Beginning with colonialists and missionaries, followed by the United Nations and the international community more generally, international actors have had a significant and detrimental impact on Rwanda’s national politics. Today, the role of internationals is a key component in the prevailing narrative around the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and that mnemonic formation is what we shall be examining in this chapter.¹ Importantly, we recognise the detrimental effect that international involvement has had on Rwanda in the past. However, we are interested here in how the internationals feature as a trope in current memory politics and what impact this has on the quality of peace. We argue that the creation of an enemy outside of Rwanda serves the function of forging a coherent identity in a country still heavily affected by the experience of genocide.

In the government’s explanation of the genocide, internationals feature in three ways: they are attributed responsibility for having constructed and politicised ethnic identities under colonialism; for having failed to stop the killings in 1994; and for having actively supported the genocidal regime. By blaming colonialists for instigating the ethnic divisions that led to genocidal violence, the government locates responsibility with actors outside of the country, thus significantly reducing Rwandan responsibility for the massacres (Brehm and Fox, 2017: 121; Longman, 2017: 265). Through projects of civic education, training camps and public events, this version of history and of the causes for the genocide is systematically reproduced throughout the country. It seems to be successful in influencing how Rwandans narrate their past today (Bentrovato, 2017; Brehm and Fox, 2017; Buckley-Zistel, 2006a; Longman, 2004), and is a major influence on peace because it leaves prevailing social cleavages unaddressed and obstructs an open discussion about alternative narratives as to causes and consequences of the genocide. In particular, the framing of international responsibility for the genocide precludes any critique by the international community of the current government, headed by former military leader President Paul Kagame, despite this regime’s autocratic nature. This framing explicitly emphasises that it was Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that ended the genocide, while the international community seemed indifferent.

There is a large body of literature concerning Rwanda’s memoryscape that addresses a variety of contentious issues. Most prominently, the unifying narrative of the government and its stifling of alternative memories comes in for some criticism (Buckley-Zistel, 2009; Hintjens, 2022; Longman, 2017; Thomson, 2018), and the role of various constituencies in the memorial process has been analysed (Ibreck, 2010; Viebach, 2014). In this chapter, we take a slightly different approach and zoom in on the way internationals are depicted in memory discourses. We explore how current memory practices narrate the internationals’ responsibility for genocide, and with what effect.

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda is an unprecedented example of extreme and often very intimate violence between social groups, all the way to community members and their neighbours. On 7 April 1994, after the aeroplane carrying the Hutu president Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down, a well-prepared killing machine moved into action in an attempt to extinguish all Tutsi. In just 100 days around 500,000–600,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed (Meierhenrich, 2020).² The genocide was perpetrated by Hutu militias, most notably the Interahamwe, as well as by government troops and Hutu neighbours. Most victims were killed at roadblocks, in villages and towns, at home in their gardens, or in places that had been deemed safe by Tutsi fleeing the violence such as churches, school buildings or UN compounds that were then abandoned by UN peacekeepers (Straus, 2006). They were killed with machetes, clubs, spiked nail bats, grenades or small arms. In addition, about 350,000 women were raped or subjected to other forms of sexual violence (Bijleveld et al., 2009). More than 1.6 million people, predominantly Hutu, were later found guilty of having participated in the genocide (Nyseth Brehm et al., 2014), their crimes ranging from killing or instigating killings to property crimes, in a country that had been home to about six million people at the time.

The Rwandan genocide did not occur in a vacuum, though, but in the midst of a peace process that followed a three-year-long insurgency by the RPF/A under Kagame’s leadership. At the time, the RPF/A mainly consisted of Tutsi refugees and their descendants; they had fled Rwanda after experiencing aggressive attacks during the so-called Social Revolution of 1959 and subsequent waves of violence, and now wanted to return to their homeland. As they were not granted a right to return, Tutsi forces of the RPA invaded Rwanda in 1990, starting a civil war that was only terminated by the Arusha Peace Agreement three years later. The agreement promised democratisation, power-sharing, multi-party elections and freedom of speech – all in a highly volatile situation. This opened a space for radical politics, extreme hate speech and anti-Tutsi propaganda, contributing to an atmosphere in which genocidal ideology could fester. Due to the Tutsi insurgency and the Hutu government propaganda, the society was soon deeply divided along ethnic lines, with many Hutu blaming Tutsi for the violence, and in particular framing the Tutsi in the country as being intimately connected to, and acting as spies for, the RPA. This opened the gate to indiscriminate violence against civilian Tutsi across the country.

The genocide unfolded despite a considerable international presence in the country, including the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), which had been tasked with overseeing the implementation of the Arusha Peace Accord. In the early days of the killings, many internationals left the country and the UN presence was subsequently reduced in number, in particular after Belgium decided to remove its troops following the assassination of ten of its soldiers who had attempted to protect the moderate Hutu prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana (Reggers et al., 2022). Despite the fact that the killings were carried out under the gaze of the international community, the UN did not intervene due to its restricted mandate. Furthermore, as the use of the term genocide was avoided in Security Council meetings in early 1994, the UN was able to evade any mandate to intervene within the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention. UN Security Council Resolution 918, which was intended to expand the mandate of UNAMIR in mid-May, received little support. In the end, therefore, the genocide was only stopped by the military victory of the RPA led by Kagame. Since the genocide had led many people – mainly Hutu – to flee, the UN Security Council in June authorised France to create a safe zone for humanitarian purposes, that is, to protect displaced persons and civilians at risk. Opération Turquoise was therefore established in the south-west of the country with this mandate, guarded by French and Senegalese troops. It is estimated that about 13,000–14,000 people, mainly Hutu, found refuge in the zone, yet they were not disarmed and continued the genocide even within the zone (Landgren, 1995).

After the genocide, low-intensity violence continued for several years between the RPF/A and Hutu rebel troops – mostly genocide perpetrators who had retreated and now sought to regain control – in the periphery of the country, as well as in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (Straus, 2019). Today, the country no longer experiences armed conflict, but its peace remains shallow. A deeply divided society and lingering mistrust indicate that the legacy of the genocide is still very prevalent today (see McDoom, 2022). Kagame and the RPF continue to rule the country, and while the Kagame government receives broad international praise for Rwanda’s strong economic development, the political climate remains illiberal and the government rules with an iron fist. Little room for dissent remains on any political issues, least of all on the topic of the genocide – for which the official version is key to the government’s legitimacy. Memory politics is profoundly affected by this and is utilised to strengthen the government’s position.

The Rwandan memoryscape

In Rwanda, as in most post-violence societies, collective memory is highly diverse and politicised. It is situated in the wider contestation of the country’s history going back to colonialism, including the questioning of whether Tutsi are ‘autochthonous’ (i.e. indigenous to Rwanda) and thus truly Rwandan (Eltringham, 2004; Pottier, 2002). Memory, or history, was at the very heart of the genocide and remains an area of intense dispute.

It is important to note that the memory of the Rwandan genocide varies considerably depending on individuals’ experiences during the violence. It is estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 Tutsi survived the genocide, about a quarter of whom were left suffering from symptoms of trauma (Rieder et al., 2013), affecting how they see the past. Survivors’ organisations have been established to guard the memory of the genocide, organise memorial events, contribute to national memorialisation and take care of some of the memorials (Ibreck, 2010; Viebach, 2020). Often this is guided by the maxim never again – as reflected in the motive of the umbrella survivors’ organisation Ibuka, which translates as ‘remember’ – which is likewise indicative of one of the essential objectives or aspirations behind remembrance: memory shall serve to prevent future violence. For many, it is thus imperative to remember. Remembrance is also a response to genocide denial amongst Rwandans inside the country and in the diaspora, and also to any tendency to relativise the atrocities through comparison with the killings of Hutu during and after the civil war.³ And yet, many survivors are dissatisfied with the space that is made available to them for remembering, as well as with how they, as survivors, are instrumentalised for political purposes by the government (Fox, 2021; King, 2010).

