Here is a "paper" that I had to make for one of my courses IEP. This is not the best quality because I was a bit short of time and especially since the issues of justice and memory are not the ones I know best. The bibliography is quite large and may serve those who want the issue approdondir
Post-Genocidal Conflict in Rwanda: Between Justice and Remaking Society by Thierry Marchal-BECK
How to Build Sustainable Peace after genocide like The One That Touched Rwanda Between 100 in spring 1994 Hundreds Is The Question That Rwandese staff has to face. Building peace after a civil war and genocide after est très different. The definition of genocide Itself Makes it very different. Genocide Is A politics of extermination, the aim of genocide is to destroy a group because the perpetrators believed that by doing so that it will bring peace to the whole society [1] . How is it possible to build peace when a large part of the society had believed, and acted consequently, that it was only by killing one group of the society that social peace was possible for the entire society?
In order to understand genocide and the peace building process that need to take place after it, in order to try to give an answer to those specific questions, it is very important to have pluralistic analysis : politest, anthropologist but even more important an historian analysis. Articles and thesis that have a single approach often miss to understand the complexity of the problem.
The multiple approaches by analysis should also be combined with a multiple approach of issues: justice, democracy, peace building, stakes of memory, defining common history. For those issues also, looking at one without taking consideration of the other will lead to over simplistic analysis.
This paper will show how justice is necessary and how the gacaca can be one of the answers even after taking in considerations the limits of such jurisdiction. In order to understand the complexity of doing justice, this paper will also develop a comparative approach of post-genocidal justice. At last, the reflection on justice needs to be combined on a global reflection on collective memory.
The specificity of post-genocidal justice.
Justice after genocide seems impossible. No sentences could ever be sufficient. At the heart of modern justice is the believed that someone can be reintegrated in the society after having accomplished is sentences, but no sanctions can be sufficient after genocide. However absence of justice is not also a possibility because “génocidaires” are guilty of their crime and should be prosecuted as such. The impossibility of sanction proportionate to the crime of genocide should not lead to the absence of justice. Antoine Garapon, in the foot steps of Hannah Arendt, untitled one of his book “the crimes that cannot be punish and forgive [2] ”. How is it possible to judge the unthinkable? However justice is necessary, victims and survivors deserved justice. Perpetrators need to be found guilty, it is important in order to established the truth but also because impunity will mean a certain victory of the genocide that should not be accepted. The absence of justice, the absence of people recognize as guilty by a tribunal court is one of the best way for ensure “négationisme [3] ”. Justice is also a fundamental step for rebuilding one society after genocide. Nevertheless the act of justice is complicated after genocide: how is it possible to avoid victory justice? For how long justice should take place in a society that also need to live once more as a whole?
An historical approach of post-genocidal justice
In order to understand the justice process in Rwanda it is indispensable to compare with others genocide. It is also necessary to briefly analyze how the lack of justice in the Great Lakes region is one of the numerous explanations of genocide [4] .
Justice after genocide is a very difficult issue. After the Armenian genocide, justice was almost completely inexistent. For almost 60 years victims had been forgotten [5] . The trial of Nuremberg had often been presented as the symbol of justice after genocide. This assertion is false; the term of genocide had never been used [6] during the trial [7] and these trials had judged all crimes of the Nazi regime and not specifically the Shoa [8] . After the Shoa, trial like the one in Jerusalem for Eichmann [9] or more recently the one for Papon in France had prove the difficulty of jugging people responsible of genocide. In most of the cases people refused their responsibility and denounced the victor justice. More recently post-genocidal justice in Cambodia, ex-Yugoslavia is not a easy process, and once more, judges have to face the negation of the butchers and the accusation of not respecting due process.
The specific need of justice in the great lakes in order to ensuring peace
Justice is even more important in Rwanda because the denial of justice after each massacre since independence had always leaded to revenge and more massacres [10] . The massacre of Tutsi in Rwanda in 1959, 1964 and during the 1980’s but also the genocide of Hutu in Burundi in 1972 [11] , the massacre of 1988 and the coup of 1993. Each time a massacre or a genocidal process took place in one of the country of the region it helped to implement the “banality of brutalization” [12] , the acculturation to violence but also the believed that violence and extermination was a “banal” and maybe useful political tool. This absence of justice made it easier to implement the idea that peace will never be sure and definitive until the other group will be annihilated.
Justice in Rwanda : an impossible task ?
It is in this historical context that post-genocidal justice in Rwanda take place. Justice is accomplishing at three different levels: the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of Arusha, justice in Rwanda and justice in foreign countries. The ICTR had judge very few perpetrators but the more important one and it had helped a lot to understand how the genocide was planed. However, the justice is very slow; and Rwandese deplore that the tribunal had not taking place in Rwanda [13] .
