Truth and denial in post-genocide Rwanda

Abstract: 

In post-genocide Rwanda, several criminal offences on ‘genocide denial’ and ‘genocide ideology’ have seen the light. Such criminal laws are not unique in history: Holocaust denial is still a criminal offence in several European countries, whereas France has just enacted legislation to criminalise denial of the Armenian genocide (and in Turkey, one can be prosecuted for the opposite – acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide). In post-conflict situations the truth may be so sensitive that free expression is overruled by the wish to enable a smooth transition to peace and democracy.

Criminalising genocide denial can be viewed as one of the means to achieve the goal of ‘truth-finding’ in post-conflict societies (though they may be connected to other transitional justice goals such as reconciliation), as a means to fix an official truth and thus enable acknowledgment. In this sense denial laws are connected to other transitional justice mechanisms engaged with the goal of truth-finding, such as national or international criminal trials, community justice mechanisms and truth and reconciliation commissions. Yet the notion of truth-finding has many aspects (see the South-African TRC, which distinguished four types of truth) and after a conflict many dimensions of the truth can appear. Denial laws are particularly interesting in this regard: they may work to construct a certain ‘truth’ about the genocide while outlawing other versions of history. This presentation – which is based on a literature review and a short study tour to Rwanda – delves into the way denial laws have developed in Rwanda and what discussions they have provoked.