Regarding people who were not targeted by the genocide, that is, mainly the Hutu population, many also lost loved ones in the war or in post-genocide-related violence, while others experienced displacement or imprisonment. For them, memory often takes a different, private form. Since it is not part of the national commemoration, and may run contrary to official narratives, some feel that their suffering is not recognised. This leads to resentment and, at times, to contestation of genocide memory itself. In some cases, this goes as far as genocide denial or what has been termed the double genocide thesis, according to which the genocide against the Tutsi is put on the same level as the killings of Hutu (Jessee, 2017b). Many, mainly Hutu, argue that their memory of the events and how it affects their lives at present is excluded from the official memory, that they do not have memorials to go to, that their agony is – and by implication they as a social group are – less important. As a consequence, alternative and, most importantly, private and unofficial forms of remembrance have emerged, which sometimes collide with and contradict the national and official versions of memory (Mwambari, 2021).

It is also instructive to look at the gendered nature of remembrance. Gender-based and sexual violence against mainly women was key to the Rwandan genocide. This is something widely acknowledged in Rwanda and affects how women are portrayed in memory narratives, in that they are portrayed almost exclusively as victims. That women were also rescuers, bystanders or perpetrators is often overlooked in current memory practices (Brown, 2017; Mannergren Selimovic, 2020a).

In addition to the people who were already present during the genocide, the many Tutsi who went into exile during the so-called Social Revolution of 1959 and who have returned to Rwanda since the genocide now constitute a new demographic group with new perspectives on the genocide and its aftermath. Referred to as returnees, many tend to support the government’s line on history and subsequent politics (Jessee, 2017a) and frequently benefit from the economic and political development pursued by the RPF government.

As a consequence, even though the genocide appears rather dichotomous along the dividing line of ethnicity, there are significant differences within these groups, as well as a range of views on what and how to remember. In spite of the strong, top-down memory discourse of the government, Rwandans still have their own interpretation of the past (Jessee, 2017a: 237). Almost thirty later, the event is today transmitted intergenerationally through the way the genocide and its aftermaths are reflected upon in families and in society. Memory of the genocide is not just transmitted through memorials, commemorative events or educational initiatives, but also indirectly through socio-economic consequences that people still suffer today, such as torn family structures, the illness of parents, poverty or troubled community relations (Eichelsheim et al., 2017).

On the level of the state, memory is a top-down venture linked to the RPF-led government’s project of national unity and reconciliation based on Rwandan citizenship (Buckley-Zistel, 2006a). A discourse of national unity is promoted to reshape the identity of the parties to the conflict by referring to a common past and future. National commemorations, the rewriting of history and the revision of its teaching, as well as museums and memorials, circulate this narrative (McDoom, 2021). The function of memory politics is well expressed by the researcher and NGO activist Odeth Kantengwa (2013: 111): ‘The motive behind this remembrance has nothing to do with perpetuating feelings of hatred and vengeance. The purpose is rather to educate Rwandans and whoever might be interested in designing the better future of Rwanda.’ For the government and some memory activists, memory is thus a political project to unite and reconcile the country. As will be explored, however, this view is not shared by all.

In the national memory discourse, ‘only some civilian memories of violence are acknowledged while others are repressed’ (King, 2010) and there are a number of government institutions such as the Commission Nationale de Lutte contre le Génocide (National Commission for the Fight against Genocide, CNLG) which serve as gatekeepers. Memory law, moreover, is increasingly politicised and any transgressions reprimanded (Jessee and Mwambari, 2022).

The government has furthermore sought to deconstruct ethnic belonging by passing legislation that criminalises all mention of ethnic identity. Nonetheless, in 2007, the Constitution was amended and the word genocide replaced with ‘the 1994 Tutsi genocide’ (King, 2010). In 2014, it was changed again to ‘the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi’ (Baldwin, 2019: 356). While it seems ironic that the criminalisation of ethnic terminology that might abet divisionism does not extend to the official nomenclature given to the violent past, this dialectic is actually quite productive in the maintenance of power for the Tutsi minority leadership, without their ethnicity being overt (Baldwin, 2019). As ideology that can be alleged to promote genocide faces possible legal penalties (Russell, 2019: 15), it is impossible to tell a different story about the genocide or to challenge the government’s official narrative. ‘Never again’ as a political maxim has thus become Rwanda’s ‘narrative of redemption, renewal, self-reliance and dignity’ (Thomson, 2018: 242), rendering the ruling party the only arbiter of the country’s non-violent future.

Mnemonic formation: the internationals

Internationals – in the form of colonisers, missionaries, foreign governments, the UN or the international community more generally – form a central component of the Rwandan memory narrative, and of the one deployed by its government in particular. In this narrative, the internationals serve the function of having an outside enemy on whom some of the responsibility for violence against the Tutsi population can be placed, thus highlighting an additional facet of victimisation for the victims of genocide while not absolving the direct perpetrators of culpability.

Our focus on the internationals as a mnemonic formation serves to examine critically their deployment as a trope in memory politics. It should be noted that beyond this academic investigation, we do recognise that (neo-)colonial legacies are still prevalent all over the world, including in Rwanda. We therefore do not critically engage with the fact that Rwandan memory politics focuses on the internationals, but we are interested in how this mnemonic formation is constructed and encouraged, and to what end.

According to the government’s history discourse – as displayed in the memorial sites discussed in the next section – colonialism introduced the since-discredited ‘Hamitic hypothesis’, which argued that the Tutsi originate from northern and eastern Africa while Hutu belong to the Bantu people and constitute the indigenous population of the country. Allegedly physically resembling Europeans, Tutsi were portrayed as superior and were endowed with social and political functions, while Hutu were assigned the role of common farmers. As a consequence, over the course of history Tutsi came to be seen by Hutu not only as immigrants but rather as foreign occupants and oppressors. Importantly, the colonial administration issued identity cards which contained the ethnic identity of the carrier. As independence approached, and with the backing of Belgian missionaries, Hutu sought to overcome their political and social inferiority in the so-called Social Revolution of 1959. This brought a first pogrom against Tutsi, with repeated outbreaks of violence in 1962 and 1973. In foregrounding these developments, internationals – in the form of colonial powers and missionaries – are held accountable for having invented and polarised ethnicity in Rwanda, as well as for having instigated the first violence against Tutsi (Office of the President, 1999).

The most significant reference to internationals, however, is concerning their failure to stop the genocide while it was unfolding before their eyes. In the words of President Kagame, ‘[t]‌he UN and the international community as a whole abandoned Rwanda in 1994. … The UN’s failure to intervene in Rwanda in 1994 shook my faith, and that of most Rwandans, in the UN system and the international community generally’ (Kagame, 2008: xxi–xxii). As a consequence, a number of heads of states as well as a UN General Secretary have apologised. These apologies are often delivered at memorial sites or during memorial week in April, and shall be discussed below.

The government’s version of history is systematically and pervasively propagated across the country through history teaching and civil education programmes, and seems to have a significant impact on the way Rwandans narrate the past today. For instance, in 2000, interviewees from diverse social backgrounds did not relate the country’s past – including colonialism – to the genocide (Buckley-Zistel, 2006b; Longman and Rutagengwa, 2004); yet by 2016 individuals being interviewed mirrored the government’s version of the colonisers’ role in the construction and fixation of ethnicity. Brehm and Fox (2017) illustrate how their interviewees often held colonialists responsible for having instigated division in Rwanda, which ultimately led to genocidal violence. They conclude that ‘[b]‌y blaming colonialism, these survivors locate blame outside of Rwanda and suggest that the genocide finds its roots in a foreign institution rather than in Rwandan society itself, refuting ideas that deep-rooted hatred or long-standing problems within Rwandan society caused the violence’ (Brehm and Fox, 2017: 121).

