Capitalism is violence: Rwanda 1994 Part 1
libcom.org (blog) - 17 hours ago
The common story that people know about Rwanda in 1994 is taken from
this book and is summed up by a couple of paragraphs on the book's
first page.
Quote:
In the thirteen weeks after April 6, 1994, at least half a million
people perished in the Rwandan genocide, perhaps as many as three
quarters of the Tutsi population. At the same time, thousands of Hutu
were slain because they opposed the killing campaign and the forces
directing it.1
Des Forges goes on to write that,
Quote:
This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to
foster hatred and to keep itself in power.2
This is the most commonly held belief about Rwanda 1994, but there is
a lot of info out there that would suggest that this story is
completely wrong.
In Leave None to Tell the StoryDes Forges goes on to write,
Quote:
The necessary data have not been gathered but speculation about death
tolls continues anyway, usually informed more by emotion than by
fact.3
One of the main catalysts driving Des Forges to write Leave None to
Tell the Story
was her desire to see Rwandans tried in the International Criminal
Court for their participation in the genocide. It is by now pretty
clear that she and others at HRW produced data "informed more by
emotion than by fact."
First of all the numbers Des Forges bases her assumptions on are
fabrications. Des Forges does not provide a citation for the statistic
of 500,000 Tutsi killed but Professors Allan Stam of the University of
Michigan and Christian Davenport of the University of Notre Dame
believe the statistic comes from HRW specialist William Seltzer.
Seltzer, writes that 800,000 Rwandans were killed in 1994, 500,000 of
them Tutsi. Stam and Davenport, who were working to create a
statistical analysis to detail the scale and location of killings in
Rwanda during 1994, questioned Seltzer asking him how he came up with
this statistic. Seltzer replied,
Quote:
the figure 'more than 500,000' was modeled on the notion that the
estimate of 'about' or 'at least' 6,000,000 died in the Holocaust was
sufficient for the Nuremburg prosecution.
I can no longer recall why I settled on 500,000 as the lower anchor of
my estimate
So apparently the numbers were created so that Rwandans could be
prosecuted for the killings and have no basis in reality.
4
So how many people did die? The Tutsi survivor support network Ibuka,
which is composed of refugees from the conflict, estimates that
345,170 Tutsi were killed. Davenport and Stam after years of research
and time spent in Rwanda have found that most likely upwards of 1
million people were killed.
5 Yes it is true that Des Forges writes that "moderate" (an extremely
misleading term) Hutu were killed during this period, but if this was
a straight up genocide against the Tutsi then how is it that almost
all of the people killed were Hutu? Were the 700,000 other Hutu who
died all "moderate" Hutu? That is very dubious, and in addition Des
Forges writes only that "thousands" of "moderate Hutu" were killed,
not 700,000.
So we can confidently throw out part of Des Forges' story of the
genocide, that it was almost all Tutsi being killed, and that some
much smaller number of "moderate Hutu" were also killed. But what
about her contention that,
Quote:
This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to
foster hatred and to keep itself in power.?
This is also doubtful. In the years leading up to 1994, the elite of
Rwanda was facing massive social unrest. Thanks to the efforts of
international development agencies such as the World Bank, Rwanda was
the poorest country in the world, and its citizenry was well aware of
the magnitude of corruption taking place amongst the ruling political
party, the MRND. Peter Uvin writes in
Aiding Violence : The Development Enterprise in Rwanda,
Quote:
By the 1990s, the legitimacy of the elite was very low: it was
generally seen as a corrupt, distant group, interested primarily in
self-preservation and enrichments. Thus, contrary to a widespread
vision of Rwandese peasants as obedient executioners of orders from
above--even if these orders involved killing their neighbors--they
should be seen, like all people, as independent actors, facing
constraints, to be sure, but capable of making decisions.
6
This summary of the situation from Uvin seems in line with the fact
that the majority of people killed, by a good margin, were Hutu. The
elite was endlessly fostering hatred of the Tutsi ethnic group, but
almost all of the people killed were Hutu. Combine this with the
atmosphere of civil unrest in the lead up to 1994 and it seems very
doubtful that all of the killings, or even most of the killings in
1994 were orchestrated or instigated by a small elite. Rather as I
will explain in subsequent articles, it seems that Rwandans killed
each other in order to be able to feed themselves and their families
or for reasons similar to this. In addition, if we want to find
someone to blame for the killing, as Des Forges and HRW wanted to, we
should look no further than Washington DC. That is where the World
Bank is headquartered. Of course, HRW is a liberal organization based
in America where prisons are for people of color. Rwandans are most
definitely not white, but there are plenty of white World Bank
employees, and all World Bank employees promote the interests of
capital, we can see why one group is put on trial and another is not.
1. Forges, Alison Liebhafsky. "Introduction." In "Leave none to tell
the story": genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch ;, 1999.
1.
2. ibid
3. Forges, Alison Liebhafsky. "Leave none to tell the story": genocide
in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch; 1999.
4. Stam, Allan. "Understanding the Rwandan Genocide." Lecture, from
University of Michigan Ford Center for Political Studies, Ann Arbor,
February 1, 2009.
5. ibid
6. Uvin, Peter. "Political and Economic Crises and Radicalization of
Society." In Aiding violence: the development enterprise in Rwanda.
West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998. 68.
Posted By Soapy
Jun 12 2014 19:51
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