Rwanda's securitisation of genocide denial: A political mechanism for power or to combat ontological insecurity?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the concept of genocide denial as a security threat within the case study of Rwanda. Rwanda experienced the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi when an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were butchered by extremists within a one-hundred-day period. Since the ending the genocide the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) continues to dominate the post-genocide nation's political sphere. The remnants of genocide perpetrators initiated Rwanda to militarily and politically intervene in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Since the end of the Second Congo War in 2002, Rwanda's security interests shifted from fearing the destruction of the state to ontological insecurities founded on a threat of genocide ideology. This research examines whether Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the RPF mobilises genocide denial through a securitisation framework as a method to legitimise its control over the nation's political institutions and to deflect criticism. However, by examining the deficits within this discourse, it becomes possible to understand how Rwandans perceive genocide denial as part of a large threat that is a repetition of the genocide.