History

Key unit competence

Explain measures of preventing genocide from happening again in

Rwanda and elsewhere

Introduction

In 1994, a genocide was perpetrated against the Tutsi. Before,

during and after that genocide, its perpetrators set up ways of

denying it. Even the international community hesitated to consider

the massive killing of the Tutsi as genocide.

Three forms of the denial of genocide against the Tutsi have been

identified: literal genocide denial, interpretative and implicatory

genocide denial. Literal genocide denial consisted of refusal to

accept that Rwanda genocide had taken place. The interpretative

genocide denial aims at saying that in Rwanda there had been

a double genocide. The implicatory genocide denial supports the

opinion that the Rwanda Patriotic Army also participated in the

genocide.

Genocide denial and genocide ideology are unbearable. The

government of Rwanda set up different strategies to combat it

including law n°18/2008 of 23/07/2008 relating to the punishment of the crime of genocide ideology. At the international level, different

conferences were organised and the problem of genocide, its denial

and ideology were examined in order to search for ways of fighting

them.

Links to other subjects

Conflict transformation in General Studies and Communication

Skills

Main points to be covered in this unit

࿤ Forms and channels of genocide denial and ideology of genocide

denial

࿤ Ways of fighting against different forms and channels of genocide

denial and ideology

Forms and channels of Genocide Denial and Ideology

Activity 1

Define the following concepts: ideology, genocide ideology and

genocide denial. Present the results of your findings to the class.

Activity 2

Carry out research on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and

then discuss different ways used to deny this genocide. Present

the results of your discussion to the class.

Activity 3

Carry out research on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and

then explain the three forms of denial of that genocide. Present

the results of your findings to the class.

Activity 4

Carry out research on the 1994 genocide against Tutsi and

analyse how the banal denial was manifested in Rwanda and

abroad. Present the results of your study to the class.

Activity 5

Conduct a study on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and

demonstrate with examples how the literal genocide denial was

manifested in Rwanda and abroad. Present the results of your

study to the class.

Activity 6

Conduct a research on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi

and show how the interpretative form of genocide denial was

manifested in Rwanda and abroad. Present the results of your

study to the class.

Activity 7

Carry out research on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and

show how the implicatory form of genocide denial manifested

in Rwanda and abroad. Present the results of your findings to

the class.

Definition of Concepts

Definition of the terms “ideology”, “genocide ideology” and

“genocide denial”

Definition of the concept “ideology”

An ideology is an organised collection of ideas. The word ideology

was used in the late 18th century to define a “science of ideas”. 

An ideology is a comprehensive vision, or a set of ideas proposed by

the dominant class to all members of a society. The main purpose

behind an ideology is to introduce change in society through a

normative thought process. Ideologies tend to be abstract thoughts

applied to reality and, thus, make this concept unique to politics.

Ideologies are very common in the world of politics and have been

used; for example, to provide guidance and to persuade.

Definition of the concept “genocide ideology”

Genocide ideology is a collection of thoughts characterised

by conduct, speeches, documents and other acts aiming at

exterminating or inciting others to exterminate people basing on

ethnic group, origin, nationality, region, colour, physical appearance,

sex, language, religion or political opinion, committed in normal

periods or during war.

Definition of the term “genocide denial” in Rwanda

Genocide denial is an attempt to deny or minimise statements of

the scale and severity of an incidence of genocide for instance the

denial of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi and the holocaust.

Where there is near universal agreement that genocide occurred,

genocide denial is usually considered as a form of illegitimate

historical revisionism. However, in circumstances where the

generally accepted facts do not clearly support the occurrence of

genocide, the use of the term may be an argument by those who

argue that genocide occurred.

Some ways used to deny the 1994 genocide against Tutsi

࿤ The minimisation of genocide in any behaviour exhibited publicly

and intentionally in order to reduce the weight or consequences

of the genocide against Tutsi.

࿤ Minimising how the genocide was committed.

࿤ Altering the truth about the genocide against the Tutsi in order

to hide the truth from the people.

࿤ Asserting that there were two genocides in Rwanda: one

committed against the Tutsi and the other against Hutu or

saying there had been acts of mutual killing, etc. 

