The Rwandan genocide may hold the sad record for the 20th century genocide with the most killers, but calculating exactly how many people were killed has proven to be a much more difficult task.
As Rwanda prepared to commemorate on Wednesday the 10th anniversary of its 1994 genocide, there is still no consensus on the number of victims, with estimates ranging anywhere from 500 000 to a million.
In the Holocaust, most of the victims were rounded up before being killed and at least their numbers, if not identities, were recorded. The Khmer Rouge had a similar system in Cambodia, at least for those killed in detention centers.
But in Rwanda, men, women, and children were massacred in the fields in their homes as Hutus turned on their minority Tutsi neighbours.
In 2000, the Rwandan government launched an investigation to determine the genocide’s death toll.
The results of that investigation concluded that 1 071 000 people had died — 90% of them Tutsis — Rwanda’s minister of culture said last week.
But a specialist on the region, who requested anonymity, said estimates citing a million casualties were chosen for ”psychological impact”.
”Statistics are ambiguous, being at once an element to legitimise a discourse and an emotional one that to be thrown at the enemy to prove how much they have suffered,” said the specialist.
But while Rwanda’s cultural minister Robert Bayigamba has insisted that at least a million people were killed, he acknowledged the difficulty of calculating an exact number.
He said the government would be able to do so ”in the years to come” thanks to witnesses who will testify in the Gacacas — village courts where suspected killers will be tried.
Philip Gourevitch, in his book about the genocide We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, says Rwandans are probably right to cite a million deaths. Out of a population of about 7,5-million, he says, ”800 000 people were killed in just 100 days.”
The United Nations sets the death toll at 800 000.
In Leave None to Tell the Story, Allison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch speaks of at least 500 000 deaths”, while Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omar, co-directors of non-governmental organisation African Rights, speak of ”around 750 000 deaths”.
But James Smith of Aegis Trust, a British NGO dedicated to the prevention of genocide, says finding an exact number is not the point.
”What’s important to remember is that there was a genocide. There was an attempt to eliminate Tutsis — men, women, and children — and to erase any memory of their existence.” – Sapa-AFP