Ordinary Men in Rwanda
Causes and Motivations of Perpetration by Ordinary
Rwandans
University of Amsterdam (UvA): Faculty of Humanities Master History: Holocaust and Genocide Studies Course: Master’s Thesis History
Supervisor: Drs. Thijs Bouwknegt
Second reader: Prof. dr. Johannes Houwink ten Cate Name: Myrthe Roosmarijn Born
Student number: 10150919 Date: 01-07-2016
Table of Contents
Abstract 3
Introduction 4
Which Crimes, Which Perpetrators? 7
1. Perpetration in Rwanda 15
§1.1 Genocide in Rwanda 17
§1.2 The Banality of Genocide 20
§1.3 Rwanda’s Ordinary Perpetrators 28
§1.4 Conclusion 32
2. A Historiography of Genocide in Rwanda 33
§2.1 History of Ethnicity 33
§2.2 Planning and Antecedents 38
§2.3 Details of the Genocide 43
§2.4 International Context and Justice 47
§2.5 Conclusion 49
3. Explaining the Genocide 51
§3.1 Pre-colonial era 51
§3.2 Colonialism 53
§3.3 Post-colonialism 55
§3.4 Conclusion 59
4. The Perpetrators 61
§4.1 The Rwandan Perpetrators 61
§4.2 Killers’ Motivations 65 §4.3 Behavioral Changes 72 §4.4 Conclusion 75 Conclusion 77 Discussion 79 Bibliography 81
Abstract
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Rwandan Hutus killed approximately 500,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus.1 What was striking about this
genocide was the staggering amount of civil participation. Many ordinary Rwandans joined the army and militias and participated in killing, raping and assaulting their neighbors, family members and friends. This thesis sets out to investigate the research question: what caused ordinary men in Rwanda to commit genocide in 1994? This research has several objectives. First, the sequence of events before and during the genocide is explained. Second, factors are determined that help explain how the genocide could unfold. Third, ordinary male perpetrators are profiled and their motivations are elaborated on. Furthermore, a theoretical framework is drafted, concentrating on the high level of ordinariness of perpetrators of mass violence.
This research clarifies that the men participating in the violence were mostly ordinary men, who did not have deep-rooted (ethnic) hatred, or tendencies toward violence. Their lives were not extraordinary, and neither were their motivations to participate in the genocide, which ranged from fear of being killed by either Tutsis or radical Hutus, to economic motivations and war-related fear and anger. Moreover, the research shows that many perpetrators unwillingly joined the violence, but often turned into eager killers over the course of the genocide. With this, the research contributes to debunking popular theories that a deeply embedded ethnic hatred in Rwandan society was at the root of the genocide. As the research demonstrates, local ties and social contexts are paramount in explaining the unfolding of the genocide and the massive popular participation that followed.
1 There is an ongoing academic debate about the number of victims in this genocide. The United Nations (UN), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and historian Gérard Prunier estimated that around 800,000 people were killed during the 1994 genocide. Academics like political scientist Scott Straus and historian Alison des Forges estimated around 500,000 victims. Website UN ICTR, The Genocide, 2016:
http://unictr.unmict.org/en/genocide; Website Rwanda, History, 2014:
http://www.gov.rw/home/history/; Gérard Prunier, The Rwandan Crisis: History of a Genocide, (London: Hurst & Company, 1995), 5-6; Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell The Story (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), 15; Scott Straus, ‘How many perpetrators were there in the Rwandan genocide? An estimate’ Journal of Genocide Research, vol.6, no.1 (2004), 93-95, 526-527.
Introduction
The 1994 Rwandan genocide was one of the world’s bloodiest atrocities of the 20th century. During this 100-day long genocide, Rwandan Hutu extremists set
out, planned and implemented the murder of at least 500 thousand Rwandan Tutsis.2 Arguably, this genocide had roots in the pre-colonial era, as is further
explained later on in this research.3 Before European colonization of Rwanda
in the late 19th century, Hutus and Tutsis shared the same culture. Hutus
represented the largest group in society, making up about 85 percent of the population, and were generally the poorest. Many Hutus were poor peasants, who found themselves at the bottom of the social, economic and political ladder in this highly stratified monarchy. In addition, most of the wealth, power, and status were in hands of the Tutsis. This disparity did not raise significant political or social conflict between these groups.4
However, because of the vast differences in political, social and economical statuses, there was a potential for conflict and violence. German and Belgian colonialists from the late 1890s nourished this until Rwandan independence in 1962. During the colonial era, the colonialists spread imaginary myths about ethnicity, altering the social framework of pre-colonial Rwandan society. Differences between Hutus and Tutsis were racialized and institutionalized.5 The colonial system of indirect rule meant that Tutsi were
the only ones who were delegated power in Rwandan society. This spurred anti-Tutsi sentiments amongst Hutus.6 The Belgian colonial state had
exclusively given local power to Tutsis for decades, but in the mid-1950s this suddenly changed. After the Second World War, the international political climate called for decolonization in many regions in Asia and Africa. This increased the international pressure on the European colonialists to liberalize and democratize their colonies (when they still had them), which is what also 2 René Lemarchand, ‘The 1994 Rwanda Genocide’, in: Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons (ed.), Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (New York: Routledge, 2009), 483; Ravi Bhavnani and David Backer, ‘Localized Ethnic Conflict and Genocide: Accounting For Differences in Rwanda and Burundi’, in: Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol.44, No.3 (2000), 286.
3 René Lemarchand, ‘The 1994 Rwanda Genocide’, 483-484. 4 Ibid., 484.
5 Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 87.
happened in Rwanda. Additionally, because of increasing pressure from the United Nations (UN) Trusteeship Council and the arrival of a new generation of Catholic missionaries in Rwanda, the Belgians started providing Hutus with educational and political opportunities in the mid-1950s. This immediately led to resistance from the Tutsis in power. In November 1959, during the so-called Hutu Revolution, violence against Tutsi leaders broke out. This started a process towards a Hutu-directed coup (which the Belgians supported), and in 1961, a new Hutu regime was in place. This was followed by Rwandan independence in 1962. Because of the new Hutu regime and several outbursts of violence, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis went into exile to neighboring countries. This ultimately led to the establishment of the ‘Rwandan Patriotic Front’ (RPF) in Uganda in the 1980s. Decades later, the RPF would overthrow the regime leading to the 1994 genocide.7
This thesis surrounds the subject of perpetrators. General theories on perpetrators of mass atrocities are utilized to create the framework on which this thesis is built. These theories focus on the level of ordinariness of perpetrators of mass violence, but mostly look into the Holocaust and other genocides, instead of the Rwandan case specifically. Other scholars in the field of genocide studies, perpetrator studies and the Rwandan genocide are also supplement and explain the specifics of the Rwandan case. The Rwandan genocide showed some striking characteristics with regards to intensity of violence, rapidness of civilian mobilization and number of deaths. For instance, “Rwanda’s violence was remarkable for its speed and intensity”,8 said assistant professor in Comparative Politics Omar McDoom.
