Let us now turn to other sentences of the 16 which six NGOs, acting as plaintiffs, have chosen in Paris to attack Charles Onana and his editor Damien Serieyx as genocide deniers.
The other trial articles of this series can be found here
Four sentences chosen by the plaintiffs from Onana’s book Rwanda, la vérité sur l'opération Turquoise to denounce him as a genocide denier all underline that all Rwandan ethnic groups were killed, not just Tutsis: “It must be said that the rebels took advantage of the wave of emotion due to the reality of the massacres of Tutsis, Twas and Hutus."[i] (p 494) ; "Certainly the Tutsis were massacred, targeted, but they are not the only ones." (p 567) ; “In Rwanda, Tutsis, Hutus and Twas were savagely massacred” (p.621) ; "Attitudes which consist in designating, under the pressure of common sense or official discourse, the presumed perpetrators and victims of the "genocide" and which exclude, under the same conditions, other presumed perpetrators or victims of crimes against humanity in Rwanda are either part of a purely discriminatory approach.” [ii] (p 79)
Before addressing the meaning of these sentences within their respective chapters in a subsequent article, we will focus on the fact that writing that all ethnic groups suffered and succumbed during the Rwandan tragedy is seen in this trial by the plaintiffs as a form of genocide denial.
However even Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a tweet commemorating this year’s anniversary of the Rwandan genocide recalled all the victims of the tragedy,Hutus, Tutsis and Twa.
Survivors Uncensored as Ijoro ribara uwariraye
The 2017 French genocide denial press law is causing a huge disservice to Rwandan reconciliation by reinforcing the division of what Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, called worthy and unworthy victims. This key component of war propaganda was extremely efficient on the part of the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
“Worthy victims are an effective tool to demonize the aggressor. They are used to obliterate nuance and ambiguity”, writes journalist and author Chris Hedges on other contemporary imperialist wars. A recent 2022 book Survivors Uncensored, which contains a collection of 106 Rwandan testimonies produced by the Rwandan platform Ribara Uwariraye, wants to put an end to this apartheid of victims in today’s Rwanda.
They write in the introduction: “ Today, a simplified version of the genocide’s history has been spread around the world and is widely embraced as the official narrative.(…) The RPF crafted a narrative that is too simplistic, and exonerates them of all involvement in the atrocities before, during and after the genocide. It erases experiences of millions of people who suffered in Rwanda and the surrounding region. There is a Kinyarwanda saying that goes “ Ijoro ribara uwariraye” meaning “the person who lived the experience can best recount and describe it.”
Survivors Uncensored testimonies all deplore the Kagame regime’s weaponization of the genocide to silence dissidence. They ask the crucial question: “ Do we have the right to tell survivors to change their stories so that they can fit into the official narrative?”
I was hence surprised at the Onana trial to hear the Paris prosecutor say that all the testimonies admitted there was a Tutsi genocide, but said the situation was complex and warrants further questioning. This for the Prosecutor amounted to genocide denial. An embarrassing statement as it mimics “a specific aspect of Rwanda’s oppressive political climate: the use of criminal prosecutions under the country’s genocide denial laws to restrict free expression.“[iii]
The 2017 genocide denial law in France would automatically condemn these 106 Rwandans as genocide deniers. The list of these alleged genocide deniers in becoming ridiculously long. Despite the 25-year prison sentence one risks in Rwanda, these people have all decided to break the oppressive silence which hinders reconciliation in today’s Rwanda.
Many testimonies from Survivors Uncensored place the 1 October 1990 war as a watershed moment in the country’s history: the moment peace disappeared, the moment people began seeing each other through ethnic identities, the moment insecurity was felt in the country or the moment the internal refugee problem began. “Life was never the same since that day (…) in the years to come Kigali would be littered with refugees from the north of Rwanda fleeing the war and atrocities committed by the RPF”, writes Claude Gatebuke.[iv]
Associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto and geopolitical analyst Justin Podur in his brilliant 2021 book America's Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo underscores that the war was central in Rwandans understanding of what changed on the ground after 1990. He writes: “The genocide was a part of the dynamic of the civil war and would not have happened without the RPF’s invasions. Even though pro-Kagame writers treat the war and genocide as separate, unconnected events, researcher Lee Ann Fujii found that Rwandans did not see it that way: “The most common word that people used to refer to the period of 1990-94 is intambara, which means ‘war.’ People seemed to use this word most often despite there being multiple ways to refer to ‘genocide’ in Kinyarwanda, indicating perhaps a shared understanding of how closely linked the two forms of violence were.” [v]
Until 2003 people in Rwanda referred to the country’s recent tragedy as intambara, namely war. The term genocide ideology was introduced in Rwanda for the first time in 2003 targeting the main opposition party MDR (Mouvement Démocratique République) and its leader Faustin Twagiramungu. After the party was banned Twagiramungu ran as an independent candidate, quickly leaving after the elections, afraid of being arrested.
