Bury or display? The politics of exhumation in post-genocide Rwanda

Korman, Rémi

doi:10.7228/manchester/9780719097560.003.0009

Cited by 16 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Moreover, the names of thousands of victims are engraved in the Wall of Names at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, and a book commissioned by the government on the genocide in Murambi contains thousands more names (African Rights 2007). The government's concern for the privacy of the dead also cannot be reconciled with its policy of burying them in mass graves or publicly displaying their mummified bodies (Vidal 2004;Burnett 2009;Jessee 2012;Dumas and Korman 2011;Korman 2015). A government confident of its work probably would want to publish the names of all victims.…”

Section: Census No 3 (2000): 1074017 Victimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘More than a million’: the politics of accounting for the dead of the Rwandan genocide

Reydams

2021

Review of African Political Economy

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Accounting for the dead after a humanitarian catastrophe is often fraught with methodological and/or political pitfalls. The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda is a case in point. A UN Commission of Experts estimated that between April and July 1994 at least 500,000 civilians had been murdered. The post-genocide Rwandan government soon made clear that foreign help with demographic and forensic investigations was neither appreciated nor needed, and proceeded with its own counts of genocide victims. The article critically examines these counts; contrasts them with accounting efforts after the Bosnian conflict of the mid 1990s; compares the official Rwandan numbers with scholarly estimates; proposes an alternative method for calculating the death toll; and concludes that the official death toll roughly doubled the number of genocide victims. The article provides insight into how history is written in the new Rwanda.

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Section: Census No 3 (2000): 1074017 Victimsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘More than a million’: the politics of accounting for the dead of the Rwandan genocide

Reydams

2021

Review of African Political Economy

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“…It also contained some members of the Memorial Commission, such as Louis Kanamugire, Christophe Muhoza and Mario Ibarra, a Chilean who worked for the Rwandan Government for a year on the issue of bone preservation and from 1995 began producing reports for the Rwandan Government on the preservation of bodies. 23 In January 1996, three months before the second commemoration of the genocide, he wrote a report on the conservation of bodies exhumed in Murambi. 24 When Kanimba Misago was appointed director of the National Museum of Rwanda in 1996, he became responsible for the preservation of genocide memorial sites and bones at the national level.…”

Section: The Display Practices Of Human Remainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobilising the dead? The place of bones and corpses in the commemoration of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda

Korman¹

2015

Human Remains and Violence: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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Representations of Rwanda have been shaped by the display of bodies and bones at Tutsi genocide memorial sites. This phenomenon is most often only studied from the perspective of moral dimensions. This article aims in contrast to cover the issues related to the treatment of human remains in Rwanda for commemorative purposes from a historical perspective. To this end, it is based on the archives of the commissions in charge of genocide memory in Rwanda, as well as interviews with key memorial actors. This study shows the evolution of memorial practices since 1994 and the hypermateriality of bodies in their use as symbols, as well as their demobilisation for the purposes of reconciliation policies.

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Navigating Cultural Memory

Mwambari

2023

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This book analyzes how a master narrative of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi evolved into a hegemonic narrative. It identifies key actors of the evolution and enforcement of the master narrative in the first two decades after the genocide and civil war ended. Primary and secondary sources and rarely analyzed Rwandan folklore examine how Rwandans—identified as Champions, Antagonists, and Fatalists of the master narrative—responded through language; physical symbols of memory and art; and traditional and new media. It is argued that what has emerged as the master narrative and, over time, as the hegemonic narrative of the Genocide Against the Tutsi, was created from plural and fluid memorialization approaches, debates, tensions, and contradictions among mnemonic actors in Rwanda and beyond. It indicates that Champions struggle to maintain power to shape and classify responses to the master narrative, Antagonists and Fatalists equally mobilize tools to contest that power. The transmission of these debates within online “conversable spaces” potentially can fuel further tensions or present an opportunity for compassionate transformation. A relational approach to dignity and its significance is needed to transform polarizing narratives away from sources of competition, exclusion, and silence toward facilitating the construction and more peaceful relationships. Political conversations around the master narrative and violent histories are important for not only contemporary politics but also the key to Rwanda’s present and future peace and stability. The book contributes to postgenocide literature and policy debates on memory politics and scholarship on meanings of dignity.

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Bury or display? The politics of exhumation in post-genocide Rwanda

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

‘More than a million’: the politics of accounting for the dead of the Rwandan genocide

‘More than a million’: the politics of accounting for the dead of the Rwandan genocide

Mobilising the dead? The place of bones and corpses in the commemoration of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda

Navigating Cultural Memory

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