That the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi proceeded unhindered, accompanied by near universal indifference, will remain one the great scandals of the twentieth century. In April 1994, the more evidence of genocide emerged, the more reluctant politicians and their officials were to acknowledge it was happening.

In the Security Council of the UN, the ambassadors spent hours arguing about the definition of the word genocide. The inexcusable apathy is without compare. In the years since, there have been debates, studies and resolutions all condemning bureaucracies and systems, even as the blame has slipped away from those officials and politicians with the most to hide for their collusion and complicity. 

Only now, some 27 years later, is a glimpse afforded into relevant French archives with the recent release in Paris of the Vincent Duclert Commission report showing France bore overwhelming responsibility and just how troubling the role of certain officials and military officers really was. Those in France with the most to hide continue to deny any responsibility.  

As one declassified US State Department cable noted in July 1994, France was a key player and had the most complete information of any Western government with access to witnesses, evidence and even perpetrators. The US noted the evident reluctance on display by the French in the UN Security Council to ensure there be no arrests of genocide fugitives. The US believed that France had become a haven for Hutu Power fugitives. And it remains so today. 

France is not alone in withholding crucial information. The US own classified archives contain information with more than enough evidence about crucial events to silence those genocide deniers who seek today to alter history – although dismissing and ignoring factual evidence is something genocide deniers are good at. It is excessive government secrecy that has provided a vacuum for these deniers to exploit to further their intention to minimise, obscure, and diminish the genocide of the Tutsi of 1994.

The basic facts might seem incontrovertible, but this has not prevented a campaign of propaganda to undermine these facts. In its service, facts are reversed, disinformation and fake news promulgated. Even as they seized authority and power in April of 1994, the génocidaires portrayed themselves as victims, saying the country was overtaken by a series of unexpected events beyond their control.  Their strategy included a fully-fledged campaign of news spin designed to shroud the true nature of their crime.   

More than a quarter of a century on, with the wealth of evidence available, there are people who continue to deny any careful planning and maintain the mass killing of civilians to have been "spontaneous”. They argue that genocide charges are not applicable. This idea originated with the génocidaires as an integral part of their campaign to deny their crime. It emerged in the corridors of the UN, at the secret meetings of the Security Council to which the hastily created genocidal Interim government was granted access.

The blueprint of the denial campaign so recognisable today, is to be found in UN documents, in diplomatic telegrams and letters as the génocidaires turned the Security Council into a global forum giving voice to a genocidal regime whose sole policy was the extermination of a part of the population. 

At the UN, Rwandan diplomats were in a hurry to explain there were "victims on all sides”. The deniers do not understand the crime of genocide. The crime does not begin with killing but hatred, and division. It entails a quota system, an identity card bearing an ethnic designation. It begins with an absurdist racist ideology spread via atrocity speech, with vile rhetoric and incitement to murder. The target group suffers discrimination, exclusion, marginalisation, registration, brutality, fear, and terror.   

Each of denial claims made so familiar today first emerged in those terrible weeks at the UN in 1994 – these same claims shamefully repeated today by a slew of Western media, academics, lawyers, and politicians, who seek to prove that the genocide is a matter of legitimate debate rather than historical truth. 

The arguments made by the genocide deniers will be familiar to anyone who sat through a trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania where the perpetrators made every effort to establish that a second genocide took place in 1994 of Hutu, and that this had been the subject of an international cover-up. One of the oldest assertions, this was dismissed at the outset as a smokescreen to distract foreign attention from the genocide of the Tutsi. It is a recognisable tactic in genocide denial – an attempt to find moral equivalence.

In their trials, the genocidaires tried to diminish the death toll, and claimed the killing was in self-defence. These conspiracies and theories spread far beyond the courtrooms amid claims that the entire history of the genocide of the Tutsi needed to be rewritten.  

The purpose of denial is to destroy truth and memory. The denial of the genocide against the Tutsi causes the gravest offence to survivors. It denies the dignity of the deceased and mocks those who survived. The 1994 genocide of the Tutsi is not an event commemorated once a year for the survivors. For them, this is something they live with every single day in their grief, pain, and anger. For them, genocide is a crime with no end. 

Copyright: Linda Melvern

Intent to Deceive Denying the genocide of the Tutsi (London: Verso 2020).