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Truth

Truth

Genocide Preparatory By the time of the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, media in

Genocide Preparatory

By the time of the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, media in the West often portrayed Rwanda as consisting of warring tribes. But this was not so. Hutu and Tutsi and the smaller Twa minority have lived in Rwanda for many centuries. Hutu were largely agricultural people, Tutsi were mainly cattle herders and the Twa, hunter-gatherers.

Fighting For Truth

Revisionism

As with all genocides, including the Holocaust, some people have attempted to deny the history of the genocide for their own ideological reasons. Such revisionist ideas reveal a hatred of the new unified Rwanda and seek to perpetuate ethnic stereotypes. Revisionists have used the media and academic institutions to promote views that have no basis in historical truth, and cause much hurt and anxiety to survivors of the killing.

In 2018, Rwanda enacted a law criminalizing the negationism (denial) and revisionism of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. This is similar to laws in six European countries against Holocaust denial. Some places where the genocide took place, like Nyamata Church, have signs outside them declaring that those who cannot accept the truth of the genocide should stay away.

Many of the leading planners, organisers, perpetrators and financiers are still living openly in Europe, North America and Africa. Some have used their freedom to set up organisations and websites that continue to spread genocidal views. It is important that the world continues to bring such people to account for their crimes in courts of law, however long this process may take.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was established in Arusha, Tanzania following the United Nations Security Council resolution N° 955 of 8 November 1994 to try suspects for the crime of genocide against the Tutsi. From its opening in 1995 until December 2015 (20 years), the Court indicted 93 people. It sentenced 62 of the accused and acquitted 14, referring ten to national jurisdictions (including Rwanda) for trial. Two indictees died before judgement, two indictments were withdrawn before trial, and three fugitives were referred to the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT).

The Mechanism was established by the UN Security Council on 22 December 2010 and carries out a number of functions of the former Tribunal.

The ICTR made important judgements in establishing rape as a crime of genocide, and sentencing those responsible for the ‘hate radio’ RTLM also for the crime of genocide and incitement to genocide.

A visitor to the Kigali Genocide Memorial views the permanent exhibition on the Genocide against the Tutsi. Situated beside mass graves in which 250,000 victims of the genocide are buried, the Memorial helps to counter denial and revisionism through education. Opened in 2004, it was established by the Aegis Trust in conjunction with Kigali City Council. Aegis continues to run the Memorial on behalf of Rwanda’s Ministry of National Unity and Civic Engagement (MINUBUMWE). Tens of thousands of people visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial each year, including government leaders from around the world.

Road block south of Kigali, 14 April 1994. Interahamwe (left) check the identity papers of these civilians fleeing the city. Obscured by oncoming refugees in the foreground, a woman and child have already been taken to the side of the road. Image © Bhasker Solanki

Spring 1994: Rwanda’s rivers were filled with bodies which polluted the lakes of neighbouring countries. More than 40,000 corpses washed up on the Ugandan shore of Lake Victoria, where they were buried. Image © Bhasker Solanki

A last refuge of hope: but even churches were no longer respected as places of prayer and sanctuary. Image © Bhasker Solanki

Most Rwandans were members of the Catholic Church or other Christian denominations. The spiritual and moral leadership of the clergy was important in conditioning the response of Christian people to the incitement to kill.

There were a small number of clergy who carried out heroic acts of goodness. However, the virtual absence of any denunciation from Christian leaders on the whole demonstrated tacit support for the genocide from the Christian Churches. The only religious community that refused to participate was the small Muslim community.

Teachers betrayed their own students and in some cases even murdered them. Doctors often refused to treat wounded Tutsi or dismissed them prematurely. Hospitals were known hunting grounds for the killers, who knew that injured escapees were likely to go there.

“The massacres are systematic in nature. Whole families are exterminated – grandparents, parents and children. No one escapes, not even newborn babies … the victims are pursued to their very last refuge and killed there.

U.N. Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, 25 May 1994