Legal basis of genocidal practice in traditional Rwanda (15th-20th centuries)

The table below shows how the Nyiginya dynasty has always promoted a bloodthirsty, exterminating, not to say genocidal, vengeful and domineering policy. We can see this in the names of war that have been attributed to the various Rwandan monarchs since the 15th century:

Poem 123 "Royalty is the privilege of one lineage" declares the Tutsi race as a race of God called to dominate other races. In addition, he does not hide the determination of the Tutsi to continue their policy of exterminator. He does not forget to stress that any defeated Hutu king must be emasculated and his virile organs must adorn the Royal Kalinga Drum. The author of this poem puts it in rather pathetic terms:

"Kingship is the privilege of a single line,

Race of God!

The illusioned, deprived of this royal prerogative from birth,

This wealthy chosen one exterminated them,

And with their remains the Kalinga is adorned. (Sindayigaya: 1945) " [...]

Nowhere do I hear about kinglets:

This plague of enemies has exterminated them

And the drums are decorated with their trophies.

When he thinks of independent princes,

He cannot rest or be sleepy;

He can't go a single day without taking it;

And without turning it into a massacre of extermination.

When there is an offspring of them,

He does not let him grow up a! the risk of getting up again:17!

He inquires about his hiding place

and goes there to uproot him (Sindayigaya: 1945).

[... ”]

One might think that this hideous exterminating practice was solely a matter of politics, yet it is surprising to find it enshrined in the Code of Political Institutions of pre-colonial Rwanda and the Esoteric Code. The extermination in question is still carried out through the emasculation which we will discuss in another article.

Conclusions

The exterminating practices which have always taken place in the world have always been committed against a background of permanent violence which reigned in different societies. Rwanda, on the other hand, had a well-developed genocidal ideology. He inherited violence in several forms: physical violence, psychological violence.

This violence is physical depending on whether the individual or a group of individuals is being made to suffer physically. It reaches its peak when it seeks to proceed with the extermination of an entire group of people (family, clan, ethnic group, etc.) as an extreme form of this violence. It is also psychic, because it is directed against the psyche. To this type of violence belong lies, brainwashing, and various forms of indoctrination, manipulation, and threats etc ... which aim to diminish spiritual capacities. Here, we resort more to the language, because the Tutsi especially in the Rwandan society understood that "the lance of language defeats the spears of a troop of shock", that is to say the language kills more people than the war.

The other type of violence that has still predominated in Rwanda is structural violence that takes place when violence is embedded in the system itself and is expressed in unequal powersharing relationships and hence, in the inequality of opportunity, unequal distribution of income, educational opportunities, illiteracy, the concentration of health services in certain sectors to the detriment of others, social injustice.

In addition, to these three types of violence was added the cruelest: extermination, in the Rwandan language itsembatsemba and in the contemporary vocabulary of genocide. The latter was invented by Raphael Lemkin in 1945 when Rwandans, since the 16th century, use it very easily in their daily practices. The genocide was narrated with pride and fervor in a multitude of poems. Hence the conclusion that genocide, in a society won by violence like Rwanda, is authorized and publicly supported because it is instituted by the governing power.

In Rwandan literature, we find the foundations of the genocidal policy in three major poetic genres in Rwanda: the Pastoral, the Warrior and the Dynastic. The specter of conflicting relationships runs through Rwandan culture and anyone who does not understand its nuances is very likely to make errors in value judgments believing that they operate better according to Western logic.

The strong violence that so ruined Rwandan society was well tied up around a politico-legal architecture carefully designed by its rulers. Thus traditional penal law, traditional military law, war poetry, dynastic poetry and finally the esoteric code. Anyone wishing to settle any dispute, or prosecute an individual for a crime committed in Rwanda, is advised to know these African specificities. Oddly enough, the judges, investigators, the prosecutor and his agents knew nothing about these realities. Which was one of the roots of the failure of the ICTR.

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