Sites: displaying international responsibility

In Rwanda, there are around 263 memorials.⁴ National memorial culture is very active and strongly influences political and social developments by calling on people to participate in small and national commemorative events. Memory thus serves as a vehicle for forging the post-genocide nation. Reflecting the tight grip the government has on the history of the genocide, memorial sites are all similar in orientation; there are no visible counter-memorials that deviate from the national narrative about causes and consequences of the mass killing. In Rwanda there is no spontaneous, bottom-up memory movement expressed in plural and diverse sites. Instead, one finds a uniform memorial style, with a structured, top-down management and increasingly professionalised curation.

We can differentiate between local and national memorials, however. Most memorials are small, local and managed by local authorities and survivors’ groups; they often emerged at mass graves containing human remains. In contrast, national memorials are under the management of the Commission Nationale de Lutte contre le Génocide (CNLG). Each national memorial includes mass graves that contain countless coffins holding the bodies of tens of thousands of victims, mostly in underground spaces that can be visited. They all include some form of exhibition, with the simple presentation of human bones, skulls and victims’ clothes, as well as locally relevant weapons or other items (as in the sites at Nyamata, Ntarama, Nyarubuye, Nyange and Bisesero, for example). Other national memorials include full exhibitions with text, audio and video, produced in a highly professionalised manner and with a wealth of information (such as in Kigali and Murambi).⁵ All national memorials have CNLG-trained guides to show visitors around, and to provide deeper explanations about the genocide and history in general and the dynamics of the genocide in that particular region, as well as explanations on specificities of the site and the exhibition.⁶

It would go beyond the scope of this chapter to introduce all the sites in detail, so we shall zoom in on the two most prominent national memorials – the Kigali Genocide Memorial (KGM) and the Murambi Genocide Memorial – as two places where the role of the international community is discussed in considerable depth. We further discuss the memorial to the fallen Belgian soldiers and an exhibition on the RPF/A, which both take a slightly different approach while continuing to be in line with the government’s overall commemoration strategy.

The Kigali Genocide Memorial and the Murambi Genocide Memorial

In contrast to other memorials the two largest national memorials, in the capital Kigali and near the small town of Murambi in the south-west, dedicate considerable effort to explaining the causes of the genocide (Wolfe, 2020: 29) and in doing so focus on the internationals. Their exhibitions are well designed and are in line with a globalised style of sites memorialising atrocities (Björkdahl and Kappler, 2019; Sodaro, 2018: 105). Visitors are guided around the highly professional and modern exhibition space, clearly curated with both a national and particularly also an international audience in mind. At the KGM displays, objects, film, pictures and a catalogue are backed up by an audio guide available in various languages.⁷

The main national memorial centre is the KGM, located in Gisozi, Kigali, where expansive gardens alongside the centre contain the mass graves of some 250,000 victims of genocide. Its exhibition recounts the history of Rwanda leading up to the genocide and gives many details on the dynamics of the genocide and its aftermath. Besides the main exhibition space, there is also a comparative exhibition on other twentieth-century genocides and an exhibition on child victims. Archives, educational and conference facilities, a large amphitheatre used for events and a café are further features of the site.

The KGM attracts many visitors. Given its prominent position, including during commemorative events, it is unsurprising that the exhibitions’ narratives are very much in line with the official narrative of the government (Jessee, 2017a: 46–57; Mannergren Selimovic, 2013: 345). Educating visitors on the genocide is one of the central objectives of the memorial: ‘[i]‌t is through education that we can prevent mass atrocities from occurring in our communities’ (Kigali Genocide Memorial, n.d.). The KGM thus strongly invokes the notion of never again.

The largest exhibition, entitled The 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, is dedicated to explaining the history, development and scope of the genocide, and features the mnemonic formation regarding the role of internationals. Unsurprisingly, the section on colonialism is particularly prominent here. One display, for instance, shows a historic black-and-white photo of a Belgian general with the Rwandan King Mutara III Rudahigwa. The king is wearing his traditional royal costume as he engages in what appears to be a friendly, respectful conversation with the colonial administrators. The photo thus refers to the Belgian strategy of indirect rule through Tutsi leaders, and other pictures depict similar scenes. These images are stuck to a large poster wall with a group shot of five Belgian missionaries in the midst of a large group of Rwandan students, depicting the education by the Catholic Church and thus the Church’s influence on ethnic relations. We also find an identity card in the display, on the top-left corner of which is printed ‘Origine: People – Race – Muhutu’, as evidence of how the colonial authorities introduced identity cards fixing ethnic categories to individuals.⁸ Through these images, the internationals are assigned a prominent role in Rwanda’s history. By employing a colonial divide-and-rule strategy that favoured Tutsi, by mobilising Hutu against this Tutsi rule in missionary schools and by inscribing ethnicity in identity cards, the role and responsibility of internationals for creating and politicising ethnic identity is foregrounded.

Another section addresses the role of the UN: the resistance of the UN Security Council to having the killings referred to as genocide and the UN’s failure to intervene and stop the violence (see also Ibreck, 2013). We see a photo of General Roméo Dallaire, who headed the UNAMIR peacekeeping mission, in front of a group of stern-looking peacekeepers. Dallaire’s mouth is open, he is probably speaking and he looks agitated. Next to it, we see a copy of a document, a code cable, sent by Dallaire to UN Headquarters in January 1994, alerting New York that the situation in Rwanda was growing increasingly tense and that Hutu militias were being trained to carry out massacres. Visitors also see a photo of a white woman who looks as if she is fleeing the country; she is physically supported by Belgian peacekeepers while frightened Tutsi watch. A shot of French soldiers in front of a massive group of displaced persons (most likely Hutu) in the buffer zone created under Opération Turquoise adds to the depiction of the internationals as either abandoning Rwanda or aiding génocidaires.⁹ The failure of the internationals to stop the genocide, their failure to save Tutsi when at the same time they were evacuating their own people, is strongly communicated by these pictures.

The Murambi Genocide Memorial is another national site that features internationals prominently. It employs a similar strategy but focuses on the role of the French government and military instead of that of colonialism and the UN. Opened on 21 April 1995 near Murambi in the south-west of the country, it stands on the hilly grounds of a former technical college. It contains the remains of 50,000 victims who were killed at the school and in the surrounding area, still buried in mass graves.¹⁰ The exhibition is located on the ground floor of the main school building and has two separate rooms displaying some of the human remains behind smoked glass.

The French army and its Opération Turquoise based itself at Murambi Technical School from June 1994 onwards. The exhibition zooms in on the fact that as a result of this, many Tutsi were killed in the vicinity. It explains that Hutu pulling back into the area were protected by the French soldiers and continued killing with their full knowledge. Furthermore, the display mentions that there were considerable French arms sales to the extremist government in the lead up to and during the genocide, violating an arms embargo and stoking the genocidal violence (Cameron, 2015: 104). The memorial site includes a space at the top of a hill where, according to the guide, French troops placed a volleyball field next to mass graves, demonstrating their absolute lack of respect for the victims.¹¹ In this way the exhibition presents visitors not only with a strong narrative of international failure in responding to the genocide, but even with a construction of French complicity. At times, guides go as far as to suggest that French troops had ‘internalized the Hutu extremists’ genocide ideology’ (Jessee, 2017a: 70).

