Abstract
In 1994, Hutu Power extremists in Rwanda attempted to exterminate the nation’s ethnic Tutsi minority. Subsequently, Rwanda’s post-genocide government established a comprehensive transitional justice program, including memory laws aimed at combatting genocide denial. This chapter outlines the evolution of Rwanda’s memory laws, including their creation from 1994 to 2000; the emergence of a Rwandan official narrative from 2000 to 2010; and efforts since 2010 to internationalize the government’s label of “the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi”. Our analysis reveals the increased politicization of Rwanda’s memory laws, the impacts of which we explore via two high-profile figures—gospel singer, Kizito Mihigo, and politician Victoire Ingabire—whose transgressions illustrate the potential challenges of Rwanda’s memory laws, with relevance for other genocide-affected contexts.
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Notes
- 1.
“Kizito Mihigo: The Rwandan gospel singer who died in a police cell,” BBC World News, February 29, 2020, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51667168, accessed August 20, 2021.
- 2.
David Mwambari, “Music and the politics of the past: Kizito Mihigo and music in the commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,” Memory Studies 13.6 (2020): 1322. For a historically rigorous overview of the 1994 Rwandan genocide grounded in intensive qualitative research across the country, see the work of historian Alison Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999).
- 3.
Alison Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story; André Guichaoua, From war to genocide: Criminal politics in Rwanda, 1990–1994 (Madison, WI: Wisconsin UP, 2015). For more regarding the debate that surrounds the number of Tutsi who were disappeared and/or murdered during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, see the work of international relations scholar Jens Meierhenrich, who provides an overview of academic estimates since the genocide—ranging from 500,000 to 800,000 Rwandan civilians—in comparison with the over one million Tutsi victims currently recognized by the Rwandan government. Jens Meierhenrich, “How many victims were there in the Rwandan genocide? A statistical debate,” Journal of Genocide Research 22.1 (2020): 72–82. See also National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG) (2020) for background of the Genocide against the Tutsi, https://cnlg.gov.rw/index.php?id=80. Additionally, in the years immediately preceding the civil war, many Rwandans were also struggling to resist divisions associated with a period of serious economic decline, growing dissatisfaction with Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana’s regional favoritism and corruption, and related stressors, though the emergence of the Hutu Power movement is explicitly associated with the period immediately following the start of the civil war. (See Lee Ann Fujii, Killing neighbors: Webs of violence in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Jean Paul Kimonyo, Rwanda’s Popular Genocide: A Perfect Storm (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016); Omar McDoom, “Rwanda’s ordinary killers: Interpreting popular participation in the Rwandan genocide,” Crisis States Programme, December 2005, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28153/1/wp77.pdf, accessed August 20, 2021.
- 4.
For more on Rwanda’s broader transitional justice program, see the work of theologist Richard Benda, “Promising generations: from intergenerational guilt to Ndi Umunyarwanda,” Rwanda Since 1994: Stories of Change, eds. Hannah Grayson and Nicki Hitchcott (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2019): 189–210, anthropologists Kristin Doughty, Remediation in Rwanda: grassroots legal forums (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) and Laura Eramian, Peaceful Selves: Personhood, Nationhood, and the Post-Conflict Moment in Rwanda (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018); former Prosecutor General of Rwanda Gerald Gahima, Transitional Justice in Rwanda: Accountability for Atrocity (London: Routledge, 2013); conflict studies scholar Andrea Purdeková, Making Ubumwe: Power, State, and Camps in Rwanda’s Unity-building Project (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015) and “Building a Nation in Rwanda? De-ethnicisation and its Discontents,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 8.3 (2008): 502–523; development studies expert Molly Sundberg, Training for Model Citizenship: An Ethnography of Civic Education and State-Making in Rwanda (Cham: Springer, 2016); political scientist Susan Thomson, Whispering truth to power: Everyday resistance to reconciliation in postgenocide Rwanda (Madison, WI: Wisconsin UP, 2013); and the edited volume by political scientists Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf, Remaking Rwanda: State building and human rights after mass violence, eds. Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf (Madison, WI: Wisconsin UP, 2011), among others.
- 5.
Susan Thomson, Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018) 13–14.
- 6.
Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2009) 3.
- 7.
