Rwanda and the process of reconciliation

[the_future_modernes]

WARINING: Descriptions of thoroughly disturbing rape and torture in some paragraphs. Living with the enemy

Applying the ideas of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry to present day Rwanda, our author argues that reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture.

“Reconciliation” has become a darling of political theorists, journalists, and human-rights activists, especially as it pertains to the rebuilding of postwar and post-genocidal nations. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of Rwanda. Numerous books and articles on the topic—some, though not all, inspired by Christian teachings—pour forth. It can plausibly be argued, of course, that in Rwanda—and in other places, like Sierra Leone and the Balkans, where victims and perpetrators must live more or less together—reconciliation is a political necessity. Reconciliation has a moral resonance, too; certainly it is far better than endless, corpse-strewn cycles of revanchism and revenge. Yet there is sometimes a disturbing glibness when outsiders tout the wonders of reconciliation, as if they are leading the barbarians from darkness into light. Even worse, the phenomenological realities—the human truths—of the victims’ experiences are often ignored or, at best, treated as pathologies that should be “worked through” until the promised land of forgiveness is reached. This is not just a mistake but a dangerous one; for it is doubtful that any sustainable peace, and any sustainable politics, can be built without a better, which is to say a tragic, understanding of those truths.

...

Rwanda—tiny and densely populated—faces a problem that no other country has or does: the Hutu murderers and Tutsi survivors of the 1994 genocide live, side-by-side, in unprecedented intimacy; however monstrous this may seem, Rwanda’s history clearly shows that all other options are worse. The government is dominated by formerly exiled Tutsis of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (imagine if Jews had ruled Germany after World War II); for reasons that are practical and perhaps moral, this government has mandated, from above, an official policy of national reconciliation, however subjectively grueling that may be. As Philip Gourevitch wrote in The New Yorker last year, Rwanda’s political requirements are “emotionally incomprehensible.”

Several years ago, in response to bulging jails and an overwhelmed, dysfunctional justice system, the government made two decisions. In 2003, it released forty thousand imprisoned génocidaires and sent them back to their villages. And it has reinstated the gacaca courts, community-based forums in which perpetrators and victims face each other and are judged by their neighbors; more than a million cases have been heard. These confrontations have been the subject of an enormous amount of international interest, and disputation, from journalists, anthropologists, NGOs, legal scholars, religious activists, and human-rights organizations; the gacaca trials have been praised as an “authentic” form of African justice and derided as kangaroo courts that elide modern legal procedures regarding rights and evidence.

What becomes clear—especially in the remarkable trilogy of books on post-genocide Rwanda by the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld—is that forgiveness and reconciliation are of far less interest to the victims than they are to perpetrators.


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Comments

[thejeopardymaze]

I've always felt that the emphasis on forgiveness in any culture (thanks mostly to Christianity) is just another way to give victims of injustice a guilt trip. It's emotional policing for the traumatized, pure and simple.

This is especially true for women

[thejeopardymaze]

Women are expected to forgive everything, or they're not whole for some reason. Forget the nightmares, PTSD, STDs, physical injury, shunning from assholes in the community, no, we have to obsess over whether she forgives as a sign of healing, not whether her physical or mental state is improving.

Re: This is especially true for women

[the_future_modernes]

PBS acquired a documentary called Forgiveness that explores this in depth. Worth watching.

It sounds like its on the pro-side

[thejeopardymaze]

But I'm only judging from the description of it. I'll try to watch the whole thing, but if its pro forgiveness regardless of what a perp does, it'll only piss me off more.

There seems to be this impression that the forgiveness issue is either/or, you forgive or a pile of corpses is inevitable, as though there are no other possible coping skills.

Hmm...

[thejeopardymaze]

I'm in to the first few minutes. It seems to have a very narrow definition of what religion is.

Re: Hmm...

[the_future_modernes]

It does. It talks mostly about the Christian religion, so why on earth it didn't come out and say that is beyond me. But it does hit both sides of the problem, those who advocate forgiveness and those who go now wait a minute!

