Christian Davenport and Allan Stam
Rwanda
ICTR
[2009] Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in
the Propaganda System by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson
Separately, U.