Forms of Genocide Denial and its manifestation
in Rwandan Ssociety and Abroad

In 1994, the Hutu extremists in Rwanda’s government then in

power, planned, organised for and guided through public institutions

genocide against the Tutsi and Hutu opposed to the genocide plan.

Simultaneously, they also organised how after committing it they

could deny it as it happens in all the cases of genocide. This is the

last stage (8th) in the process of genocide. To deny here means

to deny something that was collectively organised and involved

targeted, deliberate killings of specific groups of unarmed civilians

identified on the basis of origin, and usually targeting those with

suspect political loyalties and their relatives.

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi was committed according

to ‘home-made’ Rwandan plans already underway by as early as

1992 as it has been suggested by the historical and legal record,

of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and of numerous

studies. Since 1994, the genocide denial has taken three main

forms: Literal genocide denial, interpretative and implicatory

genocide denial. In the case of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi,

all these three forms of genocide denial are more or less linked to

one another.

Literal genocide denial involves negating the facts of genocide,

silencing talk of genocidal plans and killings. Literal denial becomes

harder to sustain once evidence emerges that genocide plans

were made and executed right across Rwanda. Following this,

interpretative genocide denial reframes or relabels, the events of

the genocide, viewing them as part and parcel of civil war, rather

than genocide. Subsequently, implicatory genocide denial becomes

prevalent, and involves explicit counter-accusations that genocide

was planned by those previously viewed as saving the victims. The

Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government is thus accused of

planning genocide, not only in Rwanda but also in eastern Congo,

now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A double genocide

thesis is part of both the interpretative and implicatory forms of

genocide denial. All the three forms of denial tend to reinforce two

parallel and mutually incompatible accounts of the 1994 genocide

against the Tutsi, of the past, and tend to further polarise political

and public opinion, reinforcing divisions over the past, present and

future direction of the country. 

Banal denial

This kind of denial is manifested through the films in which French

soldiers seen rescuing, Belgian or French missionaries refuse to do

so towards the thousands of Tutsi that were being killed. These

powerful film sequences convey one key quality of everyday denial

in the sense that rescuing the expatriates while abandoning the

Tutsi to their killers constitutes one of the very flagrant aspects of

the genocide denial.

Some researchers like Freud have demonstrated that some forms

of silence or fantasy serve to protect an individual’s ego from

deep-rooted fears and memories, including from memories of

trauma. Denial in this every day, individual sense signals the failure

to accept reality, but also has a certain logic since it makes escape

during a psychologically impossible situation possible. Some

interpersonal forms of denial thus appear normal psychological

responses to abnormal situations.

The soldier’s turning up the music is an example of banal denial;

his being under orders to save only non-Rwandans, and white

expatriates in particular, is something else; it is collective denial.

In a wider sense, the term ‘denial’ refers to something societywide, something organised. In collective forms of denial, like

genocide denial, individual, more banal responses through denial

may also be instrumentalised.

Another scholar, Cohen, focuses rather on how to analyse social and

collectively organised forms of denial, of which genocide denial is

a prime example. He suggests that when entire societies, including

governments, and social groups, move to ignore past atrocities, to

minimise the significance of human suffering, then this constitutes

collective denial, and can even involve official denial by the state.

Collective genocide denial has serious long-term consequences for

criminal justice which cannot be equated with more banal forms of

individual denial, analysed by Freud as coping mechanisms. Whilst

genocide denial has both individual and collective manifestations

even before the genocide became reality, denial of its true purpose

can be shown to be part and parcel of the logic of extremist Hutu

power political ideology, at least from 1990, and perhaps even

from the time of the first attacks on the Tutsi in 1959,with Belgian

assistance.

Through a set of historical spirals of conflicting claims about which

group is the original, real or ultimate victim, these three broad

forms of genocide denial can however be roughly equated with

three broad phases of recent Rwandan history.

Literal denial

Although literal denial was predominant in the early post-genocide

years in Rwanda, it has not yet disappeared. Literal denial involves

either the full intention to deceive or forms of self-deception that

result in disbelief, silence or claiming not to know.

Knowledge may be directly denied, sometimes even in the face of

clear evidence to the contrary. Silence, indifference and treating

evidence as if it does not merit serious consideration, are all

strategies of literal genocide denial.

