Genocide denial: Rwandans take the fight beyond borders

Next month, Rwandans will mark the 21st anniversary of the Genocide against the Tutsi, with week-long activities to be organised in memory of the over one million people who were brutally killed. According to the National Commission for the fight against the Genocide (CNLG), the proposed theme of the commemoration this year will be about fighting Genocide denial beyond the Rwandan borders, especially in countries far from Rwanda. It’s now 21 years since the Genocide but Rwanda still battles with after-effects and experts say that denial is the last phase of a genocide; after the physical extermination, comes the attempt to revise history and erase the memory of the victims. For the 1994 Genocide, most of its deniers are based in foreign countries, and they include scholars mostly with ties with the genocidal regime, some politicians, activists with malicious intent, and perpetrators of the Genocide, who have for two decades eluded capture. There are signs that genocide denial is on the rise, with incidences appearing in mainstream media, but according to Dr Andrew Wallis, a seasoned British freelance journalist and researcher, it’s difficult to quantify the extent of genocide denial. “What is clear is that a motley assortment of individuals are using past genocides to gain political credit – to re-imagine and remake history in order to get popular support in the present,” Wallis said. The Kwibuka Flame on its tour of the countryside last year. (File) In his interpretation of the motive behind Genocide denial, Wallis points out that it’s a tendency in today’s world that people will believe those who shout loudest, and with social media, that can often include the most poorly informed and more dangerously, those with a political agenda that underplays what they know to be false. Dr Martin Shaw, a sociologist of global politics, war and genocide, shares a similar view. Shaw believes denial is always about a particular genocide, and so denial varies according to the political conditions surrounding each genocide. “Genocide denial remains confined mainly to some exile circles and among Westerners to some marginal extreme left milieux (and not all leftists agree with denial, by any means),” said Shaw in an email to The New Times. He is currently a research professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) in Spain. Shaw added that denial is never perpetrated out of ignorance; to deny facts as obvious as the attempted extermination of a people, requires premeditation and persistence. “Some out rightly deny, others play the double genocide card, everyone killed, everyone died, let’s call it even,” he said. Countering denial The question today is not whether Genocide denial exists or not, but how to deal with it. Experts argue that one of the ways to counter genocide denial is to criminalise it. This implies that countries need to put in place laws against genocide denial. According to Wallis, “Many Western countries in particular already have laws against genocide denial or hate speech - the problem is to enforce them which is expensive and time consuming. Many of these views come in internet blogs and via social media and clearly this is a whole slightly ‘grey’ area when it comes to prosecution.” Wallis referred to ‘free speech’ excuse that is often used, where it seems okay to deny genocide but not okay to publish a cartoon. Lately, the BBC’s controversial documentary titled, ‘Rwanda, the untold story’ has been at the centre of debate as one of the latest cases of genocide denial making it through the main stream media under the guise of free speech. The Genocide Memorial torch has been used as a symbol of resilience and the Rwandan spirit of reconciliation in the post-Genocide society. (File) An independent commission put in place to probe the documentary last week released their report, recommending that the Government of Rwanda considers legal action against those involved. Wallis and Shaw are among those that have come out to criticise the documentary. In an earlier interview with The New Times, Wallis had said that the use of a whole range of new diffusion techniques makes such views more widespread and more dangerous. According to the Chairperson of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Unity, Human Rights and fight against Genocide, François Byabarumwanzi, one way of dealing with denial is continual sensitisation since the deniers seem to have an organised way of operating. “We still lack proper coordinated means to deal with genocide denial outside Rwanda but what needs to be done is engaging the Diaspora to fight the deniers in their countries of residence,” Byabarumwanzi said. CNLG has already moved to act against deniers and revisionists and according the commission’s executive secretary Jean de Dieu Mucyo, they are already in touch with Rwandan embassies overseas, while members of the Diaspora and friends of Rwanda have also played a key role in countering the deniers. He said what is needed is getting a systematic way all these efforts can be coordinated properly and also continue putting across the world genocide monuments as a way of educating those foreign nationals of what occurred in Rwanda. Using facts According to the chairperson of the Rwandan Diaspora in Belgium, Pulchérie Nyinawase, one of the strategies being used so far is countering deniers with facts. “We identify their forums and we counter them with facts. We openly engage and challenge them right before their audiences; this strategy works,” she said. Besides the controversial BBC documentary, revisionists who attempt to cover up facts against the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi describe it as a two-sided conflict as means of promoting the notion of double genocide. One of the damning scenarios of denial is the case of Vatican radio that broadcast an interview with Catholic NGO, Caritas Switzerland, on December 9, 2013. The case was brought to light recently by Dr Jean Damascene Bizimana, a scholar and a senator in the Rwandan Parliament. The interview asserted that the government of Rwanda pushes a one sided genocide narrative, criminalising those who disagree with this version. Caritas is a Vatican affiliated association with 146 chapters around the world, including Rwanda.In this interview, the very same organisation that claims to promote justice and restore dignity had reduced the Genocide against the Tutsi to government propaganda, Bizimana said. In an opinion published last year, Bizimana linked Caritas to the genocide with facts of the NGO’s involvement where he indicated that denying the Genocide against the Tutsi, is never a disinterested act- it is a tool to deny ones’ own responsibility. “Caritas, as an organisation, was an active supporter of the regime that planned and executed the genocide. Before the Genocide, $725,669 was diverted from foreign aid to purchase five hundred thousand machetes,” Bizimana wrote. He further pointed out that among these machetes, 816 were purchased by special order for Caritas Rwanda on August 5, 1993, from a local company in Kigali, Rwandex – Shillington. These machetes were distributed to different parishes of the Catholic Church in Rwanda. It was these machetes that were used to slaughter Tutsi priests including Joseph Niyomugabo, killed in his parish in Cyanika, according to reports. On the international level, it remains a challenge to deal with Genocide denial, even though there may be laws that punish it. Despite the complexities, experts argue that Rwanda will have to keep educating and informing the world of what happened twenty one years ago using all the available platforms especially on social media where the younger generations get information. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Genocide denial: Rwandans take the fight beyond borders