Yet this international war of aggression is totally omitted from the conventional narrative on Rwanda. Furthermore the plaintiffs in this trial call Onana a genocide denier just for stating that the illegitimate RPF regime change[vi] needs to be given attention when reconstructing historical events, as the war it brought to the country was one of the main driving forces of the genocide, as well as the internal Rwandan refugee crisis in 1990-94 and the over two million which fled Rwanda in 1994, of which 1.5 million in Zaire (today’s DR of Congo) .
The nuance and ambiguity ignored at this trial, which ends up imposing an apartheid of Rwandan victims, was mindboggling as there was no attempt to address the historical facts raised by the book under attack and corroborated by Onana’s 18 witnesses during the proceedings: the larger geopolitical implications of the war ( we heard at trial from Congolese lawyer and former President of the lawyers' association of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Hamuli Rety, how testimonial evidence pointing to this larger geopolitical implication was blocked from coming to testify at Arusha, and the Prosecution even wanted to apply judicial notice to the characterization of the war as a non-international war); the meticulous preparation for the international war of aggression on the part of the RPF despite the Arusha peace accords (even Force Commander from 1993-1994 for the U.N. peacekeeping mission UNAMIR Roméo Dallaire testified that the Ugandan city of Mbarara had weapon caches, which should have been checked for securing the Ugandan Rwandan border, yet he received an order from the United Nations Department of Peace Operations “to leave Mbarara alone[vii]”) ; the RPF terrorist attacks carried out after 1990 to destabilize Rwanda ; the RPF 1 October 1990 war of aggression, which is a crime against humanity, yet was not denounced at the United Nations at the time; the numerous crimes against humanity perpetuated by the RPF since the 1990 invasion.
Survivors Uncensored reveals countless atrocities against civilians, including women and children, committed by the RPF since 1990 and after taking power in July 1994. For example, Rwandan citizen Charles writes that upon returning from exile in Congo, in Habyarimana’s region, he found that the RPF had burned their house killing 24 family members on his mother’s side : “ they also killed my uncle’s wife and six children, using a small hoe to crush their heads” (…) In 1998 and 1999, I remember how the RPF used to come in our neighborhood and kill people. “ (…) What the RPF did is unbelievable, but some people say survivors don’t deserve mercy. That our slain beloved do not deserve remembrance. I feel silenced during genocide commemoration. I’ve been called a killer. If I cry, they say the tears are for the blood shed by my relatives. I feel suffocated in Rwanda but appreciate that this gives me a medium to share my experiences with the world.“ [viii]
Phineas Kwitonda testifies how family houses of those that had fled in exile were taken over by those returning from 30 years of exile. The RPF continued after July 1994 to commit systematic massacres: “For many years after the genocide, countless people were called to meetings and never returned. We eventually learned that the RPF was systematically killing and massacring those people. (…)… This is when I began to understand the RPF might not be the saviors that they proclaimed themselves to be.” Kwitonda underscored that “the gacaca trials became a tool of repression or setting scores”, as he spent five years in prison “for giving testimony that the government did not like, even though it was the truth.” [ix]
Roger Rusesabagina, the son of hotel Rwanda movie hero Paul Rusesabigina, recalls how he had no access to his father after he was kidnapped in 2020 by the Rwandan authorities: he was denied his medicine, a lawyer of his choice and underwent harrowing treatment in prison. Rusesabagina asks: “it scares me to think that despite his celebrity the Rwandan government can still get away for treating him this way. If it happens to him what happens to everyday Rwandans?” [x]
During the Onana trial the case of gospel singer Kizito Mihigo was brought up by witnesses. Mihigo was imprisoned tortured and eventually killed. In 2014 he had written a song, The Meaning of Death, whose lyrics called for the recognition of all the victims of the Rwandan genocide: “Though the genocide orphaned me, let it not make me lose empathy for others. Their lives too were brutally taken but not qualified as genocide. Those brothers and sisters they too are human beings. I pray for them. I comfort them. I remember them ... Death is never good, be it by the genocide, or war or slaughtered in revenge killings.” Mihigo died while in police custody in 2020.
Espérance Niyonsaba essay Wonder why the victims of the genocide are not treated the same writes about the necessity to speak up despite the fact that fellow Rwandans told her to remain quite so that the power in place in Kigali would not kill her :“ the RPF regime doesn’t like the fact that people tell their stories” She writes from exile “ I cannot fight for the rights of foreigners while leaving out those of Rwandans, my fellow citizens”. She describes her family’s flight “everyone was running from the RPF“ , all the members from her mother’s family were killed by Interahamwe during the genocide, yet she found upon her return that in Kibungo “all the Hutus who lived there were killed by the RPF.” Espérance was denied the help from the genocide survivors support fund most probably as she was a Hutu, and thus she concealed that she was a Hutu for a long time.[xi]
At the Onana trial we also heard from Marie-Jeanne Rutahisire,a Hutu woman, who was denied help although a genocide survivor in need.
