Comment ne pas reconnaître un génocide

Résumé 0

How not to recognize a genocideIf the absolute denial of genocide was the prerogative of genocide perpetrators and their allies —in the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, and in other genocides— there were also forms of non-recognition born out of the shame one felt for being faced with a crime that could not be prevented, or from a cognitive blocage in view of atrocities that the spirit refuses to acknowledge, or from an overload of information in the humanitarian sphere that blurs the distinction between genocide and other catastrophic events that took place at the same time. In addition, there is an aspect of different interpretive readings, such as the ethnic discourse reflected in the formula of a “double genocide” (Hutu and Tutsi accusing each other of genocide), or the theory of conspiracy as it is presented in the attack against the presidential plane.One would think that the lesson learned from past genocides would raise awareness of a new genocide. However, during the Holocaust, the memory of the Armenian genocide was hardly mentioned, except by Jewish victims. Thus, if the memory of the Holocaust was not enough to alert the world while the genocide of the Tutsi was taking place in Rwanda, it was not because this memory would have been preserved exclusively by Jews. On the contrary, it was because the world, captive to a narrow ideological representation of the genocide, ignored the real conditions under which the massacre of the Jews took place, which in turn resembled the circumstances of the Tutsi massacre.