Why the West cannot forgive the RPF for stopping the Genocide Against the Tutsi

The West has ensured that “Never Again” does not apply to all. By so doing, it has left no choice to those who find themselves outside its protection, but to do what it takes to remain alive.

After the Second World War, the West established a moral and institutional framework expressing solidarity with the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. In contrast, where the Genocide against the Tutsi is concerned, the West’s attitude towards the victims and survivors does not show the same clarity. The same crime, different responses. Why?

In the aftermath of the war against Nazi Germany, the West built a consensus around the uniqueness of the crime committed against the Jews – a crime like no other. Genocide was defined as a threat to humanity.

Solidarity with survivors, and Jews more broadly, manifested through the Nuremberg Trials to deliver justice, the establishment of the state of Israel and commitment to its protection and preservation, criminalisation of Holocaust denial and its minimisation, and acceptance of the idea of reparations for survivors and their payment.

Most significantly, the West led efforts to draft the Genocide Convention – an instrument to ensure such a heinous crime could never be repeated. From this, the civil society mantra of “Never Again” was born.

The Convention codified the uniqueness of genocide, underpinned by two core facts. First, that the state entrusted with the protection of its citizens can turn on a predefined group with the intent to annihilate them. Second, that once a group is targeted, its members cannot escape certain death because they cannot be anything other than what the state has decreed them to be.

The UN Security Council appointed itself custodian of “Never Again”. All well and good. A civilised international community ought to demonstrate utmost solidarity with people who are targeted for extermination by the very (state) machinery meant to safeguard them.

Attitude Towards Rwanda

Before, during, and after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, the West exhibited a profound disregard for the very institutions it had created to prevent the recurrence of genocide. Worse still, it has maintained a hostile posture towards the survivors and weaponised its media to undermine, global solidarity with them.

Prior to the genocide, General Roméo Dallaire, then UN Force Commander in Kigali, sent the now-infamous cable detailing the then government’s plans to exterminate the Tutsi, complete with the location of arms which had been stockpiled for that purpose. The cable was ignored.

When the genocide began, instead of reinforcing the UN force already on the ground, the Security Council, under pressure from Western nations including the US, UK, and Belgium, withdrew troops, leaving the perpetrators free to carry out their plan without hindrance.

Similarly, the US ignored CIA warnings of impending mass killings. After the genocide got underway, Washington refused to jam the radio station (RTLM) that was inciting people to kill, telling them who to kill and even giving the locations of the targets. For the US, the perpetrators’ freedom of speech held more value than the lives of Tutsis.

As the rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) rushed to halt the massacres, and as it became clear they would succeed in toppling the genocidal regime, the UNSC succumbed to French pressure and passed a resolution authorising a French “humanitarian” intervention. France’s true intent was to reinstall the genocidal regime. When that proved untenable, French troops instead provided a safe corridor for the perpetrators to flee into what was then Zaire (now the DRC).

The international humanitarian assistance organised in the genocide’s aftermath was not directed at survivors within Rwanda, but at NGOs operating in camps in Zaire controlled by the genocidaires. There, supported by France and Mobutu’s regime, the killers reorganised and prepared to resume their “unfinished job” of exterminating the Tutsi.

The establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) initially gave survivors hope for justice. But a high-ranking official in Rwanda’s new government was quickly disabused of that notion: the tribunal, he was told, was not truly about accountability. It was set up to make it look like something had been done and to shape world opinion towards the West accordingly.

Hostility Towards the RPF

The West’s generally hostile attitude towards the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) suggests the latter committed at least three cardinal sins in the eyes of Western powers.

First, by saving Tutsis, the RPF/A assumed a role traditionally reserved for the West: humanitarianism and saving lives is supposed to be the West’s burden. It is no coincidence that since the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, a narrative has emerged that downplays Russia’s role in defeating Nazi Germany, recasting Western allies (the US, UK, and France) as the true heroes of the Second World War – and the rightful custodians of “Never Again”. Never mind France’s complicity in the Holocaust under the Vichy regime, or the US’s rejection of Jewish asylum-seekers, many of whom were later exterminated. A new mythology was required. By saving Tutsi lives, the RPF transgressed an unspoken boundary – especially egregious given it is an African movement. At issue here is the RPF’s claim to be a moral agent, which the very act of saving people bestows on those who do so. This goes against how the West has come to view itself in its interactions with the rest of the world.

Today, in relation to the conflict in the DRC, the prevailing concern in Western discourse is not the threat of genocide against Congolese Tutsi in the Kivus, as noted by the UN Special Adviser on Genocide, but whether Rwanda has troops there. Once again, accusations of moral trespass are cloaked in concerns about sovereignty and territorial integrity, even as international law allows intervention to prevent genocide when a state turns on its own people. But how dare Rwanda see itself as a custodian of “Never Again”?

Second, by refusing to outsource its citizens’ protection, the RPF-led government once again challenged the conventional (read Western) wisdom that justifies the existence of foreign military bases on African soil and western military interventions in African conflicts. The West’s conduct before, during, and after the genocide taught the RPF/A a hard truth: Africans are on their own, and must not wait for permission to act in their own defence.

Third, the RPF’s choice to build an introspective state, rejecting externally imposed prescriptions and instead reflecting on challenges and pursuing inward-looking “home-grown solutions”, has further defied Western expectations. The West’s disdain for Gacaca courts, based on the Ubuntu principle of restorative justice, illustrates this clash between a unipolar worldview and an emerging multipolar order. For Western critics, anything that contradicts their prescriptions or that is homegrown cannot possibly be valid.

Most shamefully, the West continues to conflate the Rwandan state with genocide survivors. Whether in commemorating the genocide or naming the crime, Western governments act as though such gestures, which ought to reaffirm global solidarity towards genocide survivors and commitment to “Never Again”, are mere political favours extended to the Rwandan government.

Underlying this deeply unethical position is the West’s inability to contend with a confident and assertive African nation. And with control over global media narratives, it has sown the seeds of indifference and even hostility towards genocide survivors. This has emboldened genocide deniers and allowed killers to evade justice around the world.

Obviously, the West has ensured that Never Again does not apply to all. By so doing, it has left no choice to those who find themselves outside its protection, but to do what it takes to remain alive.

In short, by undermining the very institutions designed to uphold “Never Again,” the West has created a situation where whenever those two words are uttered the appropriate question becomes: am I included? In other words, “Never Again for whom?”

@Panafrican Review / Dr Lonzen Rugira