David Mwambari, Barney Walsh, and ’Funmi Olonisakin, “Women’s overlooked contribution to Rwanda’s state-building conversations,” Conflict, Security & Development 21.4 (2021): 475–499. See also, Wouter Reggers, Valérie Rosoux, and David Mwambari, “In Memory of Peacekeepers: Belgian Blue Helmets and Belgian Politics.” International Peacekeeping (2022): 1–24.
- 8.
There is substantial debate regarding which party to the conflict was responsible for Habyarimana’s assassination. Most notably, the current government of Rwanda maintains that a cohort of Hutu Power extremists close to Habyarimana’s wife, Agathe Kanziga, were responsible for his death (Erin Jessee, Negotiating genocide in Rwanda: The politics of history (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) 50; also see “Report of the investigation into the causes and circumstances of and responsibility for the attack of 06/04/1994 against the Falcon 50 Rwandan Presidential Aeroplane, registration number 9XR-NN,” Republic of Rwanda Independent Committee of Experts, https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/125423/1036_FalconReport.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021, though experts familiar with the legal investigations conducted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), among other international investigations, have concluded Habyarimana’s death was more likely orchestrated by the RPF (Guichaoua, From war to genocide, 144–145; Marc Trédivic and Nathalie Poux, “Rapport d’expertise: destruction en vol du Falcon 50,” (Paris, 2012), ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/2/93/44/38/rapport-ballist-attentat-contre-habyarimana-6-4-19-copie-1.pdf.
- 9.
See, for example, Alison Des Forges, “The ideology of genocide,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 23.2 (1995): 44–47.
- 10.
Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story; Guichaoua, from war to genocide.
- 11.
Kimonyo, Rwanda’s Popular Genocide, 4.
- 12.
Darius Gishoma, Crises traumatiques collectives d’ihahamuka lors des commémorations du génocide des Tutsi: Aspects cliniques et perspectives thérapeutiques, Unpublished PhD, Université de Louvain (2014) 13.
- 13.
Rémi Korman, “Le Rwanda face à ses morts ou les cimetières du genocide,” Génocides et Politiques Mémorielles, ed. F. Blum, 1–4 (Paris: Centres d’histoires sociales du XXe siècle, 2011); Rachel Ibreck, “The politics of mourning: Survivor contributions to memorials in post-genocide Rwanda,” Memory Studies 3.4 (2010): 330–343.
- 14.
Catherine Newbury and David Newbury, “A Catholic Mass in Kigali: Contested Views of the Genocide and Ethnicity in Rwanda,” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africanes 33.2–3 (1999): 293.
- 15.
Newbury and Newbury, “A Catholic Mass in Kigali,” 319.
- 16.
Gishoma, Crises traumatiques collectives.
- 17.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948, 78 U.N.T.S. 276 (entered into force January 12, 1951). treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf, accessed August 20, 2021. This prohibition is grounded in the work of Polish Jewish jurist and Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, (1944) who first coined the term “genocide.” Lemkin also co-authored the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, at which point Article II defined genocide in international law as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
- 18.
Jennie E. Burnet, Genocide lives in us: Memory and Silence in Rwanda (Madison, WI: Wisconsin UP, 2012) 96; Jennie E. Burnet, “Uwilingiyimana, Agathe,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (London, 2019): 12–13. Uwilingiyimana’s efforts to end the ethnic quota system that had limited Tutsi form obtaining positions of power in the government, military and education under the governments of Habyarimana and his predecessor, Grégoire Kayibanda (r. 1962–1973) meant that the Hutu Power extremists regarded her as a key internal enemy. Hutu Power extremists murdered Uwilingiyimana on 7 April, alongside the ten Belgian UNAMIR soldiers who had been charged with her protection. Two days later an interim government was established that was composed entirely of Hutu Power extremists who quickly incited genocide across those areas of Rwanda that were not yet under RPF control (Burnet, “Uwilingiyimana, Agathe,”; Guichaoua, From war to genocide, 214–240).
- 19.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 20.
- 20.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 96; Claudine Vidal, “Les commémorations du génocide au Rwanda,” Temps modernes 613 (2001): 1–46.
- 21.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 96–97; Kimonyo, Rwanda’s Popular Genocide, 110–117.