By statistically analyzing factors in the Rwandan region Tare, and evaluating almost 3500 participants and non-participants of the violence, he concluded that the genocide’s most unusual characteristic was the scale of civilian involvement in the genocide. He estimated that one in five Hutu men committed “at least on act of violence” during this period.9 This thesis seeks to
provide an in-depth study on the motivations of ordinary Rwandans to commit 7 Ibid., 485-486.
8 Omar Shahabudin McDoom, ‘Who killed in Rwanda’s genocide? Micro-space, social influence and individual participation in intergroup violence’, in: Journal of Peace Research, Vol.50, No. 4 (2013): 458.
mass violence in 1994, ultimately leading to genocide, and derives from theories in sociology, political science, criminology and history.10 Principally
this thesis seeks to explain the main research question of what caused
ordinary men in Rwanda to commit genocide in 1994. In order to answer this
question, it first needs to be determined if and to what extent Rwanda’s pre-genocide history explains the unfolding of the pre-genocide in 1994, which is why the first subsidiary research question is: What factors in Rwanda’s past help explain why the 1994 genocide could unfold? Afterwards, the main focus will be the ordinary people who joined or participated in the genocide in Rwanda. This thesis seeks to identify the ordinary men and distinguish what drove the
génocidaires and the goals and motivations they had while committing the
atrocities in the spring of 1994. Therefore, the second subsidiary research question is as follows: Who were the low-level perpetrators in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and what were their motivations?
Although a lot of research has been conducted on the Rwandan genocide, particularly on its historical background and its aftermath, not much interdisciplinary research has been done on the motivations of low-level perpetrators. Therefore, because this thesis offers an interdisciplinary study on perpetrators, the research adds to the academic field of genocide studies. Another factor of scientific relevance is the theoretical framework of this thesis. The theories used in the theoretical framework mostly study perpetrators outside of the scope of the Rwandan case, making the content of this research an interesting cross-case analysis. In addition, understanding the motivation as to why ordinary people commit mass violence possibly helps us figure out how to detect and prevent it in the future.11 Thus, researching
10 The material used in this research is primarily historical literature, but some of them also bear another discipline. For example, sociological perspectives are added through works of Abram de Swaan with The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder ((Yale University Press, 2015) and Carla Schraml with ‘How is ethnicity experienced? Essentialist and constructivist notions of ethnicity in Rwanda and Burundi’, in Ethnicities, Vol.14, No.5 (2014), 615-633. Political science is added through the work of Charles Mironko, Social and Political Mechanisms of Mass Murder: An Analysis of the Perpetrators in the Rwandan Genocide (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 2004) and several works by Scott Straus, such as The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). Alette Smeulers provides an international criminological dimension with ‘Perpetrators of International Crimes: Towards a Typology’, in: Alette Smeulers and Roelof Haveman (eds.) Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2008), 233-265
11 Scott Straus, Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2015), 113-186.
social processes and mechanisms, relevant to the perpetration of genocide, is inherently relevant for society at large; in order to understand why ordinary people commit mass atrocities.
As aforementioned, various theories from multiple disciplines are used to build a framework for this thesis. Furthermore, this historical research is qualitative and based on literature analysis. This research, however, is limited when it comes to empirical evidence. There was insufficient time or resources to conduct an empirical investigation. In addition, fieldwork is difficult in this field of study, and especially in Rwanda because of the language barrier, access to perpetrators, and the time lapse since the crimes. This lack of empirical data reduces the credibility of the research, and its validity. Also, because this research is qualitative, it is inherently based on interpretations made by the author, which can be biased. Additionally, these interpretations are always based on other author’s interpretations in the used literature, increasing the risk of double hermeneutics or a double bias. Because of the lack of original empirical data, the research is solely based on literature analysis, which is comparative in nature. By also using sources that contain primary source information, like the perpetrator interviews Jean Hatzfeld described in his book Machete Season (2003), this limitation is compensated to some extent.12
Which Crimes, Which Perpetrators?
In order to build and operationalize a theoretical framework and conduct a content analysis, it is paramount to present a short explanation of the sequence of events during the genocide. Furthermore, it is important to clearly define the crimes and to distinguish which perpetrators are discussed in this research.
On April 6, 1994, Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana’s died when two missiles shot down his airplane. Immediately after his death, Rwanda’s capital Kigali became a killing field. Habyarimana’s (political) opponents, both Hutu and Tutsi, and other intellectuals were murdered within the first few days. The violence soon spread to other parts of the country, where members 12 Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).
of militias, the army, local officials and citizens with extremist ideologies about Tutsis ordered and implemented local massacres. For three months, Rwanda was covered in blood: people (Tutsis and some moderate Hutus) were systematically assaulted, raped, tortured and murdered. Other crimes, like looting and vandalism, were also widespread. As many citizens confirmed after the genocide, local and national authorities legitimized and sometimes even incited the killings, for instance by the use of extensive propaganda. In roughly 100 days, from April 6 1994 until July 17 1994, an estimated 500,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were murdered.13
After the brief account of the events during the genocide, it is of vital importance to conceptualize and clarify which crimes and which perpetrators are included in this research. First, what is the definition of genocide, and to what extent did the Rwandan case match this definition? In 1948, the Genocide Convention, which condemns genocide as a crime under international law, was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations. In this Convention, genocide is defined as certain acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”14 These acts include: (a) Killing members of the group; (b)
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”15
In Rwanda, violence was aimed at the Tutsi minority, a group that was perceived by both Tutsis and Hutus, as a different ethnic group than the majority group consisting of Hutus. In reality, the existence of different ethnicities in Rwanda is ambiguous. It is widely acknowledged in academia that before the arrival of European colonialists in East and Central Africa, Hutu, Tutsi and Twa were not viewed as distinct ethnic groups. According to
13 Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell The Story (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), 8-13.
