Remaking Rwanda Critical Human Rights
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Remaking Rwanda Critical Human Rights Series Editors Steve J. Stern Scott Straus Books in the series Critical Human Rights emphasize research that opens new ways to think about and understand human rights. The series values in particular empirically grounded and intellectually open research that eschews simplifi ed accounts of human rights events and processes. Since the civil war and genocide of the 1990s, Rwanda’s new regime, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, has attempted to re- engineer the nation’s poli- tics, economics, and society. Cultivating an image of post- confl ict Rwanda as a model of stability and growth, the Rwandan state has restricted politi- cal parties, civil society, and the media while claiming this was necessary to prevent future ethnic violence. Remaking Rwanda probes the mechanisms of the country’s recovery and the durability of its success. Resisting simplifi ed, triumphalist accounts of Rwanda’s resurgence, this book asks what this experi- ence of top- down, donor- supported, transformative authoritarianism teaches us about the relationship between post-confl ict reconstruction and human rights in Central Africa and beyond. Remaking Rwanda State Building and Human Rights after Mass Violence Edited by Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf The University of Wisconsin Press The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor Madison, Wisconsin 53711- 2059 uwpress.wisc .edu 3 Henrietta Street London WCE 8LU, England eurospanbookstore .com Copyright © 2011 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Remaking Rwanda: state building and human rights after mass violence / edited by Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf. p. cm. — (Critical human rights) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 299- 28264- 6 (pbk.: alk. paper)—ISBN 978- 0- 299- 28263- 9 (e- book) 1. Rwanda—History—1994– 2. Rwanda—Politics and government—1994– 3. Human rights— Rwanda. I. Straus, Scott, 1970– II. Waldorf, Lars. III. Series: Critical human rights. DT450.44.R46 2011 967.57104'3—dc22 2010038912 In honor of alison des forges, 1942–2009 Contents Maps of Rwanda x Preface xiii List of Abbreviations xix Alison Des Forges: Remembering a Human Rights Hero xxiii Kenneth Roth The Historian as Human Rights Activist xxvii David Newbury Introduction: Seeing Like a Post- Confl ict State 3 Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf part i: governance and state building 1. Limitations to Political Reform: The Undemocratic Nature of Transition in Rwanda 25 Timothy Longman 2. Instrumentalizing Genocide: The RPF’s Campaign against “Genocide Ideology” 48 Lars Waldorf 3. The Ruler’s Drum and the People’s Shout: Accountability and Representation on Rwanda’s Hills 67 Bert Ingelaere 4. Building a Rwanda “Fit for Children” 79 Kirrily Pells 5. Beyond “You’re with Us or against Us”: Civil Society and Policymaking in Post- Genocide Rwanda 87 Paul Gready vii part ii: international and regional contexts 6. Aid Dependence and Policy Independence: Explaining the Rwandan Paradox 103 Eugenia Zorbas 7. Funding Fraud? Donors and Democracy in Rwanda 118 Rachel Hayman 8. Waging (Civil) War Abroad: Rwanda and the DRC 132 Filip Reyntjens 9. Bad Karma: Accountability for Rwandan Crimes in the Congo 152 Jason Stearns and Federico Borello part iii: justice 10. Victor’s Justice Revisited: Rwandan Patriotic Front Crimes and the Prosecutorial Endgame at the ICTR 173 Victor Peskin 11. The Uneasy Relationship between the ICTR and Gacaca 184 Don Webster 12. The Sovu Trials: The Impact of Genocide Justice on One Community 194 Max Rettig 13. “All Rwandans Are Afraid of Being Arrested One Day”: Prisoners Past, Present, and Future 210 Carina Tertsakian part iv: rural reengineering 14. High Modernism at the Ground Level: The Imidugudu Policy in Rwanda 223 Catharine Newbury 15. Rwanda’s Post- Genocide Economic Reconstruction: The Mismatch between Elite Ambitions and Rural Realities 240 An Ansoms 16. The Presidential Land Commission: Undermining Land Law Reform 252 Chris Huggins viii Contents part v: history and memory 17. The Past Is Elsewhere: The Paradoxes of Proscribing Ethnicity in Post- Genocide Rwanda 269 Nigel Eltringham 18. Topographies of Remembering and Forgetting: The Transformation of Lieux de Mémoire in Rwanda 283 Jens Meierhenrich 19. Teaching History in Post- Genocide Rwanda 297 Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Harvey M. Weinstein, K. L. Murphy, and Timothy Longman 20. Young Rwandans’ Narratives of the Past (and Present) 316 Lyndsay McLean Hilker 21. Reeducation for Reconciliation: Participant Observations on Ingando 331 Susan Thomson part vi: concluding observations Justice and Human Rights for All Rwandans 343 Joseph Sebarenzi The Dancing Is Still the Same 354 Aloys Habimana Acknowledgments 357 Contributors 