UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Cross-examining the past Transitional justice, mass atrocity trials and history in Africa Bouwknegt, T.B. Publication date 2017 Document Version Other version License Other Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Bouwknegt, T. B. (2017). Cross-examining the past: Transitional justice, mass atrocity trials and history in Africa. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:27 Sep 2021 4. Cross-examining the past. Rwanda: An Untold Tropical Nazism Witness statements are the building blocks upon which the prosecution directly bases its case. The testimony of witnesses at trial is the principal form of evidence that the Prosecutor places at the disposal of the Trial Chambers.973 You have asked me if there is such a thing as objective truth. That is a huge, almost philosophical, question that I dare not attempt to answer. But in practice, in the judiciary, it is the responsibility of the judge to listen to the testimonies of the witnesses. Each presents his or her version of the truth. Our task is to get as close to it as possible. - Erik Møse, Judge974 4.1 Introduction Days before the genocide ended in Rwanda, the popular simplistic version of the events as an outbreak of an “ancient tribal conflict” that had largely dominated western media reporting975 was subtly substituted with a much more complex narrative, one that was framed analogous to the Nazi- extermination of Jews in Europe. Social anthropologist Alex de Waal, a doyen academic on Africa, wrote that “preparations for mass killing began in 1990, when the regime of the late President Juvénal Habyarimana first faced the simultaneous threats of rebellion by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the transition to multi-party rule. Starting in 1991, members of the now- notorious Interahamwe militia were mobilised from every community in the country.”976 Although not entirely new,977 De Waal’s framing, analysis and narrative of Rwanda’s genocide, as a pre-planned conspired criminal enterprise by a “genocidal state,”978 gained much currency in the Anglophone world through the first voluminous reports by African Rights,979 an NGO he co-directed with Rakiya Omaar, a Somali lawyer and trained historian who had documented the atrocities real-time for a period of six to seven weeks.980 Their report, Death, Despair and Defiance, which was based on the raw testimonies of hundreds of survivors, for the first time provided a grand-narrative of the genocide as a state crime, told in an historical analogy to the “linear track of escalating dehumanization of 973 UNSC, Report of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Rwanda and Rwanda citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other such Violations Committed in the Territory of Neighbouring States Between 1 January and 31 December 1994 (S/2000/927; 2 October 2000), §134. 974 Arnestad, Telling Truths in Arusha, from 08:20 mins. 975 For instance: William E. Schmidt, ‘Terror Convulses Rwandan Capital As Tribes Battle’, The New York Times, 9 April 1994; ‘Tribes Battle for Rwandan Capital, The New York Times, 16 April 1994; James Mccabe, ‘Rwanda's bloody conflict is rooted in long history of tribal inequality’, The Irish Times, 7 May 1994; Reena Shah Stamets, ‘Anarchy In Africa’, St. Petersburg Times (Florida), 17 April 1994. 976 Alex De Waal, ‘Rwanda genocide took four years to plan’, The Times, 18 June 1994. Earlier on, De Waal had debunked the tribal conflict narrative in interviews, including: Martin Bright, Rwanda: Blurred Roots of Conflict; The current slaughter is political, not tribal, and those opposed to the regime include both Hutus and Tutsis’, The Guardian, 9 May 1994. 977 Luc Reydams, ‘NGO justice. African Rights as Pseudo Prosecutor of the Rwandan Genocide’, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (August 2016), pp. 547-588: 568. HRW also published a report on the genocide, in which its author, Alison Des Forges, similarly claimed “The massacres were planned for months in advance.” HRW/Africa, Genocide in Rwanda. April-May 1994, Vol. 6, No. 4 (May 1994), pp. 1; Alison Des Forges had similarly testified before the USA: HRW/Africa, Human Rights in Rwanda. Statement of Alison Des Forges. Human Rights Watch/Africa. Before the House Foreign Affairs Subc. on Africa, Wednesday, May 4, 1994. Also see: Alison des Forges, ‘The Method In Rwanda's Madness: Politics Not Tribalism, Is The Root Of The Bloodletting’, Washington Post, 17 April 1994. 