Authors
Timothy Longman
Publication date
2023/6/23
Book
Violence and Public Memory
Pages
57-75
Publisher
Routledge
Description
Timothy Longman in Chapter 3 focuses on the political manipulation of the public memory of the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. In 1994, a government-orchestrated campaign of violence targeted the Tutsi ethnic minority with devastating results. The military victory of the Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), in 1994 ended the violence, and the RPF has dominated Rwandan politics since then. They have carefully shaped public memory of the 1994 violence by espousing a particular narrative that treats the genocide as the culmination of Rwanda’s colonial and post-colonial history and that rationalizes the continuation of political power by the RPF. For the most part, Longman argues, the international community has bought into this narrative and used it to justify their strong support for the RPF. Yet, he contends, the government narrative is undermined by the lived experience of Rwandans, many of …