14 United Nations, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (New York, 1948): 281.
Sociologist Carla Schraml, ethnic categories were fluid.16 This makes the term
‘genocide’ not as easily applicable to the Rwandan case. Since Hutus and Tutsis shared a common language, culture, nationality and religion, one cannot objectively speak of two different ‘ethnic’ groups. In addition, sociologist Christian Scherrer argued that ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ ethnic groups do not exist because “the crucial determining criteria for an ethnic group are lacking,” and because the “basic concept of the ethnos is not clearly defined”.17 With the rise of colonialism, the ethnic categorization of these
groups became more distinct. This led to political abuse by European colonialists, who rigidly distinguished separate ethnicities in their colonial policies. Subsequently, this was encouraged by the two post-colonial regimes.18 Therefore, the ICTR determined that in the case of Rwanda,
violence against Tutsis was definitely genocidal: “The Tutsi constituted a group referred to as “ethnic” in official classifications. […] Accordingly, the Chamber finds that, in any case, at the time of the alleged events, the Tutsi did indeed constitute a stable and permanent group and were identified as such by all.”19
Furthermore, Hutu extremists carried out a widespread and systematic elimination of Tutsis, because they were Tutsi. Beforehand, the Tutsi were identified as the core enemy, depicted as cockroaches in propaganda, and named in death lists. This proves that there was a level of intention to destroy the targeted group, in whole or in part. When it comes to the acts of genocide committed during the 1994 genocide, it is clear that multiple acts were committed. First, many members of the Tutsi minority were killed. Lemarchand estimated that between 500 and 800 thousand people died during the genocide, most of them Tutsis. Second, serious bodily and mental harm was caused in the form of torture and rape. An overwhelming amount of girls, women and men – again, most of them Tutsis – were systematically
16 Carla Schraml, ‘How is ethnicity experienced? Essentialist and constructivist notions of ethnicity in Rwanda and Burundi’, Ethnicities, Vol.14, No.5 (2014), 616-619.
17 Christian P. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa: Conflict Roots, Mass Violence, and Regional War (Westport, Connecticut: Preager, 2002), 25.
18 Christian P. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa. 19 UN ICTR, Prosecuter v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, para. 7.8, p. 281.
raped during the genocide.20 The UN estimated that at least 250,000 girls and
women were raped during the genocide, which, according to international law expert Alexandra Miller, is a low estimate.21 The rapes that were not followed
by death, caused widespread bodily and mental harm to the women and girls, not in the least because the rapes were often very violent and rape led to the stigmatizing and ostracizing of victims in the traditional and religious Rwandan society.22 In short, genocide, as defined above, was committed in Rwanda.
This has been widely acknowledged by the international community, criminal courts, and academia.23 The Rwandan massacres are therefore a world
historical event that fits within the definition of genocide. This research, however, does not study the genocide as a whole; this would be an insurmountable task, since the genocide can be studied from countless different angles and perspectives. Instead, we focus on specific kinds of crimes and perpetrators. The types of crimes and perpetrators investigated in this research are detailed below.
This research focuses on a specific group of perpetrators and specific crimes. First, according to the Genocide Convention, the following acts are punishable under international law: genocide; conspiracy to commit genocide; direct and public incitement of genocide; attempt to commit genocide; and complicity in genocide.24 It is these crimes, inherently genocidal in nature,
which this thesis focuses on. These crimes were committed by only a part of the genocide’s perpetrators. Some perpetrators did commit crimes, but not all of them were genocidal. For example, some people simply vandalized, looted or took advantage of the genocidal context in other ways. In order to define the perpetrators, this thesis invokes Rwandan law, because Rwandan organic 20 United Nations, ‘Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict: United Nations Response’, in: Women2000 (1998), 15-17.
21 Alexandra A. Miller, ‘From the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to the International Criminal Court: Expanding the Definition of Genocide to Include Rape’, in: Penn State Law Review, Vol.108, No.1 (2003): 356.
22 Donatilla Mukamana and Petra Brysiewicz, ‘The Lived Experience of Genocide Rape Survivors in Rwanda’, in: Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Vol.40, No.4 (2008), 383.
23 Rwanda is a patriarchal and traditional society, which causes rape victims to fear stigmatization, isolation and exclusion if they come forward. Many survivors of sexual violence are therefore reluctant to seek medical care or report: Human Rights Watch/Africa, Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath (USA, 1996), 29. 24 United Nations, Convention, 280. Sara E. Brown, ‘Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol.16, No.3 (2014), 459.
law distinguishes four categories of perpetrators for the period of 1 October 1990 until 31 December 1994:
“Category 1:
o Persons whose criminal acts or whose acts of criminal participation place them among the planners, organizers, instigators, supervisors and leaders of the crime of genocide or of a crime against humanity;
o Persons who acted in positions of authority at the national, prefectoral, communal, sector or cell level, or in a political party, the army, religious organizations or in a militia and who perpetrated or fostered such crimes;
o Notorious murderers who by virtue of the zeal or excessive malice with which they committed atrocities, distinguished themselves in their areas of residence or where they passed; o Persons who committed acts of sexual torture;
Category 2:
o Persons whose criminal acts or whose acts of criminal participation place them among perpetrators, conspirators or accomplices of intentional homicide or of serious assault against the person causing death;
Category 3:
o Persons whose criminal acts or whose acts of criminal participation make them guilty of other serious assaults against the person;
Category 4:
o Persons who committed offenses against property”.25
This thesis uses only a relevant selection of elements derived from this law, supplement to answering the main research question. First, it merely focuses on low-level perpetrators, in other words, ordinary people participating in the genocide. Second, even though the Rwandan organic law focuses on a 25 Rwanda: Organic Law No. 08/1996 of 1996 on the Organization of Prosecutions for Offenses constituting the Crime of Genocide or Crimes Against Humanity committed since 1 October 1990 (1996).
timeframe of four years, this research will only take the actual Rwandan genocide, from 6 April until 17 July 1994, into account. Third, the first and fourth categories of perpetrators are not included in this research. The first category is excluded because it focuses on the planners and organizers of the genocide, not low-level perpetrators. The fourth category is excluded because this category contains people who committed offenses against property. Even though this is considered as an act of genocide under Rwandan law, it is not considered as such under international law. This research specifically focuses on ordinary perpetrators who committed genocidal violence, not on the thieves and vandals. This leaves us with the second and third category of the organic law, namely, perpetrators, conspirators and accomplices of intentional homicide and/or serious assault, sometimes causing death. These are the perpetrators encompassed by this thesis.
Categories two and three are comprised of people who killed, raped, tortured, beat, and otherwise assaulted others during the 1994 genocide. This, however, does not provide us with a satisfying definition of a perpetrator. According to political scientist Scott Straus, a perpetrator is an individual who participated in an attack against a civilian in order to kill or seriously injure that civilian.26 The definition used in this research is only slightly different from
Straus’ definition, and substitutes ‘perpetrator’ for ‘civilian’, and ‘an attack against a civilian’ for ‘an attack against another civilian’. These substitutions are provided to emphasize the fact that only ordinary civilians, and not planners and organizers, are amongst the investigated perpetrators in this thesis. This leaves us with the following definition of a perpetrator: ‘a civilian who participated in an attack against another civilian in order to kill or to inflict serious injury on that civilian’.