Literal genocide denial was mainly confined to the private sphere

during the early post-genocide years. It still appears in some

research, in internet blogs, and among the lawyers of those accused

of genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Interpretative denial

Arguably, this becomes the dominant form of genocide

denial in post-genocide Rwanda. Interpretative genocide

denial involves re-categorising evidence that is established,

and goes beyond negating, ignoring or silencing talk of

genocide. Higher moral goals are often invoked in cases

of interpretative denial, such as: revolutionary struggle, 

ethnic purity, western civilisation’, or in the case of Rwanda,

legitimate self-defence and a striving for ethnic-based selfdetermination.

Interpretative genocide denial involves use of euphemisms, and the

relativising of atrocities by one’s own side as an understandable

response to the threat of the ‘other side.’ Like literal genocide

denial, interpretative genocide denial can form part of international

scholarly discourse, or be part of public popular opinion. In the

media, the most common expression of interpretative denial was

to present the genocide of Tutsi as simply part of a wider ‘civil war’

of all against all, rather than a targeted genocide.

Implicatory denial

This third form of genocide denial consists of retaliatory counteraccusations, and explicit justification for one’s position, through

anticipatory counter–accusation against the other party.

Implicatory genocide denial has been aimed at restoring a sense of

self-worth among those accused of genocide crimes. By claiming,

for example, that the Rwanda Patriotic Front really started the

genocide themselves, by shooting down the plane carrying the

presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on 6 April 1994, implicatory

genocide denial tries to prove that if genocide was committed, it

was not by those accused but by the ‘other side’ in a civil war.

The aim is also to exonerate all atrocities and lay the blame on

others. In implicatory denial, the other side is always guilty of lies,

propaganda, ideology, disinformation or prejudice, and thus of

triggering the genocide.

Those accusing the RPF in this way seek to exonerate themselves

from any responsibility for genocide themselves. Implicatory denial

has arisen mainly since 2003, and mainly through legal institutions

in France and Spain, and on internet sites of the political opposition

to the Rwanda Patriotic Front. In more details, each of these three

basic forms of genocide denial can be presented.

Literal denial 1994–1998

At first, silence was the most common form of literal genocide

denial. Silence remains salient well after the initial post-genocide

years, sometimes in a surprising crude fashion. At a conference organised at the Peace Palace in The Hague, on Peace and Stability

in the Great Lakes Region, silence of this kind was evident.

Up to the late 1994s, during scholarly conferences, in various

academic journals, in the media, and elsewhere, the events of April

to July 1994 were still called a civil war, ethnic massacres or other

terms that avoided use of the of the word “genocide”. Those who

termed it genocide were still in a minority at that time, and were

even claimed to be propagating a genocide myth.

Transitional government members mostly stuck to the literal denial

narrative of the April–July 1994 period. They even claimed to have

done nothing wrong, and that most of those killed were Hutu, killed

by the ‘ethnic’ enemy, the Rwanda Patriotic Army.

This literal genocide denial was in line with the ideology that

Hutu power ideologies represented the heroic little men against

a cunning enemy, the Tutsi, who it was claimed were determined

to slaughter every last Hutu man, woman and child. Killings

were presented as mostly spontaneous, to centuries of feudal

oppression by Tutsi overlords. Literal denial was evident during the

early years of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in the

accounts used by defence lawyers. Genocide was thus transformed

into something else—killings based on mutual and long-standing

ethnic hatred, or ancient rivalries of clans and castes. The fact that

genocide had been planned well in advance was denied, and so

it could be claimed that the killings were just killings, and not a

deliberate genocide of a minority, the Tutsi.

In 1997 one organisation, called Africa Direct, organised a

conference in London entitled ‘The Great Genocide Debate’.

The programme and presenters suggested that since there were

massacres on ‘all sides’ in Rwanda in 1994, this was a civil war

and not genocide. Aidan Campbell, in the now defunct Trotskyist

magazine, Living Marxism, claimed this too.

At the same time Luc de Temmerman, the Belgian defence lawyer

of some leading genocide suspects at the International Criminal

Tribunal for Rwanda, simply claimed: “…there was no genocide.

It was a situation of mass killings in a state of war, everyone was

killing their enemies”.

