A trial was held in Paris from the 7-11 of October 2024 against investigative journalist and historian Dr Charles Onana and his editor Damien Serieyx, accused of genocide denial concerning a book published in 2019 on the UN mandated French-led Operation Turquoise in Rwanda 1994. The complaining parties are six French-based NGOs : Ibuka-France, Survie, the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism(LICRA), the Collective of civil parties for Rwanda (CPCR) and the Ligue des droits de l’homme, France (LDH).
This is the fourth article in a series.
Let us turn to the sixteen sentences chosen by the NGO plaintiffs from Onana’s book which formed the basis of their evidence to ask for the condemnation of author Charles Onana and his editor Damien Serieyx as Tutsi genocide deniers, according to a new French press freedom law.
Ignoring valid research, the case of two American researchers
Sentence 1 : “It is now established that the current Kigali regime does not hold in high esteem academics, journalists and authors whose work qualifies or contradicts the dogma or ideology of the “Tutsi genocide.” The weapon of mass destruction used to target and disqualify or discredit the work of these American researchers is to call them "revisionists" or "deniers", a vocabulary generally reserved for authors who deny the Jewish Holocaust and that some want to extend abusively and clumsily to the Rwandan tragedy. Let's be clear, the conflict and massacres in Rwanda have nothing to do with the genocide of the Jews! Any attempt at a comparison between these two separate events, is a forced marriage, abusive and inappropriate. » (page 34)
Rwandan government targeting of academics as well as authors in general is a well-known fact today: the May 2024 Forbidden Stories Inquiry Rwanda Classified, who work with 50 journalists from 17 media organizations in 11 countries, write: “ In international forums, conference and showrooms, Rwanda highlights its clean streets, gender equality and favorable business environment. But behind this gleaming image is a hidden army of lobbyists, trolls and agents ready to smear any opposition.” They quote University College Dublin Associate professor in the School of Politics and International Relations Alexander Dukalskis: “You see a small country – relatively low resource – allegedly go after dissidents and critics abroad with a level of focus and logistical coordination that is pretty remarkable.” They article also cites Michela Wrong and the sever harassment she has undergone from the Rwandan government for writing “Do Not Disturb,” a critical exposé of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) party. Wrong wrote about this in an article I criticized Rwanda’s leader – now I wake up screaming after constant online attacks.
Forbidden stories also mention Charles Onana in one its eight investigations:
Other scholars from all walks of life and nationalities world-wide have been accused, to name just a few: co-author with Noam Chomsky of Manufacturing Consent Edward S. Herman and David Peterson who wrote in 2014 Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later. They had been severely accused of genocide denial and even prevented from publishing their full rebuttals or arguments in UK newspapers attacking them, which they subsequently wrote about in an article George Monbiot and the Guardian on “Genocide Denial” and “Revisionism.”;British scholar Barrie Collins for his work on political violence in Rwanda was accused of genocide denial. The list is exceedingly long.
Belgian ambassador to Rwanda Johan Swinnen spoke at length at trial of the dangers of intellectual orthodoxy and the banalization of the term genocide denial.
Many of the defense testimonies at trial spoke of the lack of space in Rwanda for discussing the recent past freely, a much-needed debate wanted by the majority of the population.
Anjan Sundaram’s Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship, who taught journalism for five years in Rwanda, “details how his students end up crushed by the system, either promoting its Orwellian messages or behind bars if they refuse to conform,” writes journalist Ian Birrell in the Guardian on the book. He adds: “Criticism of Kagame’s brutal actions during the genocide is silenced.”
However, the American scholars mentioned in Onana’s sentence under attack are University of Virginia Dean of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, Allan C. Stam and Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen Professor for the Study of Human Understanding, University of Michigan Professor of Political Science, as well as Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Christian Davenport and their ten year analyses on Rwanda and their reconstruction of the political violence which occurred on the ground, collecting a wide variety of data.
Onana cites a 2009 article they co-authored What Really Happened in Rwanda? on their working experience, their findings, as well as the abusive treatment they underwent: an aggressive campaign to label them as genocide deniers, which began after they were stopped from holding a talk at a conference in Kigali on their research.
Onana deplores that their detailed work on the patters of violence on the ground, ground breaking for explaining the events, especially in light of the numerous sources used, is totally discarded from academic discussions and never referenced.
Researchers Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam write that “the accepted story of the mass killings of 1994 is incomplete, and the full truth — inconvenient as it may be to the Rwandan government — need to come out.” (1)
Some further extracts from their article :
“Our work has led us to conclude that the invading force had a primary goal of conquest and little regard for the lives of resident Tutsis." (2)
“The data revealed in our maps was consistent with FAR claims that it would have stopped much of the killing if the RPF had simply called a halt to its invasion. This conclusion runs counter to the Kagame administration’s claims that the RPF continued its invasion to bring a halt to the killings.”
“Complicating matters is the displacement that accompanied the RPF invasion. During 1994, some 2 million Rwandan citizens became external refugees, 1 million to 2 million became internal refugees, and about 1 million eventually became victims of civil war and genocide.”
“By raising the possibility that in addition to Hutu/FAR wrongdoing, the RPF was involved, either directly or indirectly, in many deaths, we became in effect persona non grata in Rwanda and at the ICTR. ” They also wrote that “any divergence from common wisdom was considered political heresy.”
“As we end the project 10 years later, our views are completely at odds with what we believed at the outset, as well as what passes for conventional wisdom about what took place. (…) Because of our findings, we have been threatened by members of the Rwandan government and individuals around the world. And we have been labeled “genocide deniers” in both the popular press as well as the Tutsi expatriate community because we refused to say that the only form of political violence that took place in 1994 was genocide. It was not, and understanding what happened is crucial if the international community is to respond properly the next time it becomes aware of such a horrific spasm of mass violence. “
Onana is in this paragraph is addressing the misplaced judgment of the academic work carried forth by American scholars Stam and Davenport, who revealed complex layers of patterns of violence on the ground. In short, the point Onana is making here is that the term genocide denial should not be weaponized to silence debate.
As for the comparison between the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide in the sentence, Onana here is referring to the statistical analysis done by Stam and Davenport, who underscored the little resemblance between the two historical events. According to Stam and Davenport:
“The most commonly invoked metaphor for the 1994 Rwandan violence is the Holocaust. Elsewhere, we have suggested that perhaps the English civil war, the Greek civil war, the Chinese civil war or the Russian civil war might be more apt comparisons because they all involved some combination of ethnic-based violence and the random slaughter and retribution that can occur when civil society breaks down altogether. Actually, though, it is difficult to make authoritative comparison when it remains unclear exactly what happened in the Rwandan civil war and genocide. “
Stam and Davenport also call for further research in the field, as they point out the many still unexploited historical archives which exist, in their words:
“While our understanding has advanced a great deal since our first days in Kigali, it is hard not to see irony in a current reality: Some of the most important information about what occurred in Rwanda in 1994 has been sent — by the very authorities responsible for investigating the violence and preventing its recurrence, in Rwanda and elsewhere — to an isolated prison, where it sits unexamined, like some artifact in the final scene of an Indiana Jones movie. “
To cite the work of these two well intentioned American scholars and to deplore that their rich analyses is unexploited in historical research, cannot be considered in any way a form of genocide denial.
Notes:
(1) Emphasis mine, as many authors use terms such as fairytale version, dominant version, institutionalized version yet according to the plaintiffs’ such terms are examples of genocide denial. The plaintiffs accused Onana of genocide denial for using terms such as the Rwandan tragedy, mass murders etc.
(2) Emphasis mine as many defense witnesses at trial corroborated this fact.
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