A last conceptual side note that must be mentioned involves the subject of gender. A majority of the perpetrators of the genocide, as defined above, were male, however, there was also an astonishing amount of female participation in various forms.27 Although some of the genocide’s perpetrators were Tutsi
women married to Hutu men or Tutsi women in the RPF, the vast majority of 26 Scott Straus, ‘How many perpetrators’, 87.
27 Sara E. Brown, ‘Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide’, 448; Alette Smeulers, ‘Female Perpetrators: Ordinary of Extra-Ordinary Women?’, in: International Criminal Law Review, Vol.15 (2015), 207.
participating women were Hutu women. In fact, Hutu women played a central role during this genocide, and particularly exercised agency.28 According to
criminologist Alette Smeulers, women usually play a much larger role in mass violence than often assumed, and she questioned the assumption that female perpetrators in international crimes are less ordinary than their male counterparts.29 Furthermore, some Hutu women participated in the core group
of planners of genocide: these women are not included in this thesis, because these people were not part of the category of ‘ordinary perpetrators’.30 The
stimulation of female agency cannot be seen without the context of the extremely patriarchal Rwandan society in the early 1990s. Women did not have equal rights to men, and their agency was limited to what was thought as acceptable behavior by Rwandan men.31
Hutu women from ‘all walks of life’ participated in the genocide, varying from nuns refusing to harbor refugees to female medical personnel killing their patients. 32 In addition, many ‘female’ crimes included spreading propaganda
and supporting the killings executed by men. Actual genocide-related crimes committed by Rwandan women can be categorized in acts of direct and indirect violence. Indirect violence included acts like looting, theft and inciting violence. Direct genocidal violence included actual killing. Women were, however, less likely to commit these direct genocidal crimes. Rwandan society was (and is) traditional, patriarchal and conventional, and women were mostly mobilized for agency and assistance to the men, who were dominant in the killings. Direct violence mostly entailed acts of physical violence, which, in a traditional society, was not often seen as an appropriate task for a woman. So even though female participation in the genocide was large and widespread, actual genocidal perpetration, as defined in this thesis, 28 Sara E. Brown, ‘Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide’, 448.
29 Alette Smeulers, ‘Female Perpetrators’, 207.
30 There are several examples of high-level female perpetrators who participated in the planning, organization and implementation of the genocide. For instance, Pauline Myiramasuhuko, the former Minister of Family and Women Affairs, was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the ICTR in 2011. She was the only female member in the interim cabinet during the genocide, and ordered and supervised abductions, detentions, murder, rape and torture by the Interahamwe: Sara E. Brown, ‘Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide’, 457.
31 Ibid., 455.
32 Lisa Sharlach, ‘Gender and Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Agents and Objects of Genocide’, in: Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.1, No.3 (1999), 392
was scarce amongst Rwandan women.33 Therefore, female ordinary
perpetrators in category 2 or 3 of Rwandan law are excluded from this research.
This thesis contains multiple chapters, each with its own objective. Chapter one encompasses a theoretical framework, in which various theories on perpetrators of mass atrocities are explained and put into context with respect to Rwanda. It will show that low-level perpetrators in the Rwandan genocide were indeed often ordinary men. Furthermore, chapter two covers the historical background to the conflict, including details of the genocide, the role of the international community and the state of post-conflict Rwanda. This is relevant for the overall research question, since the context of how the genocide could unfold is vital in understanding the motivation behind the perpetration of the genocide. Chapter three consists of an analysis to answer the first subsidiary research question. In Chapter four, the second subsidiary research question is answered. Last, this thesis is finalized with a conclusion and discussion.
1. Perpetration in Rwanda
Various scholars have studied the perpetration of mass violence within the disciplines political science, sociology, criminology, and history.34 Theories
from these different disciplines are relevant for this research, because they approach the topic of mass violence and perpetration from different angles. Furthermore, theorization combined with empirical material is important to this research, because it enables readers to put specific characteristics of the Rwandan genocide into macro-perspective. This not only enriches the material, but it also allows us to add a significant new dimension to research that is already available. The four main theories used in this research are briefly explained below, and further analyzed later in this chapter.
The first main scholar whose theories are discussed is German-American writer and philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote The Banality of Evil (1963) after she reported on the infamous trial against Nazi-leader Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. The Banality of Evil was created out of several articles and reports on the trial, which Arendt initially wrote for The New Yorker.35 The
book caused lively, decades-long academic and public debates on the nature and psyche’s of perpetrators of genocidal crimes, turning Arendt into one of the most influential Holocaust-scholars of the 20th century. The second main
scholar included in this discussion is the American Christopher R. Browning, a historian who wrote Ordinary Men (1992), a study on Police Battalion 101 during the Final Solution in Poland.36 In this book, he meticulously described
how a group of 500 men murdered and deported tens of thousands of Polish 34 Studies on perpetration of mass violence vary widely. Historical research includes works like Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, (New York: Penguin Group, 1963/2006) and Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (London: Penguin Books, 1992). Well-known studies on perpetration within political science are Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006) and Charles Mironko, Social and Political Mechanisms of Mass Murder: An Analysis of the Perpetrators in the Rwandan Genocide (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 2004). Alette Smeulers, ‘Perpetrators of International Crimes: Towards a Typology’ (2014), in: Alette Smeulers and Roelof Haveman (eds.) Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2008) is an important work from a criminological perspective, and Abram de Swaan’s The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder (Yale University Press, 2015) offers interesting sociological views on the matter. 35 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin Group, 1963/2006).
36 Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (London: Penguin Books, 1992). For his research, Browning used court records and perpetrator testimonies from the legal prosecution against RPB101, which happened between 1962 and 1972.
Jews during the Final Solution in 1942-1943. Ordinary Men was widely praised within the academic community of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and is still counted as one of the most important books regarding the study of perpetration of genocide.37
Alette Smeulers, a Dutch international criminologist, is the third main scholar whose theories are used in this research, and specifically the theories espoused in her 2014 article Perpetrators of International Crimes.38 In this
article, she provided readers with an exhaustive analysis on the typology of perpetrators of mass violence, such as genocide. This typology is derived from international case law, biographies, and literature regarding perpetrators of international crimes.39 Furthermore, Smeulers’ theoretical account is
comprehensive and well-defined, and serves as a valuable starting point for further research on perpetrators’ behavior in international law and criminology. The fourth and final main author discussed is Abram de Swaan, a Dutch sociologist, with his book The Killing Compartments (2015).40 This account
promises to be influential in the field of history, genocide studies, and sociology, because of its wide-ranging analyses and clear stance against the banality of evil by Arendt.41 These four scholars all agree that perpetrators of
genocidal violence are not sadistic sociopaths. Each of them, however, provides a different rationale, and has a differing opinion on the degree of ‘ordinariness’ of these perpetrators.