359 Index 363 Contents ix Preface scott straus and lars waldorf Remaking Rwanda is dedicated to the memory of Alison Des Forges, who died in a plane crash in Buff alo, New York, on February 12, 2009. Alison was the most vocal and knowledgeable champion for human rights in Rwanda, and her untimely death has been a tremendous loss. She arguably did more than anyone to prevent, publicize, and document the 1994 genocide, one of the worst human rights crimes of the twentieth century, and to ensure justice in its aftermath. Yet she was also able to see past the genocide thanks to her early career as a historian of colonial Rwanda and her late career as a human rights advocate in post- genocide Rwanda. Her historical scholarship, genocide documentation, and human rights reporting were all infused with intellectual rigor, nuanced understandings, and a generous attention to those sidelined by history, historiography, and politics. As a scholar- activist and pub- lic intellectual, she mentored, inspired, and infl uenced several generations of Rwanda scholars, genocide scholars, and human rights advocates. Most of the chapters in this volume emerged from conferences that we held in Alison’s honor in London and Madison. Alison infl uenced (directly or indirectly) all the contributors, and many of us feel a need to speak up in the wake of her death. A collected volume cannot begin to substitute for her loss, but we wanted to help advance some of Alison’s priorities—in particular her concern with the trajectory of post- genocide Rwanda. We also hope the book refl ects some of her intellectual qualities: her ability to marry human rights work with deep scholarly knowledge, her attention to the marginalized and dispossessed, her commitment to fi eld and empirical research, and her understanding of historical continuities and legacies. xiii For those unfamiliar with Alison and her work, an overview is in order. She began her forty- fi ve- year engagement with Rwanda when, as an under- graduate at Radcliff e College in the early 1960s, she worked with Rwandans in refugee camps in Tanzania who had fl ed violence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. That experience subsequently prompted her to conduct oral history on Rwanda’s hills for her PhD in History at Yale University. Her doctoral disser- tation, “Defeat Is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musiinga, 1896–1931” (1972), presents a trenchant analysis of the Rwandan kingdom before and dur- ing the early colonial period—an analysis that still resonates today (and that David Newbury explores in chap. 2, this volume). After several years of teaching, community activism, and raising children in Buff alo, Alison became re- engaged with Rwanda as a human rights advo- cate and contemporary historian in the late 1980s. She joined Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 1988 and worked for that organization until her death, fi rst as a board member, then as a researcher and consultant, and fi nally, from 2001 on, as a senior adviser. In the early 1990s, Alison contributed to three HRW reports, which warned of the potential for a major catastrophe in Rwanda (HRW 1992, 1993, 1994). In 1992 and 1993 she co- chaired the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda, com- posed of four human rights organizations, which issued a report in March 1993 detailing government involvement in systematic violence against Tutsi (FIDH 1993). When the genocide broke out on April 6, 1994, Alison was well- placed to draw the international community’s attention to the unfolding horrors and to counter simplistic portrayals of “ancient tribal hatreds.” While policy- makers dithered, Alison and HRW quickly called the systematic slaughter by its rightful name—genocide. She tirelessly lobbied U.S., European, and UN offi cials, including members of the Security Council, to describe the violence as “genocide” and to intervene to stop the killing (Power 2002, 329–89). As Roméo Dallaire, the commander of the beleaguered UN peacekeeping mis- sion in Rwanda, remembered: “[she] was one of our greatest allies in trying to encourage the international community to intervene in Rwanda and to expose the genocide for what it was” (Dallaire 2003, 546). Shortly after the genocide ended, Alison set about a detailed examination of its local, national, and international contours. This ambitious project took fi ve years to complete and produced a comprehensive, 789- page account titled Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (1999). The book contributed to her earning a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant award. Twelve years after its publication, Leave None remains a landmark account of how state ac- tors orchestrated the 1994 genocide. The main argument is that the genocide xiv Preface was a centrally planned, highly organized campaign directed by a small but powerful group of Rwandans.