The Murambi Genocide Memorial is the only other national memorial with a full educational exhibition and follows ‘the same emotional template [as the KGM] with carefully designed display boards and presentations of personal stories’ (Mannergren Selimovic, 2020a: 139).¹² Some of the pictures of the internationals are the same as in Kigali but there is an additional section on Opération Turquoise. One striking, colourful image in this section is a photo of a French soldier in uniform amid a group of very poorly dressed Rwandans, including children. The shot is taken from a low position so that the people seem fairly large. The soldier is talking to the group as if he is explaining something. There is also a picture of a French military vehicle driving down a tarmac road with a group of Interahamwe militia members, armed with sticks and clubs, running alongside the vehicles in a way that could be construed as part of a military drill. This is a well-known photo, the date of which is unknown. Most likely it was not shot at Murambi, but it has acquired an iconicity within Rwanda as evidence of French complicity in the genocide and their support for the Hutu génocidaires.

The most remarkable thing about the site is the display of hundreds of victims’ bodies that have been conserved with lime, a presentation that most visitors will find visually and olfactorily disturbing. Regular treatment is necessary to preserve these mummified bodies (Viebach, 2014: 81). They lie on wooden racks, in close proximity to each other and frozen in bizarre poses; some still have rosaries or other jewellery around their necks. Some are organised by age and there is a room containing the remains of small children. Similarly to the memorials in Bosnia described in Chapter 3 and the displays of victims’ bones in Cambodia discussed in Chapter 6, the display at Murambi holds very strong affective power due to its authenticity. For visitors, both Rwandans and non-Rwandans, it is a very emotional moment (Buckley-Zistel, 2007).

This deeply disturbing display renders Murambi, as a site, a symbol for the guilt of the internationals; the bones are displayed as a material representation of their moral and political failure. The combination of pictures of international actors alongside the emotionally charged display of human remains constitutes an unmistakably strong accusation. For Longman (2017: 8):

For many survivors of the genocide, meanwhile, the display of human remains in Murambi and other memorials goes against their sense of ethics and dignity. Similarly to the KGM exhibition, there is no attribution of responsibility to Rwandans, nor is there any detailed explanation about the events that occurred in Murambi, in which 50,000 Tutsi were killed (Lisch, 2019).

Figure 4.1Murambi Genocide Memorial (anonymous photographer, August 2018)

In sum, the two memorials dedicate considerable attention to internationals (not all displays and examples can be represented here). While some sections intentionally work with affect, the sections explaining the historical development from colonialism up until the genocide are analytical in style – even though some of the images are of course very painful to look at. The images are explained in the audio guide, in texts written on panels as well as in the exhibition catalogue.

Both memorials convey ambivalent messages regarding the culpability of Hutu. On the one hand, as Amy Sodaro states, ‘there is a noticeable lack of blame ascribed to the Hutu – even extremists – or anyone else of Rwanda. Rather, the exhibit depicts a collective victimization of a Rwandan people that were torn apart by colonial forces. This is deliberate; in the effort to make sure that the museum does not threaten the fragile peace and tenuous unity among the Rwandan population’ (Sodaro, 2018: 99). Producing unity and reconciliation was the government’s strategy after the genocide, in an attempt to minimise divisions within Rwandan society and prevent new outbreaks of violence. This policy continues to some extent today. Instead of focusing inwards, which would involve blaming Hutu (individually or collectively) for the killings, the strategy was to externalise guilt and to construct an outside enemy. This was seen as carrying the best promise of internal unity.

On the other hand, though, visitors are directed by memorial staff and by posters exhibited at the sites to consider the matter of criminal accountability and complicity in the genocide. The disgrace is not only placed upon the Hutu Power extremists who orchestrated and executed the genocide, or the Hutu civilians directly involved in acts of violence. It is also placed upon the entire Hutu majority for their failure to intervene and protect their Tutsi fellow citizens. With the exception of a few commendable Hutu civilians highlighted in the KGM exhibit for their role as rescuers during the genocide, the Hutu population is condemned for allowing themselves to be manipulated by the genocidal ideology. They are criticised for their involvement in attacks or for turning a blind eye to the suffering of their Tutsi neighbours, thus aiding the killings (Jessee, 2017a: 53).

The Campaign Against Genocide Museum

Another site with similar messaging regarding the role of the internationals is the Campaign Against Genocide Museum located inside the Rwandan National Parliament. Opened in 2017, it serves to explain the RPF/A’s military campaign to liberate the country (see Kimonyo, 2019). Framed in its self-presentation online, the museum

Consisting of nine rooms, the museum uses a mix of pictures, text, wax figures and simulations to showcase the RPF/A military strategy in great detail. A picture wall with the title ‘UN abandoning genocide victims, APR [sic] rescuing them’ displays some of the same photos as are on display at the KGM, such as the one from the early days of the genocide of a white woman being rescued by the Belgian soldier, as described above. The title of the wall adjacent to it reads, ‘The role of Rwandan civilians and foreigners in the campaign against genocide’, so that those held culpable and those considered as heroes are placed right next to each other. Against the backdrop of international failures, the museum with its prominent location within parliament highlights in no uncertain terms the heroic deeds of the RPF/A. As argued by Mannergren Selimovic: ‘The militaristic theme is expressive, focusing on the heroic depiction of the military defenders, which resonates with the elevation of the Tutsi in exile who returned as saviours’ (Mannergren Selimovic, 2020a: 136).

The Belgian Peacekeepers Memorial

There is, however, one memorial in the capital’s city centre that focuses on a different group of victims. It was constructed by an international actor and is in contrast to the national museums: the Belgian Peacekeepers Memorial. This memorial was inaugurated in 2004, at a site bought by the Belgian embassy, to honour the ten Belgian soldiers who were killed under circumstances that are portrayed in the memorial as heroic. The incident took place in the first hours of the genocide while the soldiers were attempting to protect then prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The memorial is situated at an authentic site as it centres on the single-storey, bullet-sprayed building in which the soldiers died. The central room of the building has been left with the bullet and grenade holes as they were following the shooting, and two adjacent rooms house a small exhibition explaining the genocide. This features explanations about the event, as well as a diverse mix of panels on human rights, humanitarian aid, pathways into and out of genocide, and various other aspects. On a plot of land beside the building stand ten individual stone pillars, one for each of those killed. The stone is rough and uneven, dotted with dimples (possibly a reference to the bullet holes at the buildings) and each has as many slits on one side as the age of the individual soldier it is dedicated to. Even though the bodies of the soldiers were returned to Belgium, annual commemorative events take place at the memorial, attended by relatives of the killed men and dignitaries.¹⁴

This site is of particular interest in the context of the internationals in the Rwandan memoryscape as it presents a decidedly different reading of events to the other sites discussed here. It foregrounds the loss of life – the sacrifices – of individual soldiers (naming the ten victims and honouring them), but more importantly it seeks to highlight the efforts made by UN troops stationed in the country to counter the genocide, as far as they were permitted to do so by their mandate (see also Reggers et al., 2022). It thus presents a more heroic counter-narrative of UN involvement, contrasting with the version that prevails nationally – of complete international failure – as depicted at the Kigali and Murambi museums. That Belgium withdrew all troops from UNAMIR after the deaths of the ten soldiers, thus undermining the peacekeeping mission, is not presented as any kind of moral dilemma in this memorial.

Figure 4.2Belgian Peacekeeper Memorial (photograph by Timothy Williams, August 2018)

To conclude, while the national memorial sites installed following the genocide differ to some extent, they all – to varying degrees yet in very similar ways – address the aspect of responsibility of the internationals for the genocide. In contrast, the Belgian memorial is the only one that portrays Belgian soldiers as heroes and saviours. As argued above, blaming outsiders for the genocidal violence carries with it the promise of uniting Hutu and Tutsi under the guise of a joint victimhood – all Rwandans, it seems, were victims of external influence from the time of colonialism to the UN missions. This discourse, however, elides any social cleavages and conflict lines within Rwandan society itself.