The first section below is included to briefly explain the genocide and provide the reader with vital background information to the conflict. It is relevant to start the chapter off with this, because the theorization will make more sense after a historical context has been provided. In the second section, the four main scholars are profiled, while simultaneously explaining their theories and conclusions. These four scholars form the main part of this theoretical framework. Afterwards, in the third section, several other scholars’ 37 Walter Reich, ‘The Men Who Pulled the Triggers’, in: The New York Times (April 1992). 38 Alette Smeulers, ‘Perpetrators of International Crimes: Towards a Typology’ (2014), in: Alette Smeulers and Roelof Haveman (eds.) Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2008).
39 Ibid., 233.
40 Abram de Swaan, The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder (Yale University Press, 2015).
observances are used to elaborate on case-specific details about Rwanda. Section four consists of a brief conclusion.
§1.1 Genocide in Rwanda
This section briefly describes the sequence of events during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. This has already been slightly touched upon in the introduction, and is further elaborated on in the second chapter of this research. It is, however, relevant to first clarify the main occurrences of the genocide before turning to the theorization and conceptualization, in order for the latter two elements to be fully understood.
Rwanda is a small, landlocked, and densely populated country in Central Africa.42 At the time of the genocide, it was also one of the poorest countries
in the world, and poverty was increasing due to population growth and scarcity of land.43 In 1994, Rwanda consisted of three main groups: Hutu
(85%), Tutsi (14%) and Twa (1%).44 Hutus and Tutsis had become
increasingly polarized in the previous decades due to colonization and post-colonial social and political conflicts. In addition, the two categories of ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ had slowly shifted from social/economic categories to ethnic categories because of colonial and post-colonial policies.45 The history of
ethnicity, colonialism, and post-colonialism are further explained in the next chapter. When Rwanda became independent in 1962, the power-monopoly by the Tutsis ended, leaving the power in Hutu hands up until the 1994 genocide. Furthermore, the country had been war-torn since 1990, when Tutsi rebel army Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda from Uganda in order to regain power for Tutsis.46 Hutu president Juvénal Habyarimana was
increasingly exposed to internal and external factors threatening his power. External factors entailed the political and ethnic conflicts in neighboring country Burundi, and the international pressure for political reforms and a 42 Paul J. Magnarella, ‘The Background and Causes of the Genocide in Rwanda’, in: Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol.3 (2005), 801.
43 Alison des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, 1.
44 René Lemarchand, ‘The 1994 Rwanda Genocide’, 483-484.
45 Paul J. Magnarella, ‘The Background and Causes of the Genocide’, 802-812; Carla Schraml, ‘How is ethnicity experienced?’, 616-619; Scott Straus, ‘The Historiography of the Rwandan Genocide’, 519-520.
46 André Guichaoua, From War to Genocide: Criminal Politics in Rwanda 1990-1994 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 34-36.
peace agreement, forcing Habyarimana to cave to some of the RPF’s demands. The latter angered radical Hutus in Rwanda. Internal factors included civil war, the installment of a multi-party system (as a result of the international pressure) and a bad economy.47
These developments caused Habyarimana’s regime to take drastic measures in order to maintain power. First, once the RPF had invaded Rwanda, ruling officials started targeting Tutsi citizens by calling them rebel supporters. Many Tutsis were (arbitrarily) arrested, assaulted, and even killed as a result. This increased the polarization between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. Second, military officials, supported by political leaders, started expanding the army and training members for youth militias (for example the
Interahamwe). A civilian defense program was also launched to ensure local
participation in the militarization of society.48 Third, Habyarimana’s regime
started disseminating anti-Tutsi propaganda, and encouraged private parties, like magazines and radio stations, and local authorities to promulgate this negative propaganda. The propaganda had two main objectives. First, the propaganda contained messages on ethnic nationalism, in order to depict Tutsis as foreigners and Hutus as the only true inhabitants of Rwanda. Second, the propaganda spread rumors about the cruel actions of the RPF and the danger they posed to Rwandan Hutus, and identified basically all Rwandan Tutsis as RPF-sympathizers.49 This, too, increased the Hutu-Tutsi
tension in the years prior to the genocide. Threatened by the aforementioned internal and external factors, Habyarimana and his trustees started planning for genocide by preparing the necessary organization and logistics to carry this operation.50 The expansion of the military, propaganda, and normalization
of violence against Tutsis showed that the regime tried to ensure that mass violence could be sparked in an instant. This spark, however, occurred at the cost of Habyarimana himself: the genocide started with the assassination of Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, when two missiles shot down his airplane.51
47 Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell The Story, 50-51.
48 Scott Straus, ‘The Historiography of the Rwandan Genocide’, 521-523.
49 Scott Straus, ‘The Historiography of the Rwandan Genocide’, 523-524; Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell The Story, 65.
50 Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell The Story, 4-5.
51 Scott Straus, ‘The Historiography of the Rwandan Genocide’, 524-526; Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell The Story, 1-2.
By late March, right before the assassination of president Habyarimana, Hutu Power (extremist Hutus) leaders were determined to commit mass murder on not only Tutsis, but also Hutus who opposed Habyarimana. When Habyarimana was killed on April 6, a new interim government, consisting of radical Hutus in favor of violence, was quickly installed during the brief power vacuum. This small group of people decided to immediately implement their plans for mass murder, resulting in violence in Kigali only a few hours after the assassination. Violence soon spread to other parts of the country. The members of the militias and army killed intellectuals and political opponents, and ordered local authorities to execute all Tutsis in their regions. The first killings happened quickly, and were spread out very quickly, probably because of the structured organization behind the operation.52 At first,
assailants went from house to house in certain neighborhoods and systematically targeted Tutsis and moderate Hutus for the killings. Later, the organizers began to drive Tutsis out of their houses. Tutsis looked for shelter in churches, schools, government buildings and other public sites, where they were largely massacred. Many people were also killed on the streets.53
There were areas where local leaders and residents resisted the violence, but by April 21, systematic massacres had started in most parts of Rwanda where the government was in control. The violence against Tutsis was extreme and exterminatory: no one was spared. In addition to killing, people were also being tortured and raped, and looting was widespread. The genocide was considered at an end when the RPF seized power on July 17, 1994. An estimated 500,000 people had been killed.54
§1.2 The Banality of Genocide
This section consists of the core theories of this research. Theories on the perpetration of mass violence by Hannah Arendt, Christopher Browning, Alette Smeulers and Abram de Swaan are explained with the main objective to lay groundwork for the analysis of the Rwandan case. It is essential, however, to first look into a world-famous psychological experiment that 52 Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell The Story, 5-6.