This civil war thesis was common in the media too, especially

in the early post-genocide years. The situation changed when the former minister Jean Kambanda set a historical precedent being

the first accused person to acknowledge and affirm his guilt for

the crime of genocide before an international criminal tribunal. He

therefore became the first political leader to take responsibility for

the deliberate planning of genocide, and for its implementation.

Although he much later appealed, this was a turning point and

marked an end to widespread individual literal denial among

perpetrators, who would now find it much harder to sustain

silence in the face of such a senior administrators’ admissions of

responsibility. As head of the provisional government, his guilty

plea departed from the prevalence of literal genocide denial among

the others appearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for

Rwanda at that time.

Through the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a

broadly-shared legal and academic consensus emerged that

genocide had indeed taken place in Rwanda, and was targeted

against the Tutsi population and those who supported them. The

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda proceedings, from each

region of the country, witness and expert testimony soon filtered

into academic research, and literal genocide denial started to be

challenged and gradually gave way to more subtle, interpretative

forms of genocide denial after 1998 or so. Since then, it was

obvious to most impartial observers, to most legal experts and to

emerging historians of the genocide period to conclude that what

happened in Rwanda in 1994 was the intent to destroy the Tutsi

as a people.

The historical evidence of genocide was thus overwhelming, and

the one-sided killings of April 6–July 1994 within Rwanda started

to be widely referred to as genocide.

In response, a gradual shift took place from literal to more

interpretative forms of genocide denial. These started with the

familiar argument that this was not one-sided genocide but twosided civil war, 

an argument later developed into the so-called double genocide thesis.

Interpretative denial 1998–2003

Civil war in Rwanda as elsewhere provides a convenient cover for

one-sided genocide to be planned and implemented. In the case

of Rwanda, the evidence is that the machinery of genocide was geared around targeted killings well before 6 April 1994, when

killings started, triggered by the shooting down of the president’s

plane.

Interpretative denial involves distancing, and sometimes even

victim-blaming, as in this statement to an African Rights

researcher: “It wasn’t genocide, but rather a civil war. The people

defended themselves. It was bad luck if you were Tutsi because it

meant certain death, and therefore you were eliminated”.

Several key elements of interpretative denial appear in this single

statement. First, the speaker regards genocide as simply part of

war and claims those who died were not targeted but were simply

unlucky.

The general effect of his words is to suggest that perpetrators were

not responsible for the outcome of the killings of the unfortunate

victims. Interpretative genocide denial can thus appear to

render victims responsible for their own deaths.

The statement shows how literal denial says it was not genocide.

For instance, Rene Lemarchand has claimed that the genocide

against the Tutsi was a retributive genocide, a punishment for past

atrocities committed by the Tutsi elsewhere. However, in that case,

he is viewing motivations for genocide as somehow genuine causes.

The double genocide thesis goes further than the civil war argument,

and moves from interpretative towards more implicatory forms

of genocide denial. The double genocide thesis is not supported

by empirical evidence about patterns of killings inside Rwanda

between April and July 1994. Verwimp’s study, for example,

confirms that killings in Rwanda during this period fitted with

the definition of genocide as an organised, systematic attempt to

eliminate a specific and targeted population.

Interpreting data in order to ‘prove’ the double genocide thesis is part

of interpretative genocide denial, therefore. And such accusations

of double genocide started even before the genocide began. In fact,

there is no doubt that genocide denial has been a political weapon

of perpetrators even before the genocide against the Tutsi took place

in 1994. Legal instruments alone are not enough to tackle genocide

denial, and yet such instruments also can be instrumentalised

in a highly polarised political climate when open criticism and

implicatory denial may, from some angles, look surprisingly similar. 

Some scholars suggest that marked social conflicts between classes

and castes were not invented by European colonisers, and were

already firmly embedded into Rwanda’s pre-colonial social fabric.

Implicatory denial: 2003 onwards

Implicatory denial explicitly accuses the other of being behind

the genocide all along and thus seeks to lay the blame on others

instead of those already accused of genocide. Implicatory denial

turns around the existing legal and political accusations of victims,

prosecutors and researchers, and suggests that those who claimed

to end the genocide and to support victims of genocide are in reality

perpetrators of genocide themselves.

