If there is one journalist and author who is famous among the killers of Genocide against the Tutsi memory, it is a Cameroonian by the names of Charles Onana. His continued denial of the Genocide Against the Tutsi has evolved into an elaborate framework that goes beyond simple revisionism. Arguments in his 2019 book, Rwanda: The Truth about Operation Turquoise, is an attempt to reshape history, absolve the genocidaires, and recast the perpetrators as victims in a distorted narrative.
Such denialism, while seemingly based on a selective use of evidence and reinterpretation of historical events, reveals a deeper intellectual pathology. Serge Dupuis in his critique of Onana’s book published in August 2020, likened the work to a form of mental hemiplegia syndrome—a condition where one is incapable of seeing or acknowledging a whole part of the truth.
Mental hemiplegia, as applied here, denotes to Onana's selective blindness to crucial facts about the Genocide Against the Tutsi. While hemiplegia typically signifies physical paralysis on one side of the body, in Onana’s case, this condition manifests as a cognitive inability to recognize one side of the historical and moral reality of the genocide.
Onana boldly argues that the Genocide Against the Tutsi was not a premeditated act but a violent struggle for power. This assertion flies in the face of the substantial evidence presented by scholars, survivors, and international courts, which demonstrate how the Hutu-led government meticulously organized the genocide. His denialism is not merely an scholarly error; it is a deliberate attempt to exonerate those responsible for the mass murder of over one million people.
Onana's selective reading of historical events extends to his portrayal of the role of the French military during Operation Turquoise. The French government’s involvement, widely criticized for its failure to prevent the slaughter and for shielding genocidaires, is dismissed by Onana. Instead, he attempts to depict France’s intervention as a humanitarian effort sabotaged by the RPF, thus flipping the narrative on its head. Such reinterpretation fails to address the well-documented complicity of French forces in enabling the retreat of Hutu extremists into what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where they regrouped as the FDLR (Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda) and continue to threaten regional security.
This mental hemiplegia is most evident in Onana's insistence that there was no clear plan by the Hutu-led government to exterminate the Tutsi population. He consistently downplays the role of extremist propaganda, the mobilization of militias, and the systematic dehumanization of the Tutsi as cockroaches—clear indicators of genocidal intent. Instead, he adopts the language and narratives of those who planned and executed the genocide, echoing their claims that it was a spontaneous act of self-defense against the RPF. By doing so, he perpetuates harmful narratives that fuel ongoing ethnic hatred and tensions in the Great Lakes region.
Onana’s denialism aligns with a broader pattern seen among other genocide deniers who aim to shift the burden of guilt from the perpetrators to the victims. He often frames his arguments as a quest for "truth” or "balance,” suggesting that the widely accepted history of the genocide is part of a grand conspiracy by the RPF and its supporters to rewrite history. This approach not only diminishes the suffering of the victims but also reinforces a dangerous form of historical revisionism that seeks to undermine the legal and moral consensus that emerged after the genocide.
The cognitive paralysis exhibited by Onana is dangerous because it not only distorts historical understanding but also emboldens those who seek to deny or justify present-day (as what is happening in the eastern DRC) or future atrocities. His work serves as a reminder that genocide denialism is not a matter of opinion or scholarly debate—it is an extension of the genocidal ideology itself, aiming to erase the memory of the victims and exonerate the perpetrators. By refusing to engage with the full spectrum of historical evidence, Onana has placed himself firmly within a tradition of denialism that undermines the pursuit of justice.
For Onana, the narrative of a "genocide of the Tutsis" is a "dogma" imposed to discredit alternative interpretations. This language mirrors that of the genocide planners, who from the outset claimed that the narrative of a premeditated genocide was a ploy by the RPF and their international allies to justify their military conquest of Rwanda. Onana’s rejection of the term "genocide" is part of this larger effort to delegitimize the established historical facts and to cast uncertainty on the moral clarity with which the world condemns the perpetrators.
His argument that the notion of a "planned genocide" is a "scam" orchestrated by the RPF and the United States echoes the propaganda spread by the genocidal regime both during and after the killings. By shifting the attention away from the planners and perpetrators of the genocide, offers them a convenient scapegoat. This form of knowledgeable complicity provides cover for those who carried out the genocide, allowing them to avoid accountability by suggesting that the true story is more complex, or that the victims were merely pawns in a larger geopolitical game.
Onana’s claim that the ICTR prosecutor could not produce evidence of a genocide plan is factually inaccurate—but it serves the same purpose as the denials issued by the genocide’s architects. By questioning the legitimacy of the ICTR’s work and implying that the tribunal relied on "judicial notice" rather than concrete evidence, Onana creates a smokescreen that allows the perpetrators to claim that they have been unfairly targeted by a biased international system. This is a classic tactic of genocide denial: when confronted with overwhelming evidence, the denier pivots to questioning the motives and methods of those presenting the evidence, rather than engaging with the facts themselves.