978 See: Alex De Waal, ‘Genocide in Rwanda’, Anthropology Today, Vol. 10, No. 3 (June 1994), pp. 1-2; Alex De Waal, ‘The genocidal state: Hutu extremism and the origins of the “final solution” in Rwanda’, Times Literary Supplement, No. 4761 (July 1994), pp. 3-4; Alex De Waal, ‘Ethnicity and Genocide in Rwanda’, Times Literary Supplement, No. 4764 (22 July 1994), p. 15. 979 Most notably: African Rights, Rwanda. Who is Killing; Who is Dying; What is to be Done. A Discussion Paper (African Rights: London, May 1994); African Rights, Rwanda. Death, despair and defiance (London; 1994); African Rights, Death, Despair and Defiance (London; 2nd revised edn. 1995). 980 De Waal, ‘Ethnicity and Genocide in Rwanda’, p. 15; AR, Death, Despair and Defiance, p. xvii. 126 Jews” during the Holocaust.981 At the same time, the “yellow-book” as it soon became to be known for its yellow cover, for the first time meticulously identified and biographed the main alleged masterminds and executioners of the genocide – more than 200 in the first edition (September 1994) of the report and more than 600 in the second edition (August 1995)982 - many of whom ended up being prosecuted by the UN’s tribunal and jurisdictions in Europe.983 On different levels, the report’s narrative of a “pathology of genocide” and “preparation for the apocalypse”, the names of “killers and their accomplices” and detailed testimony from recent crime scenes has had a massive impact. In the first place, it was the first report that published testimonies from survivors and witnesses so immediately after the events.984 Second, it allegedly became a guide book to Rwanda for the overall non-French speaking UNICTR investigators, prosecutors and other staff. Besides serving as pseudo- prosecutor’s manual, the book was heavily consulted and referenced by the early Anglophone literary, academic and human rights community that shaped and trickled into early historiography on the Rwandan genocide.985 In the field of mass atrocities, it is very common that NGOs, who as activist quasi investigative journalists bring to the attention of world leaders and the public at large immediate human rights situations, are the first to interview and document testimonies on the ground.986 Human rights reports often become the first drafts of history, even more so when written by historians.987 This was not only the case for African Rights’ Rakiya Omaar and Alex De Waal who crafted the first sketches of a narrative,988 but later also for Human Rights Watch’s Alison Des Forges, who published the second standard report on the genocide, Leave None to Tell the Story.989 Researched before and after the genocide, Des Forges’ report carried a similar linear explanation of the genocide, although also highlighting the role of the RPF. Both reports not only influenced popular thinking on Rwanda, historiography and a genocide scholarship, but also the manner in which prosecutors at the UNICTR and elsewhere framed the narrative of the crime of genocide that was committed in Rwanda. 981 Alex De Waal,’ Writing Human Rights and Getting it Wrong’, Boston Review, 6 June 2016. 982 AR, Death, Despair and Defiance, pp. 100-176. The chapter “the killers and their accomplices” is structured by: the president’s family; the interim government; politicians and ideologues with an extremist agenda; military officers; professional Interahamwe; and principal killers in the prefectures. 983 In The Netherlands alone, I was able to track at least seven cases against Rwandans in which African Rights was the referencing source. 984 Days after the start of the genocide, Omaar had travelled to Rwanda with an escort from the rebel RPF and interviewed over 200 survivors. She took notes longhand and almost verbatim, sending to De Waal in London, who typed them up. De Waal,’ Writing Human Rights’. 985 Reydams, ‘NGO justice’, pp. 547-588. Prunier, Gourevitch and Des Forges. 986 International criminal tribunals and courts often start their investigations on the basis of such reports, as recently transpired again at the ICC during the testimony