Ivan Krivoushin THE GENOCIDAL MENTALITY: THE 1994 CASE OF RWANDA Working Paper WP18/2014/01 Series WP18 Human rights in the contemporary world Moscow 2014 УДК 327 ББК 66.4 К83 Editor of the Series WP18 “Human rights in the contemporary world” Alexey Ryabinin К83 Krivoushin, Ivan V. The genocidal mentality: the 1994 case of Rwanda [Text]: Working pa- per WP18/2014/01 / I. V. Krivoushin ; Nat. Res. Univ. Higher School of Economics. – Moscow: Higher School of Economics Publ. House, 2014. – (Series WP18 “Human rights in the contemporary world”). – 24 р. – 50 copies. This paper analyses the problem of socio-cultural causes of mass violence in contemporary Afri- can societies using the example of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The author tries to identify the basic characteristics of the mentality of the perpetrators of the genocide, their logic and ways to justify their participation. The case of Rwanda shows how the lack of legal consciousness or awareness and a specifi c «culture of violence», that had deep historical roots, result in the extreme hatred between the two major Rwandan identify communities of Hutus and Tutsis and how the instrumentalization of violence by political leaders and the propaganda of fear and hostility unleashes a chain reaction that is impossible to stop and that leads to total violation of globally accepted standards of human rights ethics and to the most intense genocide in the history of mankind. УДК 327 ББК 66.4 Key words: violence, genocide, Rwanda, Hutus, Tutsis Krivoushin Ivan – Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow); E-mail:
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