53 Ibid., 9-10.
provided the world with fundamental indications that most ordinary people would, under the right circumstances, be willing and able to commit atrocities. Stanley Milgram conducted this experiment in 1961-1962 at Yale University.
The Milgram experiment entailed a social-psychological experiment where one’s level of obedience to authority was tested. Even though the experiment eventually involved over a thousand participants and was repeated at multiple other universities, it started out at Yale with only 40 adult study subjects. The basics of how it was conducted include: a person was invited to a psychological laboratory, and was then told that they were assigned the role of ‘teacher’, and that someone else was assigned the role of ‘learner’. Furthermore, the experimenter told the teacher that the experiment concerned a study on the effects of punishment on learning. The learner would not be visible for the teacher. Subsequently, the teacher would be told to give the learner electric shocks every time the learner responds to a question incorrectly. The shock generator ranges from 15 volts to 450 volts, from slight shock to danger-severe shock, and increased with 15 volts each time. Each time the teacher would give the learner a shock; the teacher would hear the learner’s reactions to the shocks. The teacher is also told that the experimenter bears responsibility for the condition of the learner, taking away the teacher’s personal responsibility for the wellbeing of the learner. 55
The real study subject in this experiment was the teacher: at what point would the teacher refuse giving shocks to the learner, who was clearly in increasing agony, and disobey the experimenter, who would keep on telling the teacher to continue to give shocks? In reality, the learner was an actor who did not receive shocks at all, so no people were actually harmed in this experiment. In this experiment, 37 of the 40 subjects continued the experiment all the way through the highest possible shock, causing the ‘learner’ extreme audible agony. Consequently, Milgram showed that people really are quite susceptible to obey authority, especially when they feel like they are not personally responsible.56 His research inspired many other social
55 Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (London: Tavistock Publications Ltd, 1974), 3-4, 160.
psychological experiments and stimulated academics of perpetration studies to further examine their ideas and hypotheses.
Milgram conducted his experiment in 1961-1962, around the time of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem. The trial against Eichmann was also a source of inspiration for Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), a German-born Jewish philosopher. Arendt fled Germany in 1933 when the persecution of Jews in Germany started taking serious forms, and continued her work in politics, journalism, and philosophy first in France, and later in the United States of America (USA). Subsequently, she became one of the most important political thinkers of the 20th century.57 One of Arendt’s most famous
academic contributions comprised a series of articles about the trial against Eichmann in Jerusalem in the early 1960s.58 In 1963, these articles were
published as a book: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of
Evil.59
In The Banality of Evil, Arendt was the first one to depict perpetrators of the Holocaust as normal (‘banal’) people, instead of the crazed sadists they were always thought to be.60 Arendt provoked a whirlwind of both criticism and
appreciation in the academic community. Before the publication of The
Banality of Evil, it was widely accepted that the perpetrators of the Holocaust
consisted of a small, exclusive group of high-placed Nazis who were insane sociopaths.61 Back then, Western philosophical and theological thinkers
generally believed that the phenomenon of ‘evil’ could be eradicated by social and political transformation.62 Arendt, however, observed something
completely different in the trial against Nazi leader Eichmann. Eichmann did not appear to be a crazy sadist, but instead seemed like quite a normal man, who was thoughtless, obedient and had a lack of self-reflection. Indeed many participants and functionaries of the Nazi regime shared these characteristics of being obedient and mindless functionaries, essentially indirectly killing from 57 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hannah Arendt, (2014).
58 Hannah Arendt, ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem – I, II, III, IV, V’, in: The New Yorker (February-March 1963).
59 Hannah Arendt, The Banality of Evil.
60 Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Lecture at the University of Amsterdam, 1 February 2016. 61 Ibid.
their desks.63 Evil, Arendt argued, was more banal than extraordinary after all.
Arendt has often been criticized for The Banality of Evil, with some people calling her anti-Semitic and a ‘self-hating Jew’, or simply ‘careless’ in her rhetoric and depiction of one of the top Nazi leaders as banal.64 No matter
how one interprets this work, however, Arendt has made a plausible, vital, and durable statement about perpetrators of mass violence, from which many other academics have continued to build upon with their own work.
American historian Christopher R. Browning (1944), who is specialized in Holocaust Studies, published his powerful book Ordinary Men in 1992. Browning was widely hailed for this academic contribution, and became one of the most influential scholars in the functionalist school of thought about the Holocaust.65 According to Browning, the main cause of the Holocaust was not
a deeply embedded anti-Semitic Nazi ideology, but rather a radicalized bureaucratic system.66 In Ordinary Men, Browning’s main point was to show
that the perpetrators in his case study were ordinary men without exceptionally anti-Semitic backgrounds. He conducted a case study of 500 German men in Reserve Police Battalion 101 (RPB101) in Poland, who killed 38 thousand Jews and deported 45 thousand Jews to Treblinka in less than a year’s time. Browning studied these men by looking into the court records, testimonies and interrogations from the prosecution of members of RPB101 between 1962-1972. Furthermore, as Browning showed, these were working-class, middle-aged men from Hamburg, the least Nazified city in Nazi Germany.67
Besides demographic profiling, Browning provided readers with an analysis of the progression of violence in this case. He described occurrences of dehumanization of the victims and routinization of the killings, which, according to Browning, created psychological predispositions that triggered 63 Hannah Arendt, The Banality of Evil, 52-55.
64 Daniel Maier-Katkin and Nathan Stoltzfus, Hannah Arendt on Trial (2013); Richard Wolin, The Banality of Evil: The Demise of a Legend (2014).
65 Opposing the functionalist school of thought is the intentionalist school of thought, which sees anti-Semitism, the Nazi ideology and intentionalism as main drivers of the Holocaust. One of the most well known proponents of intentionalism and opponents of Browning’s ‘ordinary men’ theory is Daniel J. Goldhagen, who, with his 1996 book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), criticized Browning’s functionalist views.