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[the_future_modernes]

I suppose the times when a pile of corpses were the result are rather more memorable than the times when people coped, or were individually destroyed by not being able to cope. I am scared for the kids and I am PISSED OFF at society's shunning of the raped women. Why is being raped their fault while being killed is the genocidaires' fault? How is it impossible to stop being killed but it is impossible to stop being raped?

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[thejeopardymaze]

I suppose the times when a pile of corpses were the result are rather more memorable than the times when people coped, or were individually destroyed by not being able to cope.


I disagree on that one, there are structural problems that encourage genocide, not individual problems.

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[the_future_modernes]

Can you tell me more?

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[thejeopardymaze]

Only if you remind me, there is so much I need to get finished the next few days, and I need to make my home look respectable ASAP.

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[the_future_modernes]

Ok!

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[thejeopardymaze]

I am scared for the kids and I am PISSED OFF at society's shunning of the raped women.

It pisses me off that some NGOs are more concerned with making raped women whose families were destroyed and shunned by their communities and are now HIV positive to forgive, but not actually, you know, trying to help them. The patronizing disregard for the livelyhood and welfare of the survivors is nothing less than sickening.

I believe the obsession with forgiveness is more about upholding the status quo than preventing more killings, because it's better for the ruling class to shut oppressed and victimized people up than address their grievances. Better to look down on someone who angry over being screwed over by the system than changing a damn thing that could make their lives better.

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[nagasvoice]

This also goes to the West wanting to keep their established business ties and accustomed leaders in place in other countries around the unstable areas. Places like Nigeria or Congo (with the oil) come to mind.
Also, I suspect a good chunk of it was due to wanting more places to sell all those surplus Soviet arms.
Yes, really.
Just that cold.

Re: It sounds like its on the pro-side

[thejeopardymaze]

This also goes to the West wanting to keep their established business ties and accustomed leaders in place in other countries around the unstable areas.

Definitely this. Let the masses obsess over forgiveness than get those responsible on trial.

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I was googling around for critiques of Forgiveness For Everything, I can't be the only one who thinks Blame Makes The Victim is incredibly Orwellian.

[buria_q]

yes, this! although i have mostly thought this in the context of how women are supposed to subscribe to "transformative justice" and take a handholding approach to abusers in activist communities.

[thejeopardymaze]

I'm starting to believe part of this is due to the fact that victims of injustice are often viewed as suspect, which in itself is ridiculous. I haven't seen many calls for an eye for eye vengeance, they're too busy recovering or if they talk about, are more concerned with helping something like it never happen again and/or putting the perps to justice. Yet the focus is still on victim, and how they'll supposedly go 'too far' if they don't forgive.

I've come to that conclusion after reading the first sample chapter of Resentment's Virtue. It's about demonizing victims.

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Hell, I also think it's another form of snake oil. People in the medical community never make a hundred percent guarantees about therapy and prevention when it comes to safety and recovery, at least if they want to avoid getting sued. Why say the same about any form of therapy in counseling, psychiatry, and psychology? And sadly, the Forgiveness Hypothesis is often pushed on patients. After reading some threads in cult-awareness communities, it does, at least to me, make the claims about forgiveness very suspect. Claiming your thoughts are the cause of your suffering, not the trauma-very newage, and something cult leaders love to claim.

[thejeopardymaze]

although i have mostly thought this in the context of how women are supposed to subscribe to "transformative justice" and take a handholding approach to abusers in activist communities.

They take a handholding approach to bullying in the school system in my experience, it would be interesting to see what parallels there might be. A lot of victim blaming, a lot letting the kids and staff members off the hook for what they're guilty of.

It's one of the main reasons why I'll never understand why some parts of the left are so obsessed with trying to find proof of the better side of human kind. Don't get me wrong, our species couldn't survive without cooperation, but the drive to find past utopias is fucking pointless.