- 22.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 98. There is an extensive body of literature on international—especially French—support for the Habyarimana government (see, for example, Guichaoua, From war to genocide, 63–64; Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (New York: Zed Books, 2000). Similarly, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was established in 1993 to oversee international efforts to enforce a peace agreement between Habyarimana’s forces and the RPF. However, this mission ultimately lacked a mandate to intervene militarily to save Rwandan lives, and so its troops became bystanders to the genocide [see, for example, Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2002).]
- 23.
Delia Wendel, Rwanda’s Genocide Heritage: Between Memory and Sovereignty (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming), 36.
- 24.
Wendel, Rwanda’s Genocide Heritage, 62. For more on the anti-Tutsi and related forms of political rhetoric and policies employed by the Kayibanda and Habyarimana governments, see the work of historian Marie-Eve Desrosiers, “Rethinking political rhetoric and authority during Rwanda’s First and Second Republics,” Africa 84.2 (2014): 199–225.
- 25.
Formerly, the Ministry of Youth, Sport, and Culture (MINISPOC). Ibreck, “The politics of mourning,” 334.
- 26.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 98; David Mwambari, The Malleability of Memory: Champions, Antagonists and Fatalists of the Master Narrative of the Genocide in Rwanda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming) 61. In future, Kwibuka ceremonies would always be organized around a theme that was intended to reflect the mood in the country and provide Rwandans with a government-approved vocabulary for talking about the genocide. Mwambari, The Malleability of Memory, 93.
- 27.
Vidal, “Les commémorations du génocide au Rwanda,” 24.
- 28.
Déogratias Bagiliyisha, “Mourning and recovery from trauma: In Rwanda, tears flow within,” Transcultural Psychiatry 37.3 (2000): 337–353; Jessee, Negotiating genocide in Rwanda, 2017, 220; Erin Jessee, “Promoting reconciliation through exhuming and identifying victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide,” Centre for International Governance Innovation Africa Initiative Discussion Paper Series 4, July 2012, www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/no4_0_0.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 29.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 101.
- 30.
This draft law was the outcome of a “three-phrase plan” to create official genocide memorials at key massacre sites that had been initiated by the Bizimungu government in 1995 (Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 2012, 107). This plan included the creation of memorial sites in all eleven prefectures and consecrated reburial of all remains that were recovered surrounding these sites.
- 31.
Wendel, Rwanda’s Genocide Heritage, 77–78.
- 32.
“NURC Background,” National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC), 2020, www.nurc.gov.rw/index.php?id=83. Accessed 8/21/2020.
- 33.
Mwambari, The Malleability of Memory, 87.
- 34.
“Analysis: Why Bizimungu Mattered,” BBC World News, March 23, 2000, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/688587.stm, accessed August 21, 2021; Thomson, Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace, 137. Political scientist Susan Thomson notes that Bizimungu’s resignation immediately followed a “stinging attack on parliament” during which he made “thinly veiled references to Kagame’s increasing control over the political process” and denounced several of the RPF’s most influential senior members. (Thomson, Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace, 138.)
- 35.
Sarah Watkins and Erin Jessee, “Legacies of Kanjogera: Women political elites and the transgression of gender norms in Rwanda,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 14.1 (2020): 99.
- 36.
Filip Reyntjens, “Rwanda, ten years on: From genocide to dictatorship,” African Affairs 103 (2004): 181; Kimonyo, Rwanda’s Popular Genocide, 159–162.
- 37.
Danielle Beswick, “Managing dissent in a post-genocide environment: The challenge of political space in Rwanda,” Development and Change 41.2 (2010): 235.
- 38.
Thomson, Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace, 140.
- 39.
Reyntjens, “Rwanda, ten years on,” 180.
- 40.
Reyntjens, “Rwanda, ten years on,” 182.
- 41.
Jean Paul Kimonyo, Transforming Rwanda: Challenges on the Road to Reconstruction (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2019) 162.
- 42.
Gahima, Transitional Justice in Rwanda; Bert Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice After Genocide (Madison: Wisconsin UP, 2016).
- 43.
Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 22–23.
- 44.
“Organic Law No. 40/2000 of 26/01/2001 Setting Up Gacaca Jurisdictions and Organizing Prosecutions for Offences Constituting the Crime of Genocide or Crimes Against Humanity Committed Between October 1, 1990 and December 31, 1994,” www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain/opendocpdf.pdf?reldoc=y&docid=52f2349c4, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 45.