Deflecting Responsibility
The most disturbing aspect of Onana’s denialism is the way it aligns him ideologically with the very perpetrators of the genocide he claims did not occur. His refusal to acknowledge the genocide, combined with his framing of the RPF as the true aggressors, places him firmly in the camp of those who seek to absolve the genocidaires of their crimes. This intellectual alignment with the genocidal regime is not merely a theoretical exercise—it has real-world consequences.
The denial of the genocide is not a harmless academic or journalistic exercise; it is a form of violence in itself, as it seeks to erase the suffering of the victims and vindicate the criminals. His rejection of the genocide as a premeditated atrocity and his reframing of the events as a power struggle serve to obscure the reality of the crime committed in 1994. By providing intellectual support for the deniers of the genocide— it is an active attempt to rewrite the past in a way that absolves the perpetrators of their responsibility. In doing so, he undermines the pursuit of justice and the memory of the victims, while emboldening those who continue to espouse genocidal ideologies.
This alignment with the planners’ and perpetrators’ thinking serves a crucial role in their continued effort to evade accountability, distort history, and confuse the international community about the true nature of the events.
Alignment with genocidaires
The genocide planners, primarily from the Hutu-Power fanatical faction, were meticulous in framing their actions as legitimate defense against a supposed Tutsi threat. In the years leading up to the genocide, state-sponsored propaganda was deployed to dehumanize Tutsis, portraying them as enemies of the state. This narrative served to justify the mass extermination of the Tutsi population.
Onana’s arguments closely mirror this mindset. By framing the genocide as a "conquest of power" rather than a premeditated attempt to annihilate a group of people, Onana taps into the original justifications used by the genocidaires. His work is a logical extension of the genocidaires’ efforts to erase the gravity of their crimes by framing the violence as a mere consequence of civil war and power struggles.
The notion that the Genocide Against the Tutsi was merely a side-effect of war or a political conflict, is central to how the perpetrators have sought to explain away their actions. Onana's narrative similarly shifts the focus from ethnic extermination to a political battle, effectively excusing the systematic killings as collateral damage in a broader context of warfare. This deliberate confusion between genocide and civil war obscures the reality that the killings were targeted, planned, and aimed explicitly at eliminating the Tutsi population. Onana’s revisionist views offer a sanitized, exculpatory narrative for the perpetrators.
The Hutu Power architects of the genocide, including leaders of the interim government and military, have consistently argued that there was no centrally coordinated plan to exterminate the Tutsi. Instead, they argue that the violence was spontaneous or a reaction to the RPF invasion.
Onana echoes this position when he claims that there was no "plan for genocide" and when he dismisses the idea that the Hutu regime deliberately orchestrated the mass killing of Tutsis. By casting doubt on the intent behind the killings, Onana helps to validate the genocidaires’ defense that they were not attempting to eradicate an ethnic group but were merely involved in a power struggle. This defense has been used in trials at both the ICTR and local courts in Rwanda by those accused of orchestrating and carrying out the genocide. Onana’s denial of intent is a powerful tool in aiding the perpetrators' attempts to rewrite history and avoid accountability.
Denial as a Weapon of Mass Confusion
A crucial aspect of Onana’s narrative is his effort to confuse the international community about the events in Rwanda. The genocide planners themselves used similar tactics during the early stages of the genocide. They framed their actions as a legitimate response to an RPF invasion, seeking to blur the lines between genocide and war to create confusion about the nature of the conflict. This tactic delayed international intervention and helped the genocidaires continue their campaign of extermination for months.
Another crucial element of Onana’s denialism is his attempt to establish moral equivalence between the Hutu extremists and the RPF. By framing the events of 1994 as a simple "conquest of power," Onana erases the moral distinctions between the genocidaires, who systematically sought to exterminate the Tutsi population, and the RPF, which intervened to stop the killings. This tactic of moral equivalence was employed by genocidaires to justify their actions during the genocide, and it remains a core element of their post-genocide defense.
Onana's portrayal of the genocide as a power struggle rather than an atrocity with clear victims and perpetrators distorts the moral clarity of the events. He positions the RPF as aggressors and downplays the genocidaires' role in orchestrating mass slaughter, essentially spinning the narrative to present both sides as equally responsible for the violence. This equalization of responsibility undermines the truth that the genocide was a state-sponsored, planned campaign aimed at the Tutsi population, a campaign that only ended when the RPF took control of Kigali and stopped the killing.
Onana’s work echoes this deflection of responsibility by suggesting that the RPF, rather than the genocidaires, is to blame for the violence. His narrative positions the RPF not as a force that ended the genocide but as a group seeking to seize power, thus shifting the blame away from those responsible for the extermination campaign.