The general message is that things are not always what they seem,

a message conveyed by theories that the Rwanda Patriotic Front

was involved in a conspiracy at the start of the genocide. At an

individual level, a perpetrator engaged in this kind of implicatory

denial claims the survivors associations only exist to persecute the

Hutu in general, and the prisoners in particular.

Implicatory denial thus involves accusing victims in some cases,

and the Rwanda Patriotic Front government in other cases, of being

the real perpetrators behind the scenes.

Ways of Fighting Against Different Forms and channels 

of Genocide Denial and Ideology

Activity 8

Conduct research on the 1994 genocide against Tutsi and

discuss different ways that have been proposed to fight against

the different forms and channels of genocide denial and ideology

at the African level. Present the results of your discussion to the

class.

Activity 9

Conduct research on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and

debate the different ways that had been proposed to fight

against the different forms and channels of genocide denial and

ideology at national level. Present the results of your findings

to the class.

At African level

Before speaking of the strategies or ways of fighting against the

different forms and channels of genocide denial and ideology, it is

essential to reflect on the real or perceived causes of genocide. In

fact, the perceived or real causes of genocide provide the foundation

for the peddling of genocide ideology by extremists in our society.

What then is genocide ideology? Whether genocide is an actual

ideology or not is debatable but it is certainly a developing stream

of ideas rooted in fear and thirst for power usually in the context

of a history where the people are of different origin. 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 spontaneous reaction to the enemy, as we have learnt

through history, is to eliminate the enemy).

So the genocide ideology begins with the process of identification

and stigmatisation of the ‘other’ that is, labelling of the ‘other’

and eventually the separation of the ‘other’ from the rest of ‘us’.

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, lynching,

proscription or exile. 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’, ‘rebel 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 result of the

separation of ‘us’ from the ‘other’ by the political leadership is the

process through which genocide ideology evolves.

These examples of the early warning signals at the formative

stages of genocide ideology are not exhaustive. Extremists are very

resourceful people and are constantly inventing new ways and

vocabularies for identifying, stigmatising and dehumanising the

‘other’. Once the ‘other’ is sufficiently stigmatised and dehumanised,

it becomes easy, and even necessary for ‘us’ to massacre ‘them’

without any sense of guilt or remorse. Every African will recognise

some or all of these processes either in their own national histories

or elsewhere.

Yet, it is not possible to construct the ‘other’ before establishing the

identity of the ‘us’. The political leadership ensures that the public

understands that the ‘us’ is more superior, intelligent and deserving

of a better life, with higher dignity and respect than the useless and

backward ‘others’. How can the law then deal with such situations

and discourage or prevent the use of political demagoguery?

It is important to understand how the ‘ideology’ of genocide becomes

part of the dominant discourse of a society where the ‘other’ is

terrorised 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

and 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.

Crimes of genocide have, in the past, been committed when the

state refuses, declines or fails to meet its responsibility under both

national and international law.

The first duty of the state is to protect its entire citizenry without

discrimination. Genocide or mass killing is either a failure of

the state in the sense of an omission to protect or it is an act of the state as in commission of genocide and other crimes

against humanity. However, as demonstrated at the International

Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, the participating citizenry

is not entirely blameless either. The active participation of the

Interahamwe (comprised not of drunken ill-disciplined men but

of highly politicised, well-trained, armed youth responsive to the

interim government’s demands) in the Rwanda genocide is well

documented.

The challenge of the law must be the establishment, through

active parliamentary law or judicial law making, of laws and

decisions that address the complex circumstances that permit

ordinary people to turn against each other in mass killing sprees,

and to identify mechanisms for acting on early warning signals

to emerging discrimination and discriminatory practices of the

state and its functionaries as well as the people themselves. Good

governance demands that states’ have a ‘Best Practice’ standard

operating procedure to which all member states of the African

Union must comply with the possibility of effective sanctions for

noncompliance.

After the Second World War the international community

recognised the dangers of these practices and adopted laws to

prevent the development of a genocide ideology. However, after

Europe’s pogroms, genocides and holocausts against each other

and against the people they had colonised, they adopted the 1948

Genocide Convention but not much appeared to have changed as

is demonstrated by mass killings in the former Yugoslavia.