Kimonyo, Rwanda’s Popular Genocide, 171; “No.16/2004 of 19/6/2004: Organic Law Establishing the Organisation, Competence and Functioning of Gacaca Courts Charged with Prosecuting and Trying the Perpetrators of the Crime of, Genocide and Other, Crimes Against Humanity, Committed Between October 1, 1990 and December 31, 1994,” Official Gazette of the Republic of Rwanda, repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/4582/3677.pdf?sequence=1, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 46.
Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 25; Kimonyo, Rwanda’s Popular Genocide, 171.
- 47.
Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 5. (see also, Max Rettig, “The Sovu Trials: The Impact of Genocide Justice on One Community,” Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights After Mass Violence, eds. S. Straus and L. Waldorf (Madison: Wisconsin UP, 2011) 194–209; Susan Thomson and Rosemary Nagy, “Law, Power, and Justice: What Legalism Fails to Address in the Functioning of Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 5.1 (2011): 11–30.
- 48.
Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 22.
- 49.
Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 115.
- 50.
Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 95–96.
- 51.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 2012, 111.
- 52.
Jessee, Negotiating genocide in Rwanda, 47; Amy Sodaro, “Politics of the Past: Remembering the Rwandan Genocide at the Kigali Memorial Centre,” Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places, eds. E. Lehrer, C. Milton, and M. Patterson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 72–83.
- 53.
For a more detailed overview of the official history disseminated at the KGM and other state-funded genocide memorials in Rwanda, see Jessee, Negotiating genocide in Rwanda, 45–80.
- 54.
Genocide Archive of Rwanda (2015), genocidearchiverwanda.org.rw/index.php?title=Welcome_to_Genocide_Archive_Rwanda, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 55.
“National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG): Overview,” Republic of Rwanda. (2021), cnlg.gov.rw/index.php?id=10, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 56.
Law No. 09/2007 of 16/02.2007, “On the Attributions, Organisation, and Functioning of the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG),” cnlg.gov.rw/fileadmin/templates/documents/Law_establishing_CNLG.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 57.
Law No. 18/2008 of July 23, 2008, “Relating to the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Ideology,” www.refworld.org/pdfid/4acc9a4e2.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021. The new genocide ideology law built upon a 2001 law that criminalized discrimination and sectarianism (Republic of Rwanda 2001b). Indeed, human rights scholars Lars Waldorf (2009, 109) notes that prior to 2008, offending Rwandans were prosecuted on charges of genocide ideology even though the government had not yet created a law to define what this term meant.
- 58.
Martin Ngoga, “Why Rwanda Need the Law Repressing Genocide Denial and Ideology,” Umuvugizi, June 4, 2011, umuvugizi.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/why-rwanda-needs-the-law-repressing-genocide-denial-and-ideology/, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 59.
See for example, Lonzen Rugira, “Genocide against the Tutsi has passed moral, legal, and political tests,” The New Times, April 16, 2020, www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/genocide-against-tutsi-has-passed-moral-legal-and-political-tests, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 60.
Gretchen Baldwin, “Constructing Identity through Commemoration: Kwibuka and the Rise of Survivor Nationalism in Post-Conflict Rwanda,” Journal of Modern African Studies 57.3 (2019): 11. A week of events from 7 to 14 April that corresponds with the most intense period of murders during the genocide are intended to encourage Rwandans to reflect on the three months of ethnic violence that overwhelmed their nation in 1994, and so people are expected to eschew non-Kwibuka events. After this week, the situation in Rwanda is less somber as people return to their regular activities, though technically Kwibuka events continue until 17 July of each year to mark the approximately 100 days of the genocide.
- 61.
“Rwanda: Safer to stay silent: The chilling effect of Rwanda’s laws on ‘genocide ideology’ and ‘sectarianism’,” Amnesty International, August 31, 2010, 7. www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/36000/afr470052010en.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 62.
David Mwambari, “Agaciro, vernacular memory, and the politics of memory in post-genocide Rwanda,” African Affairs 120.481 (2021): 611–628. “Rwanda: Safer to stay silent: The chilling effect of Rwanda’s laws on ‘genocide ideology’ and ‘sectarianism’,” Amnesty International, August 31, 2010, 8. www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/36000/afr470052010en.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 63.
