Atrocity After Atrocity: Examining the Use and Abuse of ‘Memories’ of Genocide During Mobilisation for Violence in Serbia and Rwanda

Genocidal elites often defend and justify their campaigns in terms of the fear of and threat posed by the targeted group (see, for example, Straus, 2006 on Rwanda; de la Brosse, 2003, on Serbia). The more existential the threat, the more urgent the call for ‘defensive’ or ‘pre-emptive’ action - and what greater threat than the spectre of genocide, especially if it appears to repeat another instance of genocide within living memory? Given this - and considering the turn away from ‘ancient hatreds’ and pure materialist accounts of conflict, towards an understanding rooted more in complex identity formation and historical memory - I will examine how elites in post-genocidal societies have used histories of atrocity to spur contemporary violence, drawing upon early 1990s Rwanda and Serbia as my case studies. I will examine contemporary documents describing historical atrocities that have often gone overlooked beyond country-specific literature, such as Draskovic’s ‘Knife’ (1982), Njegoš ‘The Mountain Wreath’ (1847), and the ‘Tutsi Colonisation Plan’ published in Kangura (1990). This analysis will pay particular attention to the way that memories about the form, targeting, and contemporary applicability of genocide are often reinterpreted or even fabricated to suit contemporary political agendas, as seen in Kangura, where a largely fictitious history of atrocity and political violence was ‘discovered’ in order to justify contemporary violence against Tutsi civilians. In each case, I will examine what the impact of these recharacterisations was on subsequent violence. I argue that, taken together, this underlines the importance of understanding the contemporary conditions when assessing post-conflict identities. Political ideologies clearly may affect the trajectory of post-atrocity transitions - but when those same ideologies can reshape or even create the understanding of what it means to be ‘post-atrocity’, understanding how historical memory can be constructed, reinterpreted, or created, is essential.