For Africa, if the experiences of Rwanda, Darfur, Liberia, Sierra

Leone, Democratic Republic of the Congo or Somalia are anything

to go by, then Africa has a long way to go notwithstanding that the

law has a definition for genocide.

Africans must also sit down and agree to stop killing one other. At

the street level, the discourse on the subject by ordinary citizens

is at a different level. It is wrapped in the grasp of ‘victimhood’,

packaged by the finery of racial, ethnic, religious and geographical

trimmings. It is propelled by talk of ‘marginalisation’, ‘ethnic, racial

or religious discrimination’, of ‘lack of equal access to the national

cake’. It speaks the language of power and counter-force, through

legal as well as undemocratic and unlawful means. It is this arena

of discourse that the state must seriously address. 

What politicians say to the people, what professional and civil

society leaders interpret from the actions of political leaders, what

idioms and sound-bytes the media exploits and what language

religious and cultural leaders utilise in sensitising people about

the dangers of targeting and segregation of the ‘other’ should be

the stuff of concern to African leaders – both political and civic.

The lessons of Rwanda relate to ensuring that all Africans do not

have to undergo pogroms in order to emerge from the fire of sociopolitical change.

Besides, countries have to adopt the good governance and anticorruption principles. What socio-legal, political and cultural

mechanisms should also be adopted to further promote unity a life

that is, at the very least, in consonance with human dignity.

Ethnicity will not disappear anytime soon in Africa given our racist

colonial history, and the selective rewarding of a few against the

interests of the majority.

There is an on-going challenge with privatisation, globalisation,

and death of socialism and shunning of socialist ideals, the

marginalisation of egalitarian ideas rooted in social worth and

equity and the rejection of most African customs, values and family

structures. These factors have exacerbated or halted prompt and

effective response to genocide ideology.

These differences, including focusing on individual rather than

group rights, have been taken to an extreme length, resulting in

breeding segregationist ideals leading to power struggles, coups,

election rigging and denial of political space to the ‘other’ as the

‘us’ continues to monopolise state power and the means of inflicting

violence on the ‘other’.

Continued control of state power using all means necessary

often results in an acute politicisation of ethnicity and the rise of

repression on the one hand and resistance on the other. The signs

are always there for the keen observer to notice. When political

and military leaders begin to address a section of society as

cockroaches, pigs, criminals, backward elements, and biological

substance, it is important that these utterances are taken seriously

as warning signs suggesting that part of the population is being

classified as the ‘other’. 

These express classifications are a prelude to genocide, signifying

that genocide is being gradually implanted in the minds of the

unsuspecting population. Left to continue unabated, unchallenged

and unrestrained, this behaviour will snowball into a fully-fledged

genocide ideology.

In view of the human rights jurisprudence read together with the

jurisprudence developed at the International Criminal Tribunal for

Rwanda, International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia and

Special Court for Sierra Leone, the courts should take greater

liberty in interpretation of social policies, read into legislation the

requirement for social justice and re-interpret law in consonance

with social equity and fair distribution of natural and other resources

in order to counter the development of genocidal ideologies.

Efficient nation building and the treatment of citizens on an equal,

fair and non discriminatory basis, the essence of good governance,

is a positive counter mechanism to the rise of segregationist ideas.

All ethnic groups in a state should in theory and practice feel

represented in government and other state institutions. Loyalty

must be to the state and not to particular ethnic groups or only

to governments of the day simply because the leadership of that

government is military. Leaders must therefore treat their citizens

in a manner that they themselves would wish to be treated after

they have left office.

Abuse of judicial process by prosecuting the ‘other’, or opposition

leaders or former heads of state without sufficient evidence or

reasonable cause undermine efforts to fight genocide ideology.

Governments have to make efforts to eradicate such bad practice.

It is also important and necessary to domesticate decisions and

judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In

fact, knowledge of conditions that lead to genocide is helpful

and can be used to fight genocide ideology. It is our collective

responsibility to ensure that at the national level, the jurisprudence

of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is understood and

used as one of the tools for effectively fighting genocide ideology.

African governments must recognise the state’s internal propensity

for abuse of the monopoly of power and its use against the people.

