the politics of trauma in rwanda

last week, i attended a conference on "peacebuilding and trauma recovery" at the University of Denver (http://www.du.edu/con-res/center/February2007Conference.htm), and co-hosted with the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University (http://www.emu.edu/cjp).

i gave a presentation to a room of about fifty scholars, ranging from graduate students at the Master's level to some self-professed "experts" on Rwanda. The audience was a mixture of political scientists, peacebuilders, social psychologists and cultural anthropologists. my presentation was on "The RPF, National Unity and the Representation of Trauma in Post-Genocide Rwanda". My core argument was that the Rwandan Patriotic Front-led government, who claims to be rebuilding "one Rwanda for all Rwandans" through its policy of national unity, is actually laying the groundwork for a renewal of acute violence in its efforts to maintain physical and psychological control of the political landscape. I used the discourse of trauma to show how national unity is actually re-labelling Rwandans as either survivors or genocidaires, and how these discrete categories are structuring how these individuals participate (or not) in political life. I argued that not only is untreated trauma (of survivors) a problem for their active engagement in reconstruction and reconciliation, but that in collectively stigmatising genocidaires (all adult male Hutu) as guilty of crimes of genocide, the policy of national unity
not only leaves their participation-induced trauma unacknowledged, and hence untreated. I then argued that it also has created a narrative of the genocide that is disconnected from the lived realities of ordinary Rwandans during the genocide. Not all Tutsi were targeted; not all Hutu killed.

I knew that this argument would be provocative, but i did not expect a public roasting. some members of the audience were appalled at my insensitive analysis, two in particular stating that they knew "the truth in Rwanda". This was after they acknowledged that things are "complicated" in Rwanda. They both claimed to have been in Rwanda on several occasions, and had been hosted by the government, to which i responded, "do you mean that you were hosted by members of the RPF? Is it possible you only saw what they wanted you to see?" A Congolese woman who lived in Rwanda after the genocide thanked me for offering a different perspective on Rwanda. She said that where ever she goes in the United States, it is always the same about how the RPF has saved Rwanda.

After the panel, I was accused by my two aggressors of being "anti-Tutsi", to which i replied, " i am not anti-Tutsi, or pro-Hutu; I am pro-people and anti-conflict".