In Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda, Tim Longman argues that the memory of the genocide has been instrumentalized by the long-ruling Rwandan Patriot Front or RPF.  By casting itself as the selfless liberator of the Tusti minority, the RPF has used the genocide to mask its own crimes, abuses of power, and political ambitions.  Showcasing the horrors of the genocide at commemorative sites helps the RPF to justify its own brand of authoritarian rule.  Suspicious and distrustful of both the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, the RPF’s top down approach to governance has failed to move the country beyond its deeply rooted ethnic divisions.  

When Tim attended a commemoration at a place called Murambi in 1996, two years after the genocide, he was shocked by what he witnessed.  Murambi was a school, still under construction at the time of the genocide.  Drawn to the site by false promises of shelter and protection, as many as 5,000 Tutsis were murdered at Murambi.  As director of the Human Rights Watch office in Rwanda, Tim was one of many dignitaries from around the globe to attend the commemoration.  What he witnessed were the remains of bodies, covered in lime to prevent their decomposition, carefully placed on display around the school.  Some rooms featured skulls, other rooms featured the bones of children, there was even the remains of a women with a stick placed between her legs to convey how women were also subjected to rape.  

What unsettled Tim was how the bodies at Murambi, in complete disregard for the wishes of the victims’ families or traditional Rwandan burial practices, were used to shock visitors with the violence of the genocide.  The bodies Tim witnessed were eventually buried in a mass memorial grave at the site but other bodies found in the region were brought to replace them.  Tim notes that the 1996 commemoration at Murambi was still an early stage in the politics of memory in Rwanda.  In the years since, this use of bodies at other genocide commemoration sites around the country has become a more standardized means of anchoring the memory of the horror of the genocide, the victimization of the Tutsi minority, the responsibility of the Hutu majority, the failure of the international community to react, and the savior role of the RPF in ending the genocide.  

Beyond the use of bodies to shock and horrify, commemorative sites distort the past by inflating the number of dead.  Whereas some 5,000 lives were lost at Murambi the number of dead has risen over time to as many as 50,000.  Perhaps the most blatant example of this inflation of the dead is the Kigali Genocide Memorial.  Site of an ultra modern, high tech museum devoted to the genocide, and an obligatory stop for international dignitaries, the Kigali Genocide Memorial also proclaims to be the final resting place for over 250,000 victims of the genocide.  But according to an official census in 1991 the entire population of Kigali was 234,000 and only a minority were Tutsi.  Moreover, much of the population fled the capital after the start of the genocide.  Tim concludes that while there may be 250,000 buried at the Kigali Memorial it is not at all clear who they are and who killed them. 

A crucial purpose of the genocide memorials and commemorations is to reinforce the centrality of the genocide to Rwandan history.  With memorials present in most communities, people are regularly reminded of the genocide.  Tutsi, particularly repatriés, are reminded of the peril that they face as a minority group, while Hutu are reminded of the atrocities for which they are responsible and that explain their need to remain silent and accept RPF rule.  The pointed refusal publicly to commemorate those killed by the RPF sends a message that these deaths, while perhaps unfortunate, are not socially meaningful.  The erasure of the physical traces of RPF massacres underlines the government’s rhetoric about the historical insignificance of deaths outside the genocide as accidental and non-systematic, and thus not worth remembering.  Timothy Longman, Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda. 

To fully grasp the particular dynamics of the memory work in Rwanda it is important to recognize the refugee roots of the RPF.  Most of the leaders of the RPF, including long-time ruler Paul Kagame, grew up in Tusti refugee communities outside of Rwanda. Thousands of Tutsis were driven into exile in the 1960s and 1970s in response to the ethnic violence and discriminatory policies of the Hutu led government that seized power in Rwanda in 1959. The RPF was created in Southern Uganda, home to Paul Kagame and many of the RPF elite.  It was in Uganda that Paul Kagame and Fred Rwigyema, founder of the RPF, joined a rebel movement in the 1980s, led by Yoweri Museveni, that successfully toppled the government of Uganda and put Museveni in power—where he still remains president.  Kagame became Museveni’s first head of security in Uganda.  It was the experience and confidence gained in Uganda that inspired the RPF’s efforts to invade Rwanda in 1990.  Following Rwigyema’s murder, under mysterious circumstances at the start of the conflict, Kagame became the head of RPF forces and led them to victory in 1994.  Rwigyema is now considered a national hero and is buried at the Hero’s Cemetery in Kigali.  

While the RPF casts its intervention in Rwandan as a selfless act aimed at ending the genocide and saving the Tutsi minority, Tim argues that the real motive was power.  Moreover, this act of military aggression lent greater credence to the genocidal rhetoric of the Rwandan regime and helped fuel the violence.  The tendency, especially in the West, to conflate the genocide in Rwanda with the Holocaust, ignores the fact the while some 500,000 died in the genocide the RPF killed 100,000 to 200,000 in its invasion of Rwanda and its later military intervention in Congo.  

Because the RFP was outside of Rwanda during the genocide, Tim believes that it lacks a real understanding of what actually happened.  He argues that the RPF regards both Tutsis and Hutus who remained in Rwanda with a considerable degree of distrust and suspicion.  Tutsis are held suspect because of doubts about what they may have done to survive the genocide.  Did they betray their own?  Did they prostitute themselves?  Hutus are regarded as a genocidal population who wholeheartedly embraced the rhetoric of hate and both willingly and actively participated in the slaughter of the Tutsi population.  Tim notes that this skewed perception of the Hutu majority ignores the fact that most Hutus didn’t participate in the genocide and those who did, did so for a variety of reasons, many of which had nothing to do with ethnic hatred.  

