CHAPTER 3: DURING THE GENOCIDE
3.3. Normalizing genocide
Fujii argues that the logic of genocide had to be taught in order for a large proportion of the civilian population to participate (2004, 99). Many Rwandans today say that prior to the early 1990s they were largely unaware of overt ethnic tension or worrying about ethnic identity. But in the years preceding genocide, latent fears and stereotypes were reawakened and politicians played on the divisive historical narratives described in chapter two to bring a new awareness to people of their ethnic identity. Not only did ethnic categories have to be ‘taught’, argues Fujii, but violence and killing needed to be normalized (2004, 99). She describes four ways that the genocidal government succeeded in doing this;
through repetition, through having a far reach of the general population, through having a monopoly of the discursive space, and through skillful use of evidence that lent credibility to their story (2004, 102). The following section will unpack these methods.
Des Forges suggests that the amount of repetition across different forms of media and by various politicians indicates that this propaganda campaign was deliberate and planned, although this remains a controversial point to some Hutu ideologues (1999, 80). Evidence shows that use was made of radio and newspapers, both widely accessed forms of media in Rwanda. The extremists’ radio station, Radio Te´le´vision des Mille Collines (RTLM) “turned the genocidal message into popular entertainment. Through a mixture of music, banter, jokes, and editorials, the station reinforced the genocidal message over and over again” (Fujii, 2004, 102). Similarly, extremist newspapers such as Kangura depicted obscene cartoons of opposition politicians in a way that was both humourous and hateful (Taylor, 2001, 48).
RTLM became the primary tool of communication throughout the genocide, with every roadblock barrier playing its music and announcements throughout the day.
Des Forges describes the radio station as being “like a conversation among Rwandans who knew each other well and were relaxing over some banana beer or a bottle of Primus [the local beer] in a bar. It was a conversation without a moderator and without any requirements as to the truth of what was said” (1999,
70). RTLM turned talk of genocide into everyday, normal, acceptable conversation (Fujii, 2004, 104).
Once the genocide had started, travel became difficult and many other forms of communication were completely cut off, making RTLM the only source of news and, as Des Forges stresses, “the sole authority for interpreting its meaning”
(1999, 71). Fujii highlights the fact that during times of instability or crises people tend to become more dependent on media for information and guidance, thus giving it more power than it normally would have (2004, 105). During the crises in Rwanda, as people tried to access information through RTLM, the message they were receiving was ‘kill or be killed’ (2004, 105).
Apart from creating a ‘genocidal norm’ through repetition, reach and monopoly of the media, the propaganda campaign also made use of real and staged events as
‘evidence’ for their message. The campaign’s most effective message was that the RPF were advancing, that they were cruel and dangerous and that they wanted to take over Rwanda and rule it as they once did.
“As one perpetrator confessed to journalist Bill Berkeley in June 1994: “I did not believe the Tutsis were coming to kill us and take our land, but when the government continued to broadcast that the RPF is coming to take our land, is coming to kill the Hutu—when this was repeated over and over, I began to feel some kind of fear” (Berkeley, 2002, p 74) (Fujii, 2004, 106).
The RPF’s attack across the Rwandan border in October, 1990, although unsuccesful, nevertheless became ammunition for the propaganda campaign to instill fear in the population. This occurred again when the RPF attacked in 1993, and on both occasions thousands of Tutsi within the country, usually the educated and those in power, were thrown into prison (Prunier, 1995, 93). Alongside these actual attacks, Fujii makes mention of ‘staged’ attacks or rumours of attacks, at which time the general population could ‘practice’ killing and violence could become ‘routine’. Prunier even speaks of ‘settling into a war culture’ (1995, 94).
“These massacres,” writes Fujii, “were a crucial element of the text—the genocidal story that the extremists were busy writing and making real” (2004, 108).
