Rwandan genocide denial

Rwandan genocide denial is the assertion that the Rwandan genocide did not occur in the manner or to the extent described by scholarship. The Rwandan genocide is widely acknowledged by genocide scholars to have been one of the biggest modern genocides, as many sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the victims.

Denial of the Rwandan genocide is a crime in Rwanda.

Denial by officials

A high-ranking Tutsi and a UN official have claimed that no genocide of the Tutsi took place at all: Antoine Nyetera, who claims Tutsi royal origins, and the former UN Representative in Rwanda, Roger Booboh, who declared that "to claim that a genocide occurred is closer to the politics of surrealism than to the truth".

Herman and Peterson

In The Politics of Genocide (2010), economist Edward S. Herman and independent researcher David Peterson, while not denying the scale of the killing during the period of extreme violence of April–July 1994, questioned the distribution of the victims for those months, arguing that Hutus comprised the majority of the dead, not Tutsis. Their detractors have charged them with genocide denial, accusations that have been condemned by Herman and Peterson.

Their book goes much further than others who have questioned the consensus view of the genocide: it states that common knowledge is not simply partly incorrect, but is actually "a propaganda line ... that turned perpetrator and victim upside-down." The pair are critical of fundamental aspects of the well-known report by Alison Des Forges, and maintain that she obfuscates the issue of who assassinated Habyarimana (they argue it was clearly the RPF) and that, contrary to the conclusions of Des Forges's report, the only well-planned regimen of massive violence perpetrated after the assassination was the RPF's invasion to drive the Hutu from power. Herman and Peterson ultimately conclude that the RPF were "prime génocidaires", while the Interahamwe were "the RPF's actual victims."

Their book argues that the accepted version of the events of 1994 implies Rwanda is "the first case in history in which a minority population, suffering destruction at the hands of its tormentors, drove its tormentors from power and assumed control of a country, all in the span of less than one hundred days", a narrative Herman and Peterson deem "incredible in the extreme."

Africa specialist Gerald Caplan criticized Herman and Peterson's account, charging that "why the Hutu members of the government 'couldn't possibly have planned a genocide against the Tutsi' is never remotely explained". Herman and Peterson's position on the genocide was found "deplorable" by James Wizeye, first secretary at the Rwandan High Commission in London. Adam Jones has compared Herman and Peterson's approach to Holocaust denial.

According to sociologist Martin Shaw, Noam Chomsky subscribes to the Herman–Peterson thesis.

Rwanda, The Untold Story

In 2014, the BBC aired the documentary Rwanda, The Untold Story, which included interviews with American researchers who claim that most of the victims may have been Hutus. Afterwards, Rwanda's parliament approved a resolution to ban the BBC in the country.

Peter Erlinder

American lawyer Peter Erlinder, who was Lead Defence Counsel for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, questions the planning of the killing, and so concludes that the slaughter of the Tutsi should not be called genocide.

See also

• Genocide denial
• Historical revisionism (negationism)