Convinced that Hutu hatred of Tutsis was driven by a false historical narrative, the RPF crafted a new narrative.  Tim notes that while this new narrative was less harmful, it also lacks historical veracity.   While the old narrative overstated the rigidity and significance of ethnic identities in Rwanda, the new narrative understates them as having little or no real grounding in Rwandan history.  Similarly, by casting the Hutu seizure of power in 1959 as the first genocide in Rwanda, the new narrative ignores legitimate Hutu grievances at being disenfranchised by the colonial regime and reduced to second class status.  The new narrative, in its quest to erase the significance of ethnic identities, fails to confront the reality of Tutsi collaboration with a colonial regime which gave them a privileged status while discriminating against Hutus.  Moreover, the new narrative casts all of Rwandan history as leading inexorably toward the genocide, ignoring long periods of peaceful relations between Hutus and Tutsis and how the genocide was really a desperate effort to bolster the declining popularity of a long ruling regime.  

Forgetting, Tim reminds us, is just as important as remembering in the construction of national narratives. Tim offers several examples of this in the Rwandan case.  The first is the home of Grégoire Kayibanda, first president of Rwanda.  Deposed in 1973, Kayibanda spent his remaining days in his house just outside of Kigali.  After the RPF seized power in 1994 the house was allowed to fall into disrepair as a reminder that Kayibanda’s Hutu nationalist and anti-Tutsi policies were anathema in the new Rwanda.  The second is Kibeho, where the RPF massacred 2,000 to 4,000 internally displaced people (IDP) in April 1995 in their efforts to close IDP camps around the country.  Although well-documented and witnessed by a number of outside observers, there is nothing at Kibeho to memorialize those massacred by the RPF.  However, there are memorials at the site devoted to the victims of the genocide who also died there.  Similarly, there has been no effort by the RPF to memorialize the thousands of Hutus who were killed when the RPF attacked remnants of the former Rwandan military mixed with innocent civilians at refugee camps along the Congo border with Rwanda.  While it is right to commemorate the genocide, Tim remarks that many Hutu feel that they have no right to commemorate Hutu lives lost to RPF violence.  

Beginning with the end of apartheid rule in South Africa the idea that transitional justice should entail some process of truth and reconciliation has gained greater support. In the Rwandan case there was much optimism that gacaca courts could facilitate the airing of past grievances in ways that would help the country move toward a more peaceful future. It was precisely because gacaca courts were based on a traditional form of local justice that they seemed to offer an ideal means of opening a constructive dialogue about the past. In the end, however, Tutsi victims were afraid to press changes in the absence of the protection of a family support system that no longer existed after the genocide. Moreover, few Hutu were willing to confess to crimes beyond property theft.  Although most convictions were based on property theft, those convicted were still labeled as participants in the genocide and excluded from jobs in local government.  Because gacaca courts ended up trying and convicting over one million Hutu men, they effectively labeled the majority of Hutu as perpetrators and Tutsi, by extension, as victims.  The frustration caused by this anchoring of the Hutu/Tutsi, perpetrator/victim divide was compounded by the fact that the RPF also banned the use of ethnic labels making it impossible to discuss the true complexity of what happened during the genocide.  

The United Nations did create an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in late 1994.  The ICTR was effective in bringing to justice many of the top leaders of the genocidal regime and preventing the formation of a rival government in absentia.  While the jurisdiction of the court included all crimes against humanity committed during the genocide, no charges were brought against the RPF.  When Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte considered doing so, the RPF was able to pressure the United Nations into forcing her dismissal.  Tim notes justice did come from the creation of the ICTR but it was partial justice at best.  

Tim adds that what transitional justice often ignores is what most victims really want.  Transitional justice is typically a top down process imposed by international or political elites without any real consultation with victimized populations.  In the case of Rwanda, what most people wanted were reparations to help rebuild their lives. With the loss of family support systems, and often property and possessions, the genocide impoverished Tutsis in Rwanda. Perhaps the greatest failure of the court system was a grossly insufficient response to the dire economic straits of Tutsis in post-genocide Rwanda.  

The RPF has been very effective in attracting international investment and using this money to bring about many positive changes in Rwanda.  Dramatic improvements in the health care and education systems have lowered child malnutrition and increased adult literacy.  Urban renewal programs have transformed the capital of Kigali into a city with paved streets, brick sidewalks, fountains, glass towers, shopping and entertainment districts.  Inspired by the Political Action Party which transformed Singapore from a third to first world nation, the RPF has high hopes that far sighted economic planning will lift all Rwandans causing economic divisions to fade over time.  

In practice, however, what we see is the same top down approach applied to economic planning and development.  In the absence of trust or confidence in the people, decisions are made from above with little or no consultation.  Most people just go along because they feel they have no choice or are afraid of the repercussions of not doing so.  Beneath the surface, Tim remarks, there is very real discontent.  Because of the high degree of securitization, Tim doesn’t believe that an outbreak of violence is likely in Rwanda, but he argues that many Rwandans are dissatisfied that their voices are not being heard.  There is a deepening conviction and resentment that most of the wealth created by the RPF is going to a small Tutsi elite with origins in the refugee community.