Jessee, Negotiating genocide in Rwanda, 12; see also, “Tony Blair defends Rwanda’s role in DR Congo,” BBC World News, February 27, 2013, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21608906, accessed August 21, 2021; “20 minutes with Bill Clinton—up against ‘big poppa’,” BBC World News, August 12, 2013, www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-23632845, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 64.
Rachel Ibreck, “A Time of Mourning: The Politics of Commemorating the Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda,” Public Memory, Public Media and the Politics of Justice, eds. P. Lee and P. Thomas (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 103.
- 65.
Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 128.
- 66.
“World Report 2013: Rwanda,” Human Rights Watch, 2013, www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/rwanda#, accessed August 21, 2021. The 2013 proposed revisions to Rwanda’s genocide ideology law ultimately did not pass, while the 2018 proposed revisions have now passed parliament. However, the 2008 law and definition currently remains in force (Eugène Kwibuka, “Parliament passes law against genocide ideology,” The New Times, July 12, 2018, www.newtimes.co.rw/news/parliament-law-genocide-ideology, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 67.
Baldwin, “Constructing Identity through Commemoration,” 10.
- 68.
Jessee, Negotiating genocide in Rwanda, 87–88.
- 69.
Annalisa Bolin, “Dignity in Death and Life: Negotiating Agaciro for the Nation in Preservation Practice at Nyamata Genocide Memorial, Rwanda,” Anthropological Quarterly 92.2 (2019): 345–374.
- 70.
Annalisa Bolin, “Imaging Genocide Heritage: Material Modes of Development and Preservation in Rwanda,” Journal of Material Culture 25.2 (2020): 200; see also, “Sites mémoriaux du génocide: Nyamata, Murambi, Bisesero et Gisozi,” UNESCO World Heritage Centre (2012), whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5753/, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 71.
It is important to note that in doing so, the UN also encourages participants to acknowledge the Hutu and Twa who died in opposition to the genocide. See, for example, “General Assembly Designates 7 April International Day of Reflection on 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda, Amending Title of Annual Observance,” United Nations: Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, January 26, 2018, www.un.org/press/en/2018/ga12000.doc.htm, accessed August 21, 2021; and David Mwambari, ‘Emergence of Post-Genocide Collective Memory in Rwanda’s International Relations’, in Elijah Nyaga Munyi, David Mwambari, and Aleksi Ylönen (eds), Beyond history: African agency in development, diplomacy and conflict resolution (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2020), 119–34.
- 72.
Julius Bizimungu, “How significant is Belgium’s move to criminalise genocide denial?” The New Times, April 10, 2019, www.newtimes.co.rw/news/how-significant-belgiums-move-criminalise-genocide-denial, accessed August 21, 2021; Lisa Bradshaw, “Belgium to pass law that makes denial of genocide illegal,” The Bulletin, August 4, 2019, www.thebulletin.be/belgium-pass-law-makes-denial-genocide-illegal, accessed August 21, 2021. In addition to the scholarly concerns with adopting this label in official discourse, the Belgian government has been heavily criticized by other Belgium-based genocide survivors organizations in Belgian who wish to see a failure to properly recognize and label the genocides that resulted in their displacement from their home nations similarly reinforced in domestic laws (“Belgium implements EU ban on genocide denial; Stirs up controversy,” AGBU Europe (2019), agbueurope.org/controversy-over-belgiums-implementation-of-eu-ban-on-genocide-denial/, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 73.
Jeune Afrique, “Rwanda/France: Journalist Natacha Polony on trial for genocide,” The Africa Report, December 17, 2020, www.theafricareport.com/55509/rwanda-france-journalist-natacha-polony-tried-for-genocide-denialism/, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 74.
Baldwin, “Constructing Identity through Commemoration,” 3.
- 75.
For example, Nkubito died under mysterious circumstances in 1997, after having made a name for himself as a human rights champion opposed to the RPF’s increased reliance on human rights violations to consolidate their power across Rwanda (Timothy Longman, “Limitations to political reform: The undemocratic nature of transition in Rwanda,” Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights After Mass Violence, eds. S. Straus and L. Waldorf (Madison: Wisconsin UP, 2011) 29. Newbury and Newbury argue, “his death and his silenced voice represent the marginalized—and precarious—position of political moderates, in a highly politicized atmosphere.” (Newbury and Newbury, “A Catholic Mass in Kigali,” 318).