66 Karel Berkhoff, Lecture at the University of Amsterdam, 12 October 2015. 67 Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men, xv, 48.
violent behavior.68 In addition, he showed the bizarre situation in which only a
dozen out of 500 men took their commander’s option to exclude themselves from the violent tasks: no one was forced to kill or had to fear punishment for refusing. Last, Browning’s analysis of the case study showed that the accumulative effect of propaganda, pressure to conform to the group, a sense of unity and camaraderie, and obedience, created an environment that led ordinary men to commit mass murder.69 Browning assumption and
hypotheses were in part inspired by Milgram’s experiment a few decades earlier, and drew the conclusion that RPB101’s actions confirmed many of Milgram’s insights.70
Dutch international criminologist Alette Smeulers (1967) also portrayed perpetrators of mass violence as ordinary individuals in her article
Perpetrators of International Crimes (2014).71 Smeulers focused her research
on perpetration of international crimes, which she defined as extreme forms of collective violence/mass violence on behalf of the state. She defined these types of violence in terms of international humanitarian law, and according to her, this includes war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Thus, all genocides are international crimes, but not all international crimes are genocides. This is important to keep in mind when reading and using her work, because it makes her statements only selectively relevant to the subject of genocide. It is therefore important to look at her work critically when applying it to the subject of genocide.72
In her article Perpetrators of International Crimes, Smeulers said that perpetrators of international crimes are more so ordinary people than they are psychopaths or sadists. “The perpetrators are ordinary people within extraordinary circumstances”, she argued.73 Additionally, when collective
violence occurs, and a specific group is increasingly used as a scapegoat for social and economic problems, mass involvement of individuals often
68 Ibid., 162-163. 69 Ibid., 55-80. 70 Ibid., 168-174.
71 Alette Smeulers, ‘Perpetrators of International Crimes’. 72 Website Alette Smeulers, http://alettesmeulers.org/.
follows.74 This often causes ordinary people to continue to function in an
increasingly hostile environment. The state apparatus and law become criminal, and so do the followers of the regime. When societal norms and values change, violent behavior is no longer considered as wrong. This, argued Smeulers, is how ordinary people become mass murderers.75
What is more, Smeulers distinguished several types of perpetrators of international crimes, and found their roots in three types of people before the period of violence: law-abiding citizens, borderline types, and criminals/sadists.76 The consequences and effects of collective violence
triggers adaptive behavior and transformative processes, resulting in the existence of ten separate types of perpetrators, each with different motives to perpetrate: careerists, conformists, followers, devoted warriors, compromised professionals, profiteers, fanatics, criminal masterminds, criminals and sadists. Since the first five types of perpetrators used to be law-abiding citizens, it is safe to say that many perpetrators of international crimes are indeed ordinary people, said Smeulers.77 A part of these perpetrators would
fall within this study’s category of perpetrators, namely perpetrators of genocide. Smeulers used data from several cases to support her statements, and also looked at the Rwandan case for evidence. She mentioned that many perpetrators play minor roles as accomplices, but become physical perpetrators instead. For instance, in Rwanda, Hutus married to Tutsis had to prove their loyalty to Hutu Power by killing other Tutsis. These types of perpetrators are what Smeulers called ‘comprised perpetrators’.78
Finally, Dutch emeritus professor in Sociology, Abram de Swaan, published The Killing Compartments in 2015, which was based on an analysis
of existing literature. In this book, he also argued that perpetrators of mass violence are not necessarily sadistic psychopaths. De Swaan, however, did argue that perpetrators of mass violence become perpetrators of these types of violence because they are more prone to becoming murderers, even though they are socialized under the same circumstances as their fellow 74 Ibid., 235.
75 Ibid., 263-265. 76 Ibid., 235. 77 Ibid., 263-265. 78 Ibid., 241-263.
citizens.79 He theorized that perpetrators of mass violence are (1) more prone
to obeying orders; (2) feel little agency over their own lives; and (3) have no empathy or sympathy for outsiders.80 This is what spurs them to become
perpetrators, and is why not every human being has the capacity to become one.81 Furthermore, De Swaan tried to comprehend the societal and
psychological conditions that cause people to commit mass murder. His theory on ‘killing compartments’ painted a picture of a society in which a targeted victim group is ‘increasingly separated’ from the rest of society through social, political, cultural, institutional, emotional, and mental measures initiated by a genocidal regime.82 In a strongly compartmentalized society, the
victim group is therefore compartmentalized from the rest of society in various ways. This causes disidentification with the victim group by other citizens. Genocidal regimes reinforce these processes by using propaganda. As compartmentalization increases, people become more and more opinionated about the targeted group, and start to avoid them: ‘us against them’ thinking becomes dominant in society. These processes pave the way for mass violence.83
By emphasizing the aforementioned differences between perpetrators and others, De Swaan is less convinced of the ordinariness of perpetrators of mass murder than the aforementioned authors. He also mentioned Milgram’s experiments in his book, calling it ‘a most revealing experiment’, but nonetheless not necessarily convincing.84 De Swaan criticized Milgram’s
conclusions because the experiment was conducted in a laboratory setting, where the experimenters wore white lab-coats and were working for a prestigious university. The results were therefore not necessarily representing reality, according to De Swaan, and it is hard to make this evidence credible in a context outside of a lab. De Swaan concluded that the experiment did not show that the majority of people are capable or willing to electrocute someone
79 Abram de Swaan, The Killing Compartments, 247. 80 Ibid., 225-236.
81 Claire McCarney, An Author Explains How Mass Killings Happen. 82 Gary James Jason, Are We All Little Eichmanns?, 4.
83 Abram de Swaan, The Killing Compartments, 118-121. 84 Ibid., 28.
in real life, but rather, that the experiment showed that people can get carried away in these game-like experiments.85
What is more, De Swaan rejected Arendt’s claim that evil is banal, as well as the trend in the study of perpetration that overstresses situational factors and downplays personalities when explaining the behavior of génocidaires.86
De Swaan did note, however, that perpetrators do not completely lack empathy or compassion. Instead, they use the compartmentalization and other coping mechanisms to dehumanize their victims in order to ignore their moral sense, De Swaan wrote. By blaming their victims for being dirty, sick, filthy, and corrupt, perpetrators increasingly see their victims not as human beings but as animals. This dehumanization causes perpetrators to lose composure and self-control, resulting in escalation of violence.87 Because of
these factors, some perpetrators kill eagerly and others try to cope in other ways. This makes some perpetrators extraordinary, but others ordinary.
Arendt, Browning, Smeulers and De Swaan all agree that perpetrators of mass violence are not necessarily sociopaths. The first three authors particularly note that the perpetrators of genocidal violence are mostly quite ordinary, normal people in unusual societal contexts that trigger violence. De Swaan also does not depict perpetrators as immoral beasts, but he does stress that these types of perpetrators are a little different than others, causing them to be more prone to commit genocidal acts of violence. These findings show similarity with Arendt’s statement about the perpetrators of the Holocaust: the committed crimes were unprecedented, but the perpetrators and their motivations were terrifyingly banal.
