Most of the perpetrators recounted their genocide crimes and as usual, they rejected their personal responsibility for killing and blamed bad leadership and the devil. One of the perpetrators decided to tell of the tremendous achievement of the Church that seeks to put an end of the cycle of violence in Rwanda. He started his conversation by showing how the crime of the genocide went unpunished through the years. He said, in 1959, we killed Tutsi, we killed them also in 1962, 1963, 1964, 1973, 1990, but in 1994, it was a rinse. His metaphoric statement was followed by laughter in which the other perpetrators in the group joined. I paused, unable to put into words what the Rwandan speaker found amusing in the last statement. What stuck me was the fact that he did not appreciate the impact of his statement. The use of the metaphor gave intensity to the killing that he did in 1994, but the laughter that

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followed his statement diminished the seriousness of the whole testimony and abruptly pushed the audience out of the context of the genocide. On the other hand, survivors in the group were not amused. They grinned without a comment. For the survivor, reconciliation requires first the recognition of the crime of genocide by the perpetrator, an essential step to healing and closing a wound. A testimony without such recognition re-wounds and cripples the victim. These cases are subtle forms of denial and trivialization of genocide that can negatively affect both the survivor and the listener. Have the perpetrators gone through the motions so many times and reached the point where they no longer see the negative impact of their heinous crimes? Did being accepted by survivors as a part of their community put the perpetrators so much at ease that they can easily joke about their crimes? These are questions that demonstrate the challenge of balancing reconciliation with the need to prevent trivialization and denial of the genocide. Such subtle forms of denial can easily go undetected and unpunished by the law. That is why intensive education and critical scholarship need to supplement the law. I believe that this special issue will add to the needed enlightenment and to the goals of reconciliation, preserving memory through an accurate narrative, and preventing future genocides.

Bibliography Girard, R. (1972). Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Girard, R. (1989). The Scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. PBS News Hour. (May 4, 2009). Fifteen Years After The Genocide, Rwandans Struggle To Heal National Wounds. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/jan-june09/rwanda_0504.html.

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Shyaka, A. (2005) The Rwanda Conflict: Origin, Development, Exit Strategies. Kigali: National Commission for Unity and Reconciliation. Accessed April 15, 2012, http://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/4746/3833.pdf?sequence=1. Ziegler, M. (July-Sep. 2013). Breaking the Silence on the Rwanda Genocide: An Interview with Edouard Bamporiki. Accessed April 15, 2012, http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v29n3p16.htm.

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