To counter this inherent difficulty, it is suggested that constitutions

of different countries and their laws establish adequate and selfmanaging monitoring and checking mechanisms that act as an 

early warning system to the rise of a genocidal ideology or any

other tendency that can lead to crimes against humanity. Such

a system, with the assistance and support of the African Union

for example, should incorporate within it independent institutions

through which the citizens can intervene to raise the alarm against

segregation and targeting of a section of the population as the

‘other’.

The African judiciary must be equipped with additional powers

to interpret and restrain actual or potential mischief brewing in

the society. African states would benefit by creating propaganda

mechanism aimed at warning the people that state functionaries

can also become monsters.

Such self-governing mechanisms arouse citizen consciousness

to remain vigilant against the self as well as against others who

profit from death and destruction. Domesticating international

jurisprudence taken from African situations like Rwanda, Sudan,

Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone, to name but

a few, and establishing national and regional policies, with laws

against hate speech, anti-discriminatory behaviour, for equitable

measures in resource allocations, checking of abuse of power,

controlling ethnic, religious or other segregationist mass social

arrangements is perhaps one of the best ways of telling ourselves

“Never again”.

At national level

The law related to the punishment of the crime of genocide ideology

has to be applied not only to punish but also to discourage all

the persons in Rwanda found guilty with the crime of genocide

ideology.

Apart from punishing, a campaign of sensitisation has to be led

to educate the Rwandans about the evils of the genocide ideology

and denial and the negative impact on the policy of the unity and

reconciliation, the pillar of the development of the country.

Rwandan and foreign scholars have also to write to combat

genocide ideology and denial spread in different written documents

like the media of different types, books, and internet. 

The decent conservation of existent genocide memorials of the

genocide against the Tutsi and the construction of others will

constitute a permanent evidence to challenge the revisionists of

the genocide against Tutsi.

Recognising the massive killing of the Tutsi as genocide was not

easy. Main perpetrators of the genocide planned before hand how

to deny that they had prepared for a genocide against the Tutsi.

Three forms of genocide denial had been used in most cases.

The first form, the literal genocide denial involved negating the facts

of genocide, silencing talk of genocidal plans and killings. Literal

denial has been combated by showing evidence which proved that

genocide had been planned and was executed right across Rwanda.

The second form, interpretative genocide denial viewed the

events of the genocide as a civil war, rather than genocide,

whereas the implicatory genocide denial advanced the idea that

the genocide was planned by those previously seen as saving the

victims. Therefore, the Rwanda Patriotic Front government was

accused of having planned the genocide, not only in Rwanda but

also in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The thesis of a

double genocide was also part of the interpretative and implicatory

forms of genocide denial.

All these forms of the genocide denial were fought and the

international community finally accepted that in Rwanda a genocide

had been committed against the Tutsi in 1994. Testimonies given

and confessions made by the prisoners at the International Criminal

Tribunal for Rwanda at Arusha played a great role in this struggle

against genocide denial.

However, even if the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has been

recognised as such, there are still many people who still deny

it. Different ways of fighting genocide denial and ideology have

been proposed at the African and national levels. These include

the respect of international conventions, adoption of the good

governance and anti-corruption principles and establishment of

related institutions, and the punishment of the crime of genocide

ideology.

Glossary

Banal: repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse

Discourse: extended verbal expression in speech or writing

Fantasy: fiction with a large amount of imagination in it

Inconsonance: a state which is characterised by the absence

of harmony

Indoctrinating: teach doctrines (a belief or system of beliefs)

accepted as authoritative by some group or

school; teach uncritically

Internment: the act of confining someone in a prison (or as

if in a prison)

Labelling: assign a label to; designate with a label (mark)

Lynching: putting a person to death by mob action

without due process of law

Plea: (law) a defendant’s answer by a factual matter

Pogrom: organised persecution of an ethnic group

(especially Jews)

Spree: a brief indulgence of your impulses, a period of

activity, especially a criminal activity

Trigger: put in motion or move to act

Revision questions

1. Define the following terms: genocide denial, genocide ideology

2. Describe different forms of genocide denial that have been

manifested in Rwanda and outside the country.

3. What are the strategies adopted by the government of Rwanda

to fight the genocide denial and ideology.

4. Find out, what the African community has already done to

prevent genocide denial and ideology from spreading.