Agents: national memory agents structuring international involvement

As in all conflict-affected societies, Rwandan memory politics is driven by various agents who pursue their particular views and interests. The various narratives presented are very much coloured by agents’ experience of and/or role in the genocide, which varies according to their presence in the country at the time or their absence, their gender, group identity, age and so on. Some of these agents are more powerful than others and thus more successful in determining memory politics. Some of these agents are more likely to effect or stifle change. Yet, despite the powerful role of government institutions, national memory is not monolithic. Moreover, international actors also play a role in shaping the Rwandan memoryscape, although it has been argued that they are for the most part willingly or unwittingly co-opted into the official narratives provided by the state (Straus and Waldorf, 2011: 12).

Rwandan organisations

Two Rwandan memory agents stand out: the governmental CNLG and the non-governmental Ibuka. The CNLG was created under Law 09/2007 of 16 February 2007 and was officially active by 21 April 2008. Its aim is to honour memory, tell peoples’ stories and to rebuild Rwanda (Gahongayire, 2015: 113). The CNLG coordinates all state commemoration efforts and plays a key role in shaping the state narrative and its manifestation at 263 memorial sites and during commemorative events. It is mandated to suggest the annual commemoration theme during Kwibuka, the memorial phase that starts on 7 April. The theme is then officially decided upon by the Cabinet, chaired by the president of Rwanda. It is printed on banners displayed around the country, and artists and memory entrepreneurs include it in their work (Gahongayire, 2015: 116). Selecting the topic and preparing speeches that are rolled out at local events across the country ensures a coherent narrative nationwide.¹⁵

National memorials in Kigali and beyond the capital are administered by the CNLG, which also curated the exhibitions. This is a change, since for several years after the genocide memorials were staffed by local survivors; these have now been replaced by professionally trained CNLG staff, who often have no personal connection to the site (Viebach, 2014). The rationale behind this change is to ensure that there is a coherent official narrative at each memorial site, rather than a narrative shaped mainly by the individual and personal stories of survivors.

The creation of the CNLG to oversee memorial politics and practices testifies to the importance the government attributes to memory discourses. The Commission’s mission is specifically to preserve the memory of the genocide, to promote research on the prevention of genocide and to fight against genocidal ideology. According to a CNLG officer, ‘memorials should primarily serve as clear physical evidence of the genocide for future generations, especially to prevent a diminishment or denial of the genocide’ (cited in Kantengwa, 2013: 112). As Kantengwa notes, the mandate to bring survivors and more generally Rwandans – whose ‘social relationships [were] destroyed during genocide’ – back together is also key to the CNLG’s work: ‘The philosophy behind CNLG’s interest in promoting supportive networks where every Rwandan would participate is to combat ethnic divisions that characterized the past regimes. This interest also is based on national unity built on an implicit discourse of “Rwandanness” as an identity field’ (Kantengwa, 2013: 113). In 2021, the CNLG was succeeded by a newly founded Ministry of National Unity and Civic Engagement (MINUBUMWE) and CNLG director Jean-Damascène Bizimana was appointed as the relevant minister, continuing the work of the CNLG in a more prominent political position and taking the political control of memory one step further.¹⁶

A second important organisation is Ibuka, which means to remember in Kinyarwanda, the language spoken across Rwanda. Ibuka is an umbrella organisation for various survivors’ associations, and was founded soon after the genocide to advocate for, and support, survivors. It acts as an umbrella group for the work of survivor groups such as AERG (a student genocide survivor group), GAERG (a genocide survivors’ group made up of college graduates) and AVEGA (widows of the genocide), among many others. Advocacy for social justice and activities around memorialisation processes feature as its key objectives.¹⁷ It supports survivors in a variety of ways and has an important voice in Kigali and local representation throughout the country. While heavily dependent on international or government funding, it has taken a leading role in supporting local survivors in the construction and maintenance of memorials, the organisation of local commemorative events and advocacy (Ibreck, 2010: 333). In giving a voice to survivors it has at times even backed positions that go against government policy, for example, advocating against the centralisation of memorials and the exhumation of bodies from smaller, locally administered memorials.¹⁸

Ibuka’s gaze is firmly fixed on survivors as its main constituency. Their voices and well-being are paramount in its activities, rather than national unity and reconciliation. As a consequence, while it does not actively counter government policies nor does it actively promote them. This constitutes some form of alternative memory politics, although in a very closed political environment. More broadly, memory agents can set their own agendas and push specific topics, as long as these do not stray beyond the (narrowly) defined confines of government-sanctioned memory politics.

International agents

In addition to Rwandan agents, internationals have an impact on the Rwandan memoryscape. The financial contributions made by international donors to support reconciliation have been considerable; there has been funding for memorial construction, justice processes and various projects for and with survivors, as well as technical advice on preservation, archiving and other aspects of the memorialisation process. Foreign approaches to memorialisation have shaped some of the approaches to dealing with the genocide at a local level. As is often the case in aid politics, shifts in donor priorities can impact the work of individual organisations; in this case, for example, mandating new focuses on education instead of on archiving.¹⁹ Such international support suggests involvement in reimagining Rwanda after the genocide: ‘International engagement is penetrating the very fabric of national identity, encroaching on territory normally reserved for the most profound domestic political agendas’ (Ibreck, 2013: 149). Equally, however, this international engagement takes place within limited bounds set by a proactive government agenda in which international donors have no fundamental say in how memory is shaped, given that the government maintains a strong hold over memory politics.

Even without the possibility of influencing memorialisation, funding genocide-related activity is important to international donors. According to Ibreck, ‘[f]unding memorialization was a means to express regret for the failure of the international community to halt the genocide in 1994’ (Ibreck, 2013: 155). The strong degree of international financial support and the presence of international dignitaries at commemorative events is suggestive of a strong degree of guilt regarding the problematic (lack of) international engagement during the genocide. The financial support is – to our knowledge – not discursively connected in any explicit way to apologies offered by the international community, particularly as this could signal some form of legal responsibility in terms of reparations. However, the financial engagement is framed as part of a project of restoration and the idea of never again, that acknowledges the shortcomings of the international community in 1994. While international responsibility for the genocide is indeed acknowledged by international actors, the topic of colonialism is diligently skirted around in order not to raise larger questions that could challenge the legitimacy of neo-colonial global politics. Even with their financial support, some donors realise that the way the Rwandan government shapes memory is problematic regarding ethnic relations in the country today, and foreign observers and academics continue to criticise the Rwandan government for using the memory of the genocide for political ends (Korman, 2015: 61).

One international organisation is particularly active in the Rwandan memoryscape: the Aegis Trust. It was founded by two British brothers, James and Stephen Smith, who had previously founded the National Holocaust Centre in the United Kingdom. The Aegis Trust designed and constructed the KGM on land provided by the city, and today continues to manage the site in close cooperation with the CNLG. Thus, the KGM is strongly tied into internationalised aesthetics and symbolism, as well as a globalised perspective on remembering. At the same time, its close partnership with, and oversight by, the CNLG ensures that the official narrative is embedded in a way that does not run counter to government intent. The involvement of the Aegis Trust does not appear to result in criticism levied against internationals at this memorial being downplayed in any way. Also, in partnership with the CNLG, the Aegis Trust has built up the Genocide Archive of Rwanda and is active in promoting research projects with international researchers and interns, as well as with Rwandan scholars. Again, the close partnership with the CNLG on all these projects ensures that the official narrative of the government regarding the genocide is not undermined by this international actor. While the Aegis Trust is an important agent in the memoryscape of Rwanda, there have been no reports of conflict with the CNLG or other government offices, and changes to official policies on how to remember the genocide are reflected in all of the Aegis Trust’s work.

