Abstract
The postconflict Rwandan state has crafted a “we are all Rwandans” national identity narrative without ethnicity, in the interest of maintaining a delicate, postgenocide peace. The annual genocide commemoration period calledKwibuka—“to remember”—which takes place over the course of one hundred days every year, is an underresearched part of this narrative. During the commemoration period,génocidaires’ confessions increase dramatically; these confessions lead the government to previously undiscovered graves all over the country, just as confessions given during the grassroots justice system—gacaca—did in the more immediate aftermath of the genocide. According to a prominent government official known for his prison outreach, the Rwandan government no longer provides incentives for prisoners to confess. Instead, he stated in a 2017 interview, those who speak up over twenty years later are simply “moved by the spirit of Kwibuka.” When confessions are made, memories of past action (“bad behaviour”) are used by the state, seemingly toward an ultimate end of reinforcing the national master narrative, to subsume the individual memories of innocent survivors into the national collective memory. This paper explores the questions around the state’s evolving use of prisoner confessions, both how those confessions are obtained, and how they factor into commemoration practices now.
Highlights
IntroductionIn conflict-affected environments, states can manipulate collective memory in the interest of maintaining a delicate peace
He stated in a 2017 interview, those who speak up over twenty years later are “moved by the spirit of Kwibuka.”When confessions are made, memories of past action (“bad behaviour”) are used by the state, seemingly toward an ultimate end of reinforcing the national master narrative, to subsume the individual memories of innocent survivors into the national collective memory
What happens when the prisoner, both as an individual and as a symbolic entity, is rendered ineffective to his original cause or to himself, but at the same time is being instrumentalized by the state? What happens when a prisoner’s presence, words, and inaccessibility allow the imprisoner to manipulate all three to formulate a component of the master narrative? When do a prisoner’s words stop being his own? Do memories cease to belong to the memory-bearer after they have been shared?
Summary
In conflict-affected environments, states can manipulate collective memory in the interest of maintaining a delicate peace In such cases, the state often sets the terms for what is and is not allowed into the public memory; peace is defined by the parties in power in government, and that definition often obscures or denies entirely any bad behaviour done by the state during wartime. The state often sets the terms for what is and is not allowed into the public memory; peace is defined by the parties in power in government, and that definition often obscures or denies entirely any bad behaviour done by the state during wartime This reinforces postconflict binaries of victors and defeated (corresponding to good and bad actors, respectively)
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