- 76.
Mwambari, “Music and the politics of the past,” 1326.
- 77.
Mwambari, “Music and the politics of the past,” 1327.
- 78.
Mwambari, The Malleability of Memory, 174.
- 79.
Translations of Mihigo’s lyrics are provided by David Mwambari (see also, Mwambari, “Music and the politics of the past,” 1328).
- 80.
Mwambari, “Music and the politics of the past,” 1329; Burnet, Genocide lives in us, 111; Straus 2019.
- 81.
Mwambari, “Music and the politics of the past,” 1330.
- 82.
“Rwanda’s Kizito Mihigo and Cassien Ntamuhanga arrested,” BBC World News, April 14, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-27028206, accessed August 21, 2014.
- 83.
“Kizito Mihigo: The Rwandan gospel singer who died in a police cell,” BBC World News, February 29, 2020, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51667168, accessed August 20, 2021; “Rwanda musician Kizito Mihigo admits opposition RNC contact,” BBC World News, November 7, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29951677, accessed August 21, 2021; “We will force you to confess: Torture and unlawful military detention in Rwanda,” Human Rights Watch (2017): 41, www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/rwanda1017_web_0.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 84.
“Rwanda: Shocking death of gospel singer in custody must be effectively investigated,” Amnesty International, February 17, 2020, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/02/rwanda-shocking-death-of-gospel-singer-in-custody-must-be-effectively-investigated/, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 85.
“Kizito Mihigo: The Rwandan gospel singer who died in a police cell,” BBC World News, February 29, 2020, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-51667168, accessed August 20, 2021.
- 86.
Victoire Ingabire, “Unity and reconciliation speech at Gisozi Genocide Memorial Centre,” 2010, www.victoire-ingabire.com/Eng/victoires-quotes/, accessed August 21, 2021.
- 87.
There is a growing body of literature that highlights acts of rescue and resistance during the genocide (see, for example, Jennie E. Burnet, “Cultivating Empathy and Coexistence Testimony about Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide,” Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence: Imagination, Empathy, and Resilience, eds. E. Zucker and L. McGrew (Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 2020) 125–148; Paul Conway, “Righteous Hutus: Can stories of courageous rescuers help in Rwanda’s reconciliation process?” International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 3.7 (2011): 217–223; Nicole Fox and Hollie Nyseth Brehm, “’I Decided to Save Them’: Factors That Shaped Participation in Rescue Efforts during Genocide in Rwanda,” Social Forces 96.4 (2018) 1625–1648), as well as the possibility of Rwandans simultaneously acting as killers and rescuers, among other complicating experiences of the genocide (see, for example, Giorgia Donà, “’Situated Bystandership’ During and After the Rwandan Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 20.1 (2018): 1–19; Lee Ann Fujii, “Rescuers and killer-rescuers during the Rwanda genocide: Rethinking standard categories of analysis,” Resisting Genocide: The Multiple Forms of Rescue, eds. J. Sémelin, C. Andrieu, and S. Gensburger (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011): 145–157; Erin Jessee, “On the margins: Role-shifting in atrocity crimes,” The Oxford Handbook on Atrocity Crimes, eds. B. Holá, H. Nyseth Brehm, and M. Weerdesteijn (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2021).
- 88.
See, for example, “Justice in jeopardy: The first instance trial of Victoire Ingabire,” Amnesty International, March 25, 2013, www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr47/001/2013/en/, accessed August 21, 2021; Human Rights Watch. (2012). “Rwanda: Eight-year sentence for opposition leader,” Human Rights Watch, October 30, 2012, 26, www.hrw.org/news/2012/10/30/rwanda-eight-year-sentence-opposition-leader, accessed August 21, 2021.
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“Rwanda: Safer to stay silent: The chilling effect of Rwanda’s laws on ‘genocide ideology’ and ‘sectarianism’,” Amnesty International, August 31, 2010, www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/36000/afr470052010en.pdf, accessed August 21, 2021.
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Jessee, E., Mwambari, D. (2022). Memory Law and the Duty to Remember the “1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi” in Rwanda. In: Barkan, E., Lang, A. (eds) Memory Laws and Historical Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94914-3_12
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