Narratives: international responsibility for genocide

When studying the narratives surrounding internationalism at these various sites, and between the relevant actors, three dominant narratives emerge, as well as some relevant sub-narratives. The three narratives are: international responsibility in terms of the passivity of international actors in the face of the unfolding genocide; international support for the perpetrators then and now; and the colonial roots of the genocide. All serve to construct a dichotomy between us (the Rwandans) and them (the internationals) as central to the government’s ‘unity and reconciliation’ discourse. Creating an outside enemy serves the function of forging a coherent identity in a country still divided by the experience of the genocide (Buckley-Zistel, 2006c).

International responsibility for the genocide

The dominant narrative regarding the role of the internationals deals with the international community’s failure to act during the genocide and its consequent responsibility for the massacres. This is evident in the following statement, for instance, where a range of international actors are held accountable: ‘The failure of humanity in Rwanda can be attributed to the then Rwandan government which executed the genocide, the UN, the five permanent members of the Security Council and Belgium’ (Rutikanga, 2013: 6). The state has an unmatched capacity to shape narratives of the past; it has the power to institutionalise collective narratives, to determine the content of textbooks and school curricula, and of course to implement its preferred policies regarding memorials and the events held there. During memorial events in Rwanda, narratives about the internationals are reinforced in events at which historians and officials give talks to the entire community on the history of the country, allocating co-responsibility for the genocide with the international community, as discussed above (Baldwin, 2019).²⁰

Let us look again at the exhibition at the KGM, which seeks to a large extent to demonstrate the incompetence and indifference of the international community. This is evidenced, for instance, in the picture of the January 1994 code cable sent to the UN in New York (described earlier in the chapter), and also by captions which provide the context and conclude: ‘No action was taken in response to the fax.’²¹ The UN is portrayed as refusing to go beyond its mandate, even though Dallaire estimated that their small contingent could have de-escalated the situation. Dallaire is quoted as saying, ‘Give me the means and I can do more’.²² That the international community refrained from intervening to stop the genocide even as various nations’ own citizens were being evacuated from Rwanda is represented in the photo of the white woman being rescued by a Belgian soldier discussed earlier in the chapter. The text accompanying that photo reads:

The narrative asserts that in the face of international indifference the RPF was the only actor able and willing to stop the genocide and to rescue the population, affording the army the moral high ground in post-genocide Rwanda (see King, 2010: 298).

A glimpse of how these narratives about the internationals affect visitors is captured by Liberta Gahongayire and Anne Marie Nyiracumi’s (2014) study on entries in the KGM’s visitors’ book. The entries were addressed particularly strongly towards the international community: 31 per cent of women and 40 per cent of men who left comments chose to focus on the topic of international involvement. The authors explain:

This shows that the way the responsibility of international actors is portrayed in the KGM has been rather effective. Part of the importance of highlighting international culpability is to deflect attention from how the RPF invasion in 1990 and the subsequent civil war played a significant role in radicalising extremist Hutu. The exhibition at the KGM and other memorials is, unsurprisingly, silent on this issue (Jessee, 2017a: 55). Furthermore, one guide at a national memorial implicitly legitimised RPF atrocities during and after the genocide by verbally posing a question for visitors: if the international community did nothing, how could the genocide against the Tutsi be stopped without using force? This question was used to highlight that the ‘double genocide’ idea was wrong and even amounted to genocide denial.²⁴

There is one memorial with an international focus in which the failings of the international community are not foregrounded: the Belgian Peacekeepers Memorial. This memorial, instead, portrays the UN peacekeeping troops’ proactive action in their mission to protect Uwilingiyimana, as well as narrating a story about the Belgian soldiers’ brave, albeit unsuccessful fight to stay alive once captured by Hutu extremists. The memorial is funded and run by the Belgian state,²⁵ so this alternative and less critical perspective regarding the Belgian involvement is perhaps unsurprising; however, the memorial nonetheless stands out in the broader memoryscape given its very different message on international responsibility. Belgian politicians regularly attend annual commemoration events here,²⁶ tying the memorial into broader diplomatic relations (McKinney, 2011: 167).

Support for perpetrators

The second narrative goes beyond the moral shock concerning the international community’s non-intervention during the genocide, as international actors are constructed as actively supporting the perpetrators. This is most prominently found in discussions of French complicity. At the KGM, the exhibition frames the French as a trainer of the Interahamwe militias and the Rwandan army, and also as the source of weapons sold to the extremists, thus being driven by ‘capitalist greed and related interests’ (Jessee, 2017a: 54). This is tied to the accusation of anti-Tutsi racism. A guide showed us a picture of a French soldier who was pointing at a man and apparently claiming that he was not Hutu but Tutsi, thus – according to the guide – demonstrating how the French were trained to identify Tutsi. Next in the exhibition comes a horrific picture of bodies, which the guide causally connected to the racist French attribution of ethnicity.²⁷ This reinforces the impression that the French are accused of having directly supported the perpetrators.

In this vein, internationals are also held responsible for having armed militias in the run-up to the genocide. Due to its proximity to the pre-genocide, Hutu-led government, France is singled out as a country that supported the training and militarisation of military and paramilitary troops that were initially fighting in the civil war trigged by the RPF/A invasion of 1990.²⁸ Kagame explicitly ‘hold[s]‌ the French government … responsible for helping to arm and train the militias that dispersed throughout the country to wipe out the Tutsi population’ (Kagame, 2008: xxii), as well as for having subsequently provided a safe haven for genocide suspects.

French complicity is seen as exemplified in Opération Turquoise, the French military operation that created a ‘safe haven’ that was then actually used by Hutu extremists to escalate the genocide in that region without being impeded by the approaching RPF troops. In the KGM, one text accompanying the exhibit reads: ‘The only soldiers to arrive in Rwanda before the genocide ended were French military during Opération Turquoise, ostensibly to create a “safe haven” in the south of the country between the “conflicting” sides.’²⁹ This is repeated in the Campaign Against Genocide Museum, which furthermore explains that in the area designated the Zone Turquoise it was safe for Hutu extremists to carry on killing Tutsi under French supervision.³⁰ In one commemorative event in Huye, this French involvement was described as very direct, in that ‘French soldiers accompanied Interahamwe and protected them’.³¹ This aspect of internationals’ culpability is given great prominence in the Bisesero and Murambi memorials, as both places were directly impacted by Opération Turquoise. In Bisesero, Tutsi had successfully resisted Hutu extremists for two weeks before being gathered in one area by the French and promised protection. They disarmed themselves, before subsequently being handed over, unarmed, by the French to Hutu extremists, who massacred them (see Jessee, 2017a: 70). In Murambi, the terrible and fatal impact of Opération Turquoise is also discussed in general terms, along with allegations that French troops gang-raped survivors who had come to their military base for protection. The perceived lack of respect for the dead on the part of the French troops is also mentioned; their placing of a volleyball court directly next to a mass grave at Murambi (see above) is cited as a demonstration of this. It is also interpreted as demonstrating they were inspired by genocidal ideology.³²

Colonialism

The third narrative focuses on the attribution of historical responsibility to international actors, both under formal colonialism and in the post-colonialist era. President Kagame used the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the genocide to point to the colonial origin of ethnic divisions by stating:

