Deborah Mayersen - On the Path to Genocide: Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined

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On the Path to Genocide

O N THE P ATH TO G ENOCIDE

Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined

Deborah Mayersen

Published in 2014 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

2014, 2016 Deborah Mayersen
First paperback edition published in 2016

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mayersen, Deborah.

On the path to genocide : Armenia and Rwanda reexamined / Deborah Mayersen.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-78238-284-3 (hardback)ISBN 978-1-78533-196-1 (paperback)ISBN 978-1-78238-285-0 (ebook)

1. Armenian massacres, 19151923. 2. ArmeniansCrimes againstTurkey. 3. GenocideTurkey. 4. TurkeyEthnic relations. 5. RwandaHistoryCivil War, 1994Atrocities. 6. Tutsi (African people)Crimes againstRwanda. 7. GenocideRwanda. 8. RwandaEthnic relations. I. Title.

DS195.5.M3738 2014

956.6'20154dc23

2013029905

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78238-284-3 hardback

ISBN 978-1-78533-196-1 paperback

ISBN 978-1-78238-285-0 ebook

For Jennie and Mary with deep gratitude

C ONTENTS

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply grateful to Professor Peter McPhee (University of Melbourne) for his superb guidance in the course of this project. I could not have had a better historian to guide my path. Sincere thanks to Professor Ben Kiernan, under whom I was privileged to have a visiting fellowship to Yale Universitys Genocide Studies Program, where I spent a semester researching this book. Professor Kiernans support and assistance, both whilst I was at Yale and subsequently, have been invaluable. My thanks also to Professor Vahakn Dadrian and Professor Stephen Feinstein, of blessed memory, for tremendously helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this book. I am grateful to the editors and production team at Berghahn Books for their invaluable assistance in bringing this volume to fruition, and I would especially like to thank Adam Capitanio, Elizabeth Berg and Caitlin Mahon.

During the course of this project I was fortunate to receive funding from numerous sources. These include funding from The University of Melbourne, the Australian Federation of University Women (South Australia and Victoria), Bnai Brith Victoria and the Jewish Community Council of Victoria. The funding I received was instrumental to the successful completion of this project, and my sincere thanks to all the organizations and people that made this possible. Special thanks also to Mary Mass for making this project possible in a very practical way.

A BBREVIATIONS

APROSOMA	LAssociation pour la Promotion Sociale de la Masse
BBTG	Broad-based transitional government
CDR	Coalition pour la Dfense de la Rpublique
CUP	Committee of Union and Progress
FAR	Rwandan Armed Forces
GDP	Gross domestic product
GNP	Gross national product
IMF	International Monetary Fund
JEM	Justice and Equality Movement
MDR	Mouvement Dmocratique Rpublicain
MDR/PARMEHUTU	Mouvement Dmocratique Rwandais/Parti du Mouvement et de lmancipation Hutu
MRND	Mouvement Rvolutionnaire National pour le Dveloppement
NGO	Nongovernmental organization
NRA	National Resistance Army
PARMEHUTU	Parti du Mouvement et de lmancipation Hutu
PDC	Parti Dmocrate-Chrtien
PL	Parti Libral
PSD	Parti Social-Dmocrate
RADER	Rassemblement Dmocratique Ruandais
RPF	Rwandan/Rwandese Patriotic Front
RTLM	Radio Tlvision Libre des Mille Collines
SLM/A	Sudan Liberation Movement/Army
TRAFIPRO	Cooprative Travail, Fidelit, Progrs
UN	United Nations
UNAMIR	United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda
UNAR	Union Nationale Rwandaise

Introduction

T HE S YMPTOMS OF AN E XPLOSIVE S ITUATION

The Temporal Model of Genocide

Introduction

The United Nations (UN) received its first official warning of the risk of genocide in Rwanda in 1962technically speaking, some thirty-two years of advance notice. UN Commissioner Majid Rahnema, after returning from an observer mission, declared that the nation exhibited the symptoms of an explosive situation. For many of the thirty-two years between Commissioner Rahnemas counsel and the eruption of genocide, his warning seemed overstated and alarmist. Then suddenly it became prophetic. Between April and July 1994 the most intense genocide of the twentieth century tore through Rwanda, leaving close to a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu dead in its wake. Commissioner Rahnemas prediction had eventuated. And yet why thirty-two years later? Why did the genocide erupt in 1994 rather than 1964, or, for that matter, 1974 or 1984? Was Commissioner Rahnemas warning in 1962 really portentous, or just an accident of history?

The objective of this book is a simple one. It is a quest to provide a greater understanding of why genocide occurs when it does. Why did the Armenian genocide erupt in Turkey in 1915, only seven years after the Armenian minority achieved civil equality for the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire? How can we explain the Rwandan genocide occurring in 1994, after decades of relative peace and some cooperation between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority? In the wake of the seeming explosion of genocides that have marked the twentieth century, scholars in the field of comparative genocide studies have identified and modelled preconditions and risk factors for genocide. Yet there is only a very limited historical understanding of how such determinants develop over time. Does the risk of genocide develop over decades or generations, or can a nation escalate from a low risk to a high risk of genocide very quickly? Can the risk of genocide wax and wane, or is the progression a linear one?

Integral to understanding the processes that culminate in genocide is a conception not only of the escalatory factors, but the inhibitory factors that may delay or prevent its onset. Why did the Hamidian massacres of 189496, in which more than one hundred thousand Ottoman Armenians were slaughtered, not escalate into an attempt to eliminate the minority entirely? If the invasion of second-generation Tutsi refugees into Rwanda in 1990 triggered the events that led to the 1994 genocide, why did a similar refugee invasion in 1963 not trigger a genocidal response? The role of constraints in inhibiting genocide may be as significant as that of preconditions in provoking it. Moreover, the preconditions and constraints that impact upon risk of genocide are subject to change in surprising ways.

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