The PANAFRICAN Review
In October 2018 , President Kagame tried to reflect on the national psyche that was prevailing in the aftermath of the genocide , the soul searching it activated , and the practical choices that had to be made :
“ There was a huge puzzle after the genocide . How do you pursue justice when the crime is so great ? You can ’ t lose one million people in one hundred days without an equal number of perpetrators . But we also can ’ t imprison an entire nation . So forgiveness was the only path forward . Survivors were asked to forgive and forget . The death penalty was abolished . We focused our justice on the organizers of the genocide . Hundreds of thousands of perpetrators were rehabilitated and released back into their communities . These decisions were agonizing . I constantly questioned myself . But each time I decided that Rwanda ’ s future was more important than justice . It was a huge burden to place on the survivors . And perhaps the burden was too great . One day during a memorial service , I was approached by a survivor . He was very emotional . ‘ Why are you asking us to forgive ?’ he asked me . ‘ Haven ’ t we suffered enough ? We weren ’ t the cause of this problem . Why must we provide the solution ?’ These were very challenging questions . So I paused for a long time . Then I told him : ‘ I ’ m very sorry . You are correct . I am asking too much of you . But I don ’ t know what to ask the perpetrators . ‘ Sorry ’ won ’ t bring back any lives . Only forgiveness can heal this nation . The burden rests with the survivors because they are the only ones with something to give ,” Kagame told Brandon Stanton , the renowned Humans of New York blogger .
Because Rwanda ’ s future was more important than any other consideration , unity became the most significant pursuit in post genocide Rwanda : nothing was worth it , if it compromised unity . Even as Kagame would later say that post genocide society was built around three fundamental aspirations – unity , accountability , and thinking big – it was understood that the latter two were subordinate to the first non-negotiable and irreducible aspiration .
In other words , it was not just justice that was sacrificed for unity . Society was asked to sacrifice everything for unity . For instance , for much of the early post genocide period it seemed like the use of the terminology “ Rwandan genocide ” was fine because it signalled unity of Rwandans . However , this could only be acceptable on the basis that there was no ambiguity of distortion of who the victims of the genocide were .
In other words , it is an understating that is predicated on the goodwill and civility of global society . But as much as the authorities in Rwanda sought to build unity within Rwandan society , those opposing it understood that dismantling unity is the shortest path to achieving their goals . The first target was to bastardize the concept of “ Rwandan genocide ” by implying that it is an acceptance that a double genocide took place . They pushed this denialist conspiracy as a means of pulling the rag from under the unity project .
Moreover , they would use the double genocide conspiracy theory to build a moral equivalence of “ both sides ” killed whose aim was a backdoor re-entry into politics for genocidaires and Hutu Power proponents . If genocidaires were no worse , they too had the right and legitimacy to political participation and leadership , they would argue . Jean Kambanda , Prime Minister during genocide in 1994 and ICTR convict , appeared in BBC and ITV , both British media outlets , interviews from a prison in Mali where he is serving his conviction , urging the people in Rwanda to be patient that soon they will return to power in Kigali . It didn ’ t dawn on the BBC what it would mean if it gave its platform to a Nazi criminal to threaten the remaining Jews in Germany of the extremists ’ return to power . As if to prove that it was not an oversight , the BBC soon aired a documentary whose aim was to “ prove ” the double genocide theory .
Soon after , the ICTR Residual Mechanism ( MICT ) began releasing convicts for “ good behavior .” In December 2016 , the judge ruled that Ferdinand Nahimana had “ demonstrated some signs of rehabilitation ,” drawing outrage from survivors who perceived the pattern of behavior of the judges as a mockery of the pain of survivors and an affront to their hard earned justice . In short , a movement that had started on the fringe of society by convicts of the Arusha based ICTR initially disappeared only to gain resurgence in recent years .
The United States and the UK , symbols of global indifference
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