Kagame’s statement is based on the narrative that Rwandans lived in unity and harmony until the arrival of colonialists, who introduced and politicised ethnic divisions as part of their strategy of indirect rule (Buckley-Zistel, 2006a; Purdeková and Mwambari, 2022; Shyaka, 2003). How ethnicity ‘became the weapon of the colonial master’³⁴ is discussed by exhibitions and guides at memorials, in education, during commemorative events and more broadly in the public discourse.³⁵

A closer look at the KGM is instructive. The exhibition clearly communicates how ethnic divisions were introduced by the colonial powers and how these eroded unity, paving the way for future violence. It highlights ‘the catastrophic impact of European theories of race and the Catholic Church on relations between Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa’ (Jessee, 2017a: 54; see also Ibreck, 2013). A guide at the KGM explained that prior to colonisation, the identity groups Tutsi, Hutu and Twa were structured socio-economically but that the eighteen clans within the country, each of which had members in all three socio-economic groups, were more important. Pushing this further, he argued that the Belgian colonial power aimed to implement a genocidal ideology so they started promoting Tutsi and giving them preferential treatment, as they believed them to be better.³⁶ During a commemorative event in 2019 one of the participants posed the question: if divide and rule in colonial Rwanda was so key, why did genocide only take place in Rwanda and not in all the colonies that had experienced similar divide and rule strategies? Panel members and individuals in the audience gave various responses, but one trajectory in the responses was to highlight that divide and rule as a colonial strategy needed to be stronger in Rwanda because its people speak the same language and have the same culture. The country’s unusually strong pre-colonial unity called for more strongly divisive measures on the part of the colonial powers, it was argued.³⁷

Beyond memorials and museums, commemorative events offer further occasions for this narrative to be communicated. This statement during a commemorative event explains how the colonial power transferred its own ethnic difficulties onto its new subjects. It delineates a Rwanda before colonialism where unity prevailed and a Rwanda after colonialism where division prevailed:

No matter how the divisive policies of colonial powers are explained, the narratives all emphasise that these policies represented the origin of genocidal ideology in Rwanda: a once peaceful and united country was led into interethnic hostilities, laying the foundation for the 1994 genocide.

We generally do not disagree with the historical analysis of the destructive impact of colonialism and its complex legacy in the context of Rwanda and beyond. In our analysis of the mnemonic formation concerning the role of internationals, however, we are interested in illustrating how references to the colonial past are central to present-day memory politics. The recurring theme of colonialism legitimates the government’s policy on what is officially referred to as ‘unity and reconciliation’, according to which the categories of Hutu and Tutsi were mere colonial inventions. This is enhanced by the legislation on divisionism, referred to above, that prohibits references to Hutu and Tutsi in public and political discourses. To produce unity and reconciliation, the national strategy requires the political importance of these ethnic markers to be diminished and seeks to abolish them altogether.

Events: international engagement through apologies and visits to memorial sites

As meaning-making performative mnemonic practices, events potentially have a strong impact on collective identities. The memoryscape of Rwanda is dotted with a variety of events, often in planned and regular intervals, particularly around the commemoration period Kwibuka, which starts on 7 April every year. Kwibuka translates as ‘to remember’ and often involves ‘a walk to remember, night vigils, prayers, testimonies, poems, remembrance and healing songs, decent burial when new remains are discovered, speeches of the official guests’ (Gahongayire, 2015: 113). International agents are also involved in commemoration, albeit to a relatively limited degree. Many events take place at the site of a memorial, but some are held at larger venues such as stadiums. As Wagner-Pacifici (2015) suggests, these events form a significant aspect of, yet also constantly reproduce, wider memory politics.

Apologies

Some of the most striking events in which internationals feature in Rwanda’s memoryscape are those at which public apologies are offered by leading international politicians or senior representatives of foreign countries or organisations. These dignitaries formally admit guilt, either on behalf of themselves or the international actors they represent, for a failure to intervene in the genocide, often at memorial sites and/or during Kwibuka.³⁹ This is because, McMillan argues, in the international consciousness, the genocide is ‘a source of “bitter regret” … and “shame” … for those who failed to prevent it’ (McMillan, 2016: 170). Apologies are considered a powerful gesture towards the victims because they acknowledge that victims have been harmed. Apologies recognise wrongdoing on the part of the apologiser (Tirrell, 2013) and they reduce shame and guilt on the part of the actors responsible. Thus far, however, the public apologies by international dignitaries remain unmatched by any expressions of forgiveness on the part either of the victims or the Rwandan state. This is significant because it is in sharp contrast to national reconciliation programmes elsewhere which may have victim–perpetrator encounters as a central component, that is, genocide survivors in arranged meetings with individuals who carried out the genocide; in such programmes elsewhere, perpetrators are strongly encouraged to apologise, and victims are strongly encouraged to act in a spirit of reconciliation and to express forgiveness.

There is a long list of non-Rwandan figures who have offered their apologies. One of the first was Bill Clinton, who visited Rwanda in 1998 as US president to apologise for the actions – or rather inactions – that fell under his personal responsibility. During the genocide, it was the United States in particular that kept the UN from using the term genocide since it feared that sending foreign troops into Rwanda would repeat the debacle that had occurred in Somalia five years earlier, when US troops were publicly lynched. Clinton is reported to have said in his apology: ‘We did not act quickly enough after the killings began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe havens for the killers. We did not immediately call the crimes by their rightful name: genocide’ (cited in Tirrell, 2013: 174) Strikingly, though, Clinton only stayed for a few hours in Rwanda and did not even leave the airport. In preparation for his visit the Rwandan government had constructed a temporary memorial at the airport and had brought in human remains and mummified bodies from other sites (Korman, 2015: 61). In the end, Clinton did not lay a wreath at the airport memorial, very much to the disappointment of the Rwandan government. Its handling of Clinton’s visit meanwhile had caused resentment among genocide survivors, who reportedly saw it as a pointless gimmick.⁴⁰ Given the function of apologies in acknowledging the harm done to the victim, such poorly executed events, which exacerbate the humiliation or anger of victims, will likely serve to reinforce the feeling of having been terribly wronged rather than mend any relationships.

Further apologies were offered by the then prime minister of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt, in 2000, by Kofi Annan as UN secretary general in 1998, and by his successor at the UN, Ban Ki Moon in 2014. In 2017, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s role in the massacres.⁴¹ During his visit to the KGM in 2010, then French president Nicolas Sarkozy did not apologise as such, but delivered a broader message: ‘What happened here is unacceptable, but what happened here compels the international community, including France, to reflect on the mistakes that stopped it from preventing and halting this abominable crime’.⁴² Throughout these apologies we thus find narratives that correspond to the Rwandan government’s perspective, as explained above.

It is key who apologises, that is, the apology must come from an agent who is considered to be responsible, so that the shame, guilt and remorse that the apologiser expresses can be deemed as direct and relevant. As such, these apologies are highly political events performed publicly by the highest statesmen and stateswomen. Where the apologies occur, the sites themselves, are usually chosen to be symbolic; the site selected most often, as we have seen, is the KGM, a space created for the memory of the entire genocide. The controversial nature of Clinton’s airport apology reinforces this point: the location chosen contributes a potentially important symbolic weight. In Rwanda’s memory politics, apologies as mnemonic practices thus have clear symbolic importance.