These academic contributions, powerful as they were and still are, do contain flaws. First, there are shortcomings when it comes to credibility. Even though Browning’s book was significant and powerful, some of his conclusions are based on questionable assumptions. For instance, Browning based his research on court records, which means that his statements were based on the perpetrators’ behavior and testimonies when they were suspects in a judicial context, not when they were perpetrators in a criminal context. 85 Ibid., 28-30.
86 Ibid., 21-23; 37-40. 87 Ibid., 212, 247.
This could have led to flaws in the interpretations Browning made. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, one of Browning’s main topics in the book is his elaborate description of psychological processes, with both groups as with individuals. Browning, however, is a historian and never studied psychology, making his statements regarding psychology less convincing. The same statement can be made about De Swaan, who argued that specific psychological conditions are at the root of mass violence. Since De Swaan is a sociologist, he does not necessarily have the credentials to sufficiently support these kinds of statements. Smeulers also made quite a few statements in the context of psychology, even though she was primarily trained in international criminology, i.e. the study of international crimes. Second, weaknesses exist when it comes to empirical data. De Swaan’s book lacks empirical sources in general, and Arendt and Browning’s books remain one-dimensional due to the lack of comparative data or other incorporated case studies. They only based their findings and conclusions on researching the Holocaust, and failed to put it into a more general perspective. This also overlooks the fact that genocides can carry different meanings in different cultural contexts, making their materials quite Eurocentric. One can therefore question the extent to which these books can be used to explain other examples of mass atrocities, in both other cultures and other times.
§1.3 Rwanda’s Ordinary Perpetrators
After examining several theories on the level of ordinariness of perpetrators of genocidal crimes, it is important to further investigate the background of the Rwandan case, in particular some important concepts and theories about its perpetrators. Therefore, this section consists of a conceptualization of the perpetrators: which perpetrators are we talking about, and were they ordinary people? What kind of crimes did they commit within the scope of genocide? What were their motivations? These concepts – perpetrators, crimes and motivations – are explained below.
An important note that needs to be mentioned beforehand is that generalizations about the perpetrators’ motivations are pointless. Perpetrators had varying motivations, used several kinds of violence, committed diverse crimes (not all genocidal), and were mobilized at different times and in
distinctive ways.88 Furthermore, Scott Straus stated in his book The Order of
Genocide (2006) that individuals’ motives to commit genocide are always just
that: individual. No real generalizations can be made in this regard. The Rwandan genocide clearly showed heterogeneity in motivation and participation, and the same can be said for other genocides.89 Additionally, the
perpetrators in Rwanda showed a lot of diversity when it came to their demographic profiles. For instance, perpetrators were peasants from the hills in the country, but also unemployed youngsters from the city. Perhaps most surprisingly, however, was that there were also a number of intellectuals and professionals who participated in the killings.90 Consequently, social and
economic status was not necessarily indicative of one’s level of perpetration.91
In addition, Straus calculated that between 175-210 thousand people (mostly civilians) actively participated in the Rwandan genocide. Considering that the majority of perpetrators were civilians, one can assume that the majority of perpetrators in the Rwandan genocide were ordinary people.92 Another big
group of perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, however, consisted of soldiers and militia members. According to Straus, around 20 thousand perpetrators fell into this category.93
Jean Hatzfeld, a French writer and journalist, delved into the minds of a selection of perpetrators in his book Machete Season. Just like Straus, Hatzfeld used a wide variety of primary sources by conducting interviews with Rwandan perpetrators, to present a detailed account of how and why they committed atrocities in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Hatzfeld disclosed how the killing frenzies possessed some perpetrators: “There were some who 88 Scott Straus, ‘How many perpetrators were there in the Rwandan genocide? An estimate’ Journal of Genocide Research, vol.6, no.1 (2004), 93-95.
89 Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 95.
90 Alison Des Forges gave examples of intellectuals participating in the genocide in Leave None. For instance, she mentioned ‘a group of intellectuals’ in the region of Gikongoro, which she defined as ‘people with higher education and salaried employment’, who urged others to take actions against the people responsible for Habyarimana’s assassination (p.478). Also, after the news of Habyarimana’s death spread, intellectuals in this region began spreading rumors about Tutsis wanting to kill Hutus (p. 503). Other intellectuals provided support to militia members and participating citizens in terms of logistics and organization (p. 512). In Butare, intellectuals also played important roles in the killings (p. 837).
91 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69
92 Scott Straus, ‘How many perpetrators’, 93-95. 93 Ibid., 95.
brutalized a lot because they killed overmuch. Their killings were delicious to them. They needed intoxication, like someone who calls louder and louder for a bottle.”94 Other perpetrators, however, simply followed orders: “The suffering
brought to light each person’s natural kindness of wickedness. There were fierce people who urged us to cause pain. But they were the very few. Most appeared uneasy with the awful suffering.”95 A certain perpetrator elaborated
on these orders: “Making someone suffer was up to each person, as long as he did his job. The intimidators gave no particular order to encourage or discourage it.”96 Thus, while some perpetrators in this case study were indeed
sadistic killers, many others complied with the orders they got from local and national officials and members from militia and the army in this – let us not forget – extraordinary and extremely violent social context.
In The Order of Genocide, Straus used various research methods to find out why the perpetrators committed violent acts. Straus interviewed over 200 Rwandan perpetrators, and found that the perpetrator group strongly resembled the adult Hutu population of the time, meaning that the perpetrators were mostly ordinary people.97 Expected motivations of the
perpetrators to join the violence, such as ethnic animosity, ideological beliefs, blind obedience, and prejudice, did not actually hold ground in this research. The findings ran contrary to what many expected. Rather, “the overwhelming majority of perpetrators in rural areas were ordinary men. […] For the most part, Rwanda’s genocide perpetrators – “génocidaires” – were regular citizens,” Straus concluded.98 In his article Who killed in Rwanda’s genocide?
McDoom also acknowledged the academic consensus about the Rwandan civilian perpetrators being ordinary people, and wondered what factors could predict one’s participation in the genocide.99 McDoom concluded that
micro-spatial and social mechanisms were predictors of participation, like social proximity to other perpetrators and social interaction and influence.100 These
94 Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 129.
95 Ibid., 129. 96 Ibid., 131.
97 Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide, 119. 98 Ibid., 96.
99 Omar Shahabudin McDoom, ‘Who killed in Rwanda’s genocide?’, 456. 100 Ibid., 456-457.
