Before I agree with those who think that Keith Snow is a genocide denier, it is necessary to find authoritative alternative or contrary evidence to contradict or controvert his version. In academic research ethics, when a scholar personally interviews respondents and presents his field results, another scholar who disagrees is forced to equally cross examine the same respondents or produce evidence from other witness testimonies which reveal different accounts of the alleged facts. As it stands, however unpalatable or biased Snow's story may be, he is at least very specific and detailed in his evidence. If you simply reject his research findings then you may be accused of simply not WANTING to believe or accept scientific facts for personal, subjective rather than scientific, objective reasons.

Rwandan Ethnic Justice 

2041 years ago Israeli King Herod heard of the birth of a messiah. To pre-empt any challenge to his own leadership, Herod slaughtered all infants under the age of two. He forced Joseph and Mary to flee with baby Jesus into exile. Last century, Adolf Hitler felt ashamed at reparations paid by Germany following their First World War defeat. To regain national pride, between 1939 and 1945, the Fuhrer executed six million Jews using gas chambers, firing squads and other crude methods. Prior to Rwanda’s 1962 independence, poorer classes of her population–branded “Hutu” majorities–were systematically excluded from political privileges. Instead, the Belgian colonial government disproportionately favoured so-called wealthy Tutsi minorities. Subsequently, by reverse discrimination the post-colonial Hutu regime forced the Tutsi into a 30-year exile. However, in 1990 the Tutsi King led his Rwandan Patriotic Front into a guerilla war seeking to restore the right to return of 250, 000 Tutsis. By 1994, some Hutu extremists countered by establishing an Interahamwe militia which massacred over 800, 000 Tutsis together with Hutu sympathizers within 100 days. The legal question arises of whether a particular law, proclamation or decree ordering mass killings, is valid.

There are three concepts of law which answer the validity question differently. First, natural lawyers Aristotle, St Aquinas, Lon Fuller or John Finnis define law according to the correctness of its content. Because law and morality are connected, killing is never necessary and always evil. They assert the right to life under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and absolute non derogation from freedom against torture; and the 1948 Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy wholly or partly, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group: killing members of that group or causing them serious bodily or mental harm; Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction or intended to prevent births from within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Naturalists appreciate the fact that since 1997 Rwanda abolished the death penalty.

Second, legal positivists Jeremy Bentham and John Austin define law as commands backed by sanctions. Modern positivists Hans Kelsen and H.L.A. Hart agree that law and morality are separate questions. Rather valid rules depend on authoritative issuance. Hence distinguishing governments from gangsters, they emphasize the need to protect populations. Sovereigns may limit the right to life by killing enemy soldiers during war or executing certain criminals or even torturing suspected terrorists. Hence positivists approve victor’s justice administered by establishment of International War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremburg and Tokyo by the allies; Establishment of UN International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; and a permanent International Criminal Court under the 1998 Statute of Rome with jurisdiction to try crimes against humanity (Art 7) and war crimes (Art 8).

Thirdly, sociologists like Max Weber or legal realist Oliver Wendel Holmes assert validity of law to emerge from social efficacy or possibility thereof. The sociological fact of power explains why despite inflicting over 200, 000 deaths on civilians and contiguous diseases on unborn fetuses, USA was not prosecuted for twin atomic bombs dropped in 1945 on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. As the world’s sole superpower USA is not an ICC member. With Britain’s complicity, USA invaded Iraq on suspicion that it was developing biological weapons of mass destruction. They arrested Saddam Hussein, had him tried by Iraqi courts and executed. 

Evaluation of responses by different critics of the Rwandan mass killings is therefore influenced by their divergent concepts of law. Anthropologists record that for over 8 centuries, three ethnic groups all spoke Kinyarwanda language, intermarried and peacefully coexisted at Rwanda (the world) with fluid social mobility. When pursuant to the 1884-5 Berlin Conference, Germany colonized Rwanda in 1895, it relied upon “indirect rule” through adopting the then existing monarchy system. However the 1919 Treaty of Versailles witnessed Belgian take-over of Rwanda-urundi territory pursuant to a UN trusteeship mandate. The Belgian colonialists were aghast that Rwandan traditional institutions had fought alongside the Germans during the just concluded war. Instead of ruling through the discredited monarchy, they introduced a new “divide and rule” policy.  

In the population and livestock census taken in 1933, the economic elite comprising persons owning over 15 cows were ascribed the identity of “Tutsi” (14% of the population). This privileged group was co-opted into the ruling governance positions to officially, artificially and arbitrarily separate them from the other 85%, those owning less than 15 cows, forming a “Hutu” lower class. Only the “pygmies” or Twa (1%) were distinctly identifiable using their physical characteristic of stunted growth.  

The colonial government issued “ethnic” identity cards and simultaneously undertook widespread ethnic propaganda campaigns to indoctrinate the economically unequal populations concerning their ordained, separate political superiority and subordinate statuses respectively. Thus an unrepentantly anti-Tutsi “Hutu ten commandments” developed. The systematic colonial class stratification underpinned by irrational ethnic discrimination generated social resentment inevitably resulting in a 1959 revolution culminating in Hutu victory at the inaugural independence elections. 

To be continued 

By Charles A. Khamala

Charles Khamala is an Advocate.