Visits to memorial sites

When internationals visit memorial sites (mainly the KGM) to apologise their visit is also an opportunity to perform regular diplomatic duties. According to Giblin, this required diplomatic engagement includes:

To name a few prominent visitors to the KGM: then UK prime minister Tony Blair visited in 2006, retired president Bill Clinton again in 2005 and George W. Bush while in office as US president travelled there in 2008. The KGM is thus a must-see for every high-profile visitor to Rwanda, not least due to the lingering feeling of guilt among members of the international community for having failed to intervene in the genocide. On 7 April, the first day of the annual commemorative events, international dignitaries show up for the official ceremonies, as happened in 2019, for example, at a high-profile gathering at the Kigali Convention Centre, followed by an event at the Amahoro Stadium in the same city. For the Rwandan government, in turn, this is a welcome opportunity to reinforce its own legitimacy, to create conditions that might encourage foreign investment and to put pressure on countries in which genocidal killers are still at large (Giblin, 2017). Against this backdrop, participation in commemoration events is not for all internationals. In 2014, the French ambassador to Rwanda was disinvited from the main ceremony in the Amahoro Stadium by President Kagame. When the ambassador asked if he could at least lay a wreath at the KGM, this too was denied. The diplomatic incident followed tensions between Paris and Kigali after Kagame stated prior to the commemoration that France had played a direct role in the genocide and had even participated in carrying it out on the ground.⁴³ Ten years earlier, the French vice-minister of foreign affairs had been present during the main commemorative event, and had found himself being directly accused by Kagame, who explained in his speech that the French had knowingly trained and armed the militias and army units who had carried out the genocide, and had criticised the audacity shown by the French when they participated in the event without having apologised (Reyntjens, 2011: 23).

The SANE analysis: memory and the quality of peace

Thirty years after the genocide, peace in Rwanda remains shallow. By exploring memory politics through sites, agents, narratives and events, this chapter has illustrated how the monolithic character of remembrance in Rwanda stands in the way of a memoryscape that allows alternative and plural accounts of the past. The mnemonic formation of the role of internationals serves as a diagnostic site for analysing present entanglement and peace.

We chose to look at memory politics through the prism of the role of the internationals – including the colonial administration, the UN, the French and Belgian military, the international community, international organisations and dignitaries – because they are a very visible topic in current memory discourse in Rwanda. The detrimental role of internationals is explained in today’s memory politics as a continuity: from the era of colonialism up until today, internationals (in various forms and guises) have had a negative effect on the country. What is surprising, though, is that prior to the genocide there was no strong anti-Western or anti-colonial sentiment in Rwanda. Colonialism had been brought to an end there without violence against the colonial master, as Belgium simply granted full independence in 1962 (Mamdani, 2001: 106). While in other former colonies the struggle for, and the moment of, independence is highly constitutive for national identity, in Rwanda Independence Day on July 1 is a public holiday but is not a day when official celebrations are held. In contrast, three days later Liberation Day – the day the RPF/A liberated the country from génocidaires – is an important celebration because it preaches unity, as a Rwandan journalist explains.⁴⁴ Prior to the memory politics around the genocide, the international actors were thus not seen as the outside force responsible for suffering in the country. Yet, as Longman (2017: 265) stresses: ‘The shift after 1994 to depicting the colonizers as a source of division and violence relieved Rwandans from their responsibility for what ultimately happened, allowing Hutu to feel less guilty and Tutsi to feel less threatened by their compatriots.’

Shaming internationals through narratives concerning their culpability also has the effect of silencing criticism of the current authoritarian government; this in turn allows an extremely hegemonic power structure to persist, suppressing any dissenting voices both with regard to how the past should be remembered as well as how the ‘now’ should be lived and the future imagined. ‘Domesticating the world’ (Reyntjens, 2011), that is, telling the world what to do and not to do, is used as a strategy to fend off criticism regarding Rwanda’s illiberal democracy, poor human rights record and involvement in violence in neighbouring countries. This strategy is often accompanied by accusations from outside (and inside) the country that international actors are threatening the unity of the country or are supporting genocidal ideology.

What might be described as a historic shame prevents the international community and its institutions from pushing too far in terms of dealing with crimes carried out by the RPF during and after the 1990–1994 civil war and the genocide. The international community is therefore participating in silencing claims to victimhood that might emanate from communities or individuals that are not Tutsi. For Ibreck (2013: 152): ‘Central to the Rwandese strategy for maintaining political autonomy was deploying the memory of the genocide, exploiting the guilt felt by development partners to fend off criticism.’ So, while international donor money is expected for memorials, history teaching and other ways of spreading memory politics, it is expected to be used exclusively in line with government narratives. Events such as apologies, or participation in commemoration events by international actors, serve to bolster the government’s legitimacy internationally. Agents such as the CNLG are in a very strong position to control memory discourses both in-country and beyond, and in doing so increasingly to silence alternative narratives. Ultimately, this will lead to an ever more pervasive muting of other actors.

Crucially, the hegemonic narratives about the past that clearly define good and bad (as illustrated with reference to our mnemonic formation of the internationals) lead to certain groups and individuals being excluded from being able to claim victimhood. As delineated in the first part of this chapter, remembering the genocide is strongly affected by individuals’ experiences during the genocide. These experiences differ depending on age, whether a person was in the country in 1994, gender, and of course whether a person identifies as Hutu or Tutsi. By enforcing a top-down discourse around national unity and reconciliation – a discourse that does not allow anyone to identify as either Hutu or Tutsi and which until 2007 even precluded discussion of the genocide of the Tutsi – differences in grievances are eliminated.

There is just one exception: the memorial to the Belgian peacekeepers is tolerated even though the soldiers were non-Tutsi victims. This is a glaring exception to the otherwise ever stronger reticence about non-Tutsi victims. In fact, both Hutu and Twa were among those killed by Hutu extremists, sometimes for refusing to participate in the genocide, sometimes when mistaken for Tutsi or for other reasons.

Conclusions

Based on our analysis of internationals as mnemonic formations, our conclusions regarding Rwanda are sobering: the hegemonic memory politics of the Rwandan government has a strong, negative impact on political and social relations. Creating this enemy beyond the borders of Rwanda carries the promise of forging a coherent identity that will be neither Hutu nor Tutsi but Rwandan. Yet the way this has been orchestrated in a top-down manner, through a style of memory politics that does not leave room for alternative accounts, is detrimental. Peace remains shallow. Our look at the interplay of sites, agents, narratives and events does not reveal any entanglement of various ways of remembering the genocide, but rather finds a discourse that has been static – for thirty years – and continues to be hegemonic and exclusive. While memorials are often sites where diverse perspectives about a violent past are debated and discussed, in Rwanda memorials have ‘constrained rather than encouraged democratic discourse’ (Longman, 2017: 318). Instead of opening up a space for public participation they close it down and limit engagement of agents who conform with the general memory politics of the country. In Rwanda, therefore, memory politics leaves little space for plural voices about the past and instead reproduces the tenets of Rwanda’s current illiberal regime.

As demonstrated in the other empirical chapters of this book, in societies emerging from violence there is usually not one hegemonic memory that dominates all interpretations of the past. Rather, we can observe various entangled strands that at times share the public space without friction and at times conflict and collide. In the case of Rwanda, we do not want to argue that a diversity of memories does not exist, but rather that this diversity is not given any space or recognition in public discourse. There are, of course, groups who remember the country’s recent history differently, but they have to do so in private.

Regarding the role of the internationals, we agree with Pottier (2002: 203) that the RPF ‘as Rwanda’s post-genocide spiritual guardian, displays exceptional skill at converting international feelings of guilt and ineptitude into admissions that the [Rwandan Patriotic] Front deserves to have the monopoly on knowledge construction’. We conclude, therefore, that the prevailing mnemonic formations around the role of the internationals have a negative effect on peace. In Rwanda, the lack of plurality regarding memory sites, agents, narratives and events can be seen as an indicator of a closed political space where deeply entrenched conflict lines are difficult to challenge. While we agree that it is paramount to take issue with a toxic colonial legacy and to address the failures of the internationals during the genocide, in Rwanda this has been done in a way that does not allow for pluralism and alternative Rwandan voices. What results is a reckoning with the country’s recent past that is deeply flawed.