Although in France French soldiers have been brought to trial for complicity in genocide, all testimonies in Survivors Uncensored speak highly of the French Operation Turquoise which was a safe zone for Hutus, Tutsis and Twa. Patrick Rugaba recounts how the French humanitarian operation Turquoise saved his life as well as that of his family. A descendant from the Bwishaza independent kingdom his family has suffered displacement since 1896. Despite the terrible loss he has endured, and also by reconstructing the history of his family, Rugaba is today dedicated to striving for all forms of justice. In 1992 his father was jailed for denouncing Interahamwe violence, yet under the RPF regime his father was again jailed, this time for 19 years, “he was beaten and tortured and ended up handicapped" for “not wanting to watch in silence as people were killed.” [xii]
Terrifying accounts of what many defined a Hutu genocide carried out by the RPF in Congo (then Zaire) abound in the book. "The RPF led by Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame invaded the Congo and destroyed refugee camps. They wiped out as many of the refugees as possible. This time genocide was conducted against the Hutu people by the RPF. Ethnic cleansing was conducted using every possible method including shooting in masses, killing with hand weapons, starvation, buring alive, mass rapes and burying people alive in a mass grave” writes Claude Gatebuke. [xiii] Augustin Nsabimana, who also published a book See you in heaven recounts the harrowing flight through Congo (then Zaire) and the desolation encountered in areas which had fallen under RPF control: “we continued on this path even though it was occupied by the RPF. We walked for a whole week. All along the way, we encountered nothing but corpses.”[xiv]
Former UNHCR staff member who as on the ground at the time Lino Bordin places the numbers that died in the Congo at 800,000 Rwandans. [xv]
Even those that had fought with the RPF tell how they soon moved away from it due to its horrendous human rights record. One anonymous testimony writes: “but since the days in Kabuga and seeing additional atrocities committed by the RPF, I am no longer a sympathizer, nor do I believe in them as a force that’s fit to lead a country. Their systematic massacres of Hutu people also amount to genocide.” [xvi]
We heard at trial from Onana’s witnesses that there is no safe space in Rwanda today for commemorating freely. Also in Survivors uncensored genocide survivor Prudencienne Seward set up an organization, PAX, in 1998 to commemorate all Rwandans across all ethnic groups to foster lasting peace” However she writes: “the government of Rwanda introduced a program claiming its reconciliation program called ndi umunyarwanda, a divisive program built on ethnic stigmatization of Hutu people” She concludes: “even though I survived the genocide while some of my family was killed by extremist Hutus, the RPF killed those who remained after taking over the county.”[xvii]
Justin Pudor writes in the introduction on his chapter Good and Evil: How Africanists Present Hutus as Deserving of Death how certain pro-Kagame apologists such as Gerard Prunier, Michela Wrong, Thomas Turner amongst others, have contributed in dividing Rwanda’s victims into worthy and unworthy: “ I show the devastating consequences of the Africanist trope of portraying the entire Hutu population as “evil” and of Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame as “good.” To do so, the Africanists suppress counter-evidence, define Kagame’s crimes as necessary in the face of evil, maximize the numbers of Hutu involved in the genocide, minimize the numbers killed by Kagame to the point of absurdity, and imply that no political, negotiated solution is possible with such evil people .“ [xviii]
Onana is called a genocide denier by the plaintiffs for this other sentence of the 16 incriminating ones: “ But for twenty-five years, many authors have persisted in looking at the tragedy of Rwanda through the lens of "genocide" instead of focusing on the conquest of power through the armed struggle launched by the RPF in 1990. It is this which is not only the cause of the horror that this country has known, but it is also partly the cause of the mass exodus of populations towards Zaire." (page 411)
Yet, in Survivors Uncensored many the witnesses corroborate this, namely that Rwandans were pushed into exile by the advancing RPF army and not by the genocide, the Operation Turquoise or the former interim government as is often stated in conventional narratives on the events. This is also corroborated by a former UNHCR staff member working in the region. For example, Cesarine writes: “one thing that is clear is that people were fleeing the war, because there were Hutus, Twas and Tutsis alike who were in these crowds fleeing the war” (…) Almost immediately after we arrived in Gisenyi, the RPF reached the town and started shelling and we evacuated into the Congo”[xix]
The new French genocide denial press law, by also enforcing an apartheid of victims, thus allowing plaintiffs to incriminate an author for simply including all Rwandan victims in historical reconstruction, is enforcing hell on earth for Rwandans unable to speak freely at home and.abroad. The 2017 French genocide denial law contributes in not allowing the truth to surface. One survivor Yvette Umutoniwabo writes in Survivors uncensored: “ I come from a mixed family of both Hutus and Tutsi, and growing up I never knew there was a difference. (…) We lost many members of our family. Some were killed by the RPF, and others by the Interahamwe militias. It was chaos everywhere. (…) We eventually left for Congo as the RPF had seized most of the country and was killing Hutus in their passage.[xx] (…) I don’ want the past to repeat itself, nor the present injustice to remain perpetually, I want to create a safe place where we can sit together and rebuild our land together. It begins with telling our story.”[xxi]
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