In this propaganda campaign, genocidaires were constantly drawing from
embedded stereotypes in the historical narratives. In section 2.4, it was mentioned that although Rwandans may have lived side by side relatively harmoniously prior to genocide, stereotyping was occurring repeatedly. At no time was this stronger than during the propaganda campaign run by the genocidaires in the months running up to the genocide. The use of stereotyping and language specifically used to create an image of Tutsi as ‘other’, alien and less than human played a significant role in influencing ordinary people to become killers.
Johan Pottier describes how propagandists constantly fell back on crucial aspects of the Hamitic hypothesis:
“The most explicit threat had come from Léon Mugesera, vice-president of the country’s former sole political party, the MRND, who in November, 1992, incited the Hutu majority to eliminate all Tutsi and everyone opposed to Habyarimana. ‘Your country is Ethiopia,’ Mugesera told Tutsi, ‘and we shall soon send you back via the Nyabarongo [river] on an express journey.
There you are. And I repeat, we are quickly getting organised to begin this work” (original quotation in Reyntjens, 1994: 119) (2001, 22).
Harrow describes how what he calls a ‘foundational fantasy’ turned ordinary people into killers. This fantasy included the core idea that:
“Tutsis were no longer ‘us,’ no longer ‘subjects,’ but were inyenzi
(cockroaches) that had to be stamped out. The foundational fantasy is built on the historical narrative of the oppressive Tutsi kingdom, the corvées, and with it the identification of Tutsis as ‘Hamites,’ as people from the north (Ethiopia being the favored site); they were depicted as foreigners, as others, with different blood and evil natures, even as evil satanic beings;
and this was elaborated in speeches, broadcasts, and publications” (2005, 17).
Harrow argues how shared historical narratives became rigid, divisive narratives, with a Tutsi version and a Hutu version, and that these rigid narratives forced people into distinct categories, categories that dehumanized:
“The scenes of young interahamwe butchering Tutsi women and children at various checkpoints have been often narrated so as to arouse our horror at the killers: they are drunk, stoned, inhuman. Indeed, they might have been all of the above, but instead of stopping with the simplistic notion that a man who drinks or smokes marijuana becomes a killer, we would do better to consider that what made possible the suppression of feelings that would normally inhibit such acts required the reinforcement of fantasies that functioned to turn other people into something other than humans, making them radically other, like the interahamwe themselves. The people who killed became, themselves, immune to the propositions of
intersubjectivity and shared histories, and were able to channel their fantasies into rigid channels that ended any other possibilities of energic relations with others” (2005, 17).
In fact, during the genocide there was an entire discourse developed to describe the act of killing that assisted killers in objectifying the horrific acts they were partaking in. Darryl Li's analysis of radio propaganda shows how the RTLM repeatedly described the killing with work euphemisms, relating the killings to community service, which normally involved cleaning the vegetation alongside roads (2004, 11). Taylor describes how the killers would speak of clearing away the ‘tall trees’, which played on the stereotype of Tutsi height. The nation-state was referred to as a garden and people were to clear the ‘weeds’, and not just the
‘tall weeds’ but also the ‘shoots’, which referred to the children (Taylor, 2001, 142).
Apart from objectifying the ‘work’ of killing, there was a different kind of identity game going on in unifying all Hutu for this ‘work’. Li describes how the RTLM continuously made reference to Hutu as rubanda nyamwinshi which referred to their ethnic majority status in the country, and how all Hutu needed to stand together against the common enemy. Alison des Forges describes how the propaganda campaign depicted a picture of Tutsi ‘clannishness’, saying that Tutsi
within the country were linked to those outside (1999, 93). She quotes from the extremist magazine, Kangura:
“We began by saying that a cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly. It is true. A cockroach gives birth to another cockroach...The history of Rwanda shows us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same; that he has never changed. The malice, the evil are just as we knew them in the history of our country. We are not wrong in saying that a cockroach gives birth to another cockroach. Who could tell the difference between the Inyenzi who attacked in October 1990 and those of the 1960s? They are all linked...their evilness is the same. The unspeakable crimes of the Inyenzi of
today...recall those of their elders: killing, pillaging, raping girls and women, etc.” (1999, 83).