The specificity of Rwanda post-genocidal justice is inherent to the Gacaca.
Gacaca was at first the name of traditional court of justice that took place in the hills of Rwanda [14] . Paul Kagame with his government reorganized and institutionalized this traditional institution. The idea at the heart of gagaca process is that perpetrators by saying the truth will have shorter sentences. Consequently the goal of gacaca is not only to accomplish justice but also to establish the truth. For the government, when the truth will be accepted by all it will be possible to live in a peaceful society.
Many analysis critics the way gacaca are organized: they denounced the manipulation by the government [15] , the lack of due process [16] , the justice of victors. One of the points developed by those analyses is to denounce the fact that the crime of the RPF and the crime of genocide are not judge in the same time. This kind of critics prove that these authors does not understand the specificity of crime of genocide and developed an over simplistic ethnicity analysis [17] . It is fundamental that all crime should be prosecuted, including the crime of the RPF. However, crime of war that touch civilians, even massacres are not the same that genocide, and to see scholars putting them at the same level is more that strange [18] .
The question rose by scholars and NGO of the lack of due process is a difficult one. Having a total due process is an impossible task, if it is necessary to put pressure in order to respect as more as possible due process it is also impotent to respect [19] and understand the way gacaca work. Also gacaca is conceived as “justice of transition”.
This aspect of gacaca as a justice of transition need to be understood in a larger reflection : a reflection on how interlaced the issues of justice, memory and definition of history.
The gacaca courts between justice and “imperative of memory”
Reflection on gacaca that focused only on the judicial approach often missed the difficulty raised by the trauma of victims, the impossibility of victims to accomplish their mourning and, at last, how victims and perpetrators can live together.
To understand the difficulty of post-genocidal justice it is important to focus on the individual. Jean Hatzfeld in his book untitled “la stratégie des antilopes” focused on how “génocidaires” and “survivors” participate in gacaca.
For the victims and for their families it is especially difficult because they want to know the truth and in the same time they are afraid by the truth. How is it possible to react peacefully, as the state asked them to do so, when people acknowledge in front of them their responsibility in the killings of their families? It is even harder because by telling the truth the perpetrators will have less important sentences [20] .
For the perpetrators telling the truth is not also an easy thing, they have to give details. These details can upset Tutsi and lead them to revenge but it can also upset Hutu perpetrators if a former colleague during the genocide had said too much about who had killed who. Jean Hatzfeld testified of Hutu who were killed for having said too much. As a result in the gacaca people tried to preserve the living of the community by not telling all the truth, not asking all the questions they want to ask [21] . As a result less and less people went to gacaca.
Gacaca need also to be understood not only at a judicial level but also at a social one. The gacaca search the truth but this truth is redoubt. One of the merits of gacaca is to “convoke memories” [22] . The Gacaca can be a good tool in order to build “collective memory [23] ”.
Defining a new collective memory
To build “collective memory” will take more than the gacaca. However, saying that it is not condemning the gacaca process. Limits to the gacaca process do not make it unnecessary and wasteful. Defining new collective memory is necessary if Rwanda want to live in a state of peace.
By denying the importance of “ethnicity” [24] as central identity after the genocide the government had make it harder to build this collective memory. The Rwanda government by using at some point the genocide in order to legitimate its power has a responsibility in the division that shapes the country. This responsibility of the government had made the gacaca lost some of their legitimacy; commemorations of genocide had also lost their legitimacy because it had become a political tribune for Kagame speech.
However, more than ever, Rwanda should build collective memory. In order to do so French, Belgian but also Rwandese scholars proposed to commemorate for example the Righteous [25] . They also proposed to write history and to teach history at school [26] .
Justice, commemoration, memory, teaching of history, all these issues are links. All of them are one of the numerous answers that should help Rwanda to recover of the genocide. Valérie Rosoux asked if the idea of Nation itself had not been destroyed by the genocide [27] . A Nation needs a history, collective heroes, and justice. It is by facing those elements all together that Rwanda may accomplish peace and lives one more as one society. At last, thinking about Rwanda as one nation, can help to "deracialized [28] " Rwanda Society, It May Be The ultimate condition for sustainable peace.
[1] Bruneteau, Bernard. 2004. The century of genocides violence, massacres and genocidal process of Armenia to Rwanda. Paris: A. Colin.
[2] Garapon, Antoine. 2002. Crimes that can neither punish nor forgive for international justice. Paris: Jacob.
[3] Negationism HAD not Been translated in Français. The word in Revisionism Français Is Not Specific To The act of genocide. A specific words, pour la Denying of genocide, Is Necessary because denying the genocide is at the heart of all genocide; it is a part of the genocide itself, a way of accomplishing it even after the end of the genocide.
[4] In order to understand genocide a single explanation will never be sufficient but multiple explanations even if it is better will not also been sufficient. The heart of genocide is not understandable; always something will be missing. Questions about genocide will always face aporia.
[5] Becker, Annette. 2007. "Les victimes entre oubli et memoire". Schweizerische Zeitschrift F̐ưur Geschichte. Revue Suisse D'histoire. Rivista Storica Svizzera. 57 (1): 12.
[6] Power, Samantha. 2002. A problem from hell America and the age of genocide. New York: Basic Books.
[7] Ibid. Raphael Lemkin who made the word “genocide” tried to convince the judges to use it..
[8] I will prefer used the French term « Shoa » as the American term « holocaust ».
[9] Arendt, Hannah. 1964. Eichmann in Jerusalem; a report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking Press
[10] Mamdani, Mahmood. 2001. When victims become killers colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Comprendre les génocides du XXe siècle Comparer-enseigner. 2007. Rosny-sous-Bois: Bréal. p. 134-137
[11] Chretien, Jean-Pierre, and Jean-Francois Dupaquier. 2007. Burundi 1972, at the edge of genocides. Men and societies. [Paris]: Karthala.
[12] Becker, Annette. 2007. "The victims between oblivion and memory." Schweizerische Zeitschrift F̐ưur Geschichte. Swiss Review of History. Rivista Storica Svizzera. 57 (1): 12.
"the banality of the growing brutalization caused by the Great War, the internalization of violence that can accept even its sustainable aspects paroxysmal did not count for anything in this repression. "The thesis Developed by Annette Becker year of acculturation to violence by European Society Düring World War 1 Can Help us to dismiss theories witch said that it is natural for Rwandese to do gencodide, that they are culturally violent (such thesis has been developed both by politician like French President François Mitterrand but also political analysis like Kaplan). Analyze a process of acculturation to violence helped by a denial of justice is a very different things.
[13] As a result, the regime of Paul Kagamé dismissed the importance of the international court and very few Rwandese know what is happening there and very often when they heard something about this court it is bad commentary from Rwandese government official.
[14] Reyntjens, F., Le gacaca ou la justice du gazon au Rwanda, Politique Africaine, no. 40, decembre 1990, 31-41.
[15] Oomen, Barbara. 2005. "Donor-Driven Justice and its Discontents: The Case of Rwanda". Development and Change. 36 (5): 887-910.
[16] Allison Corey , and Sandra F. Joireman Retributive justice: The Gacaca courts in Rwanda Afr Aff (Lond) 103: 73-89.
[17] This remark apply especially for Allison Corey and Sandra F. Joireman article.
[18] Very few scholars will put at the same level the crime committed by the Allies (Dresden for example) during WWII and the genocide of the Jews. If crime when it comes to victim are always unacceptable, and if it is necessary to refuse a “competition of victims”, it is important to keep in mind that the aim of genocide (the death of all as an end) is not the same as the aim of massacre (that can be a tool for spreading fear in a time of war for example).
[19] Here a reflection on “cultural relativism” developed by Claude Levis Strauss can be helpful.
[20] Because many “génocidaires” had been in jail since 1994 or 1996 even when they are sentence to prison they do not go to prison.
[21] Benoît Guillou, « Crimes de masse et responsabilité individuelle », Champ pénal, Responsabilité / Irresponsabilité pénale mis en ligne le 25 juillet 2005.
[22] Ibid.
[23] The work of Maurice Halbwachs on collective memory should be helpful to understand how new collective memory is build in Rwanda.
[24] Hutu and Tusti are not ethnic group in the sense of differences of culture, language or even physical differences. However Hutu and Tutsi are cultural constructed identity. Even if history prove that there are no ethnic separation between Hutu and Tutsi, it is false to consider that after the genocide Hutu and Tutsi are not central identity in Rwanda. Chrétien, Jean-Pierre. 2000. L'Afrique des Grands lacs deux mille ans d'histoire. Collection historique. Paris: Aubier.
[25] Rosoux, Valerie. 2007. "MEMOIRES PLURIELLES, MEMOIRES EN CONFLIT - Introduction - SCIENTIFIC OFFICER - Rwanda, the impossible "national memory"? - Ethnology Fran̐ưcaise. 37 (3): 409.
[26] Schools in Rwanda do not Have historic class.
[27] Rosoux, Valerie. 2007. "Plural memory, STATEMENTS OF CONFLICT - Introduction - SCIENTIFIC OFFICER - Rwanda, the impossible" national memory "? - Ethnology Fran̐ưcaise. 37 (3): 409.
[28] Understanding the genocides of the twentieth century teach-Compare. 2007. Rosny-sous-Bois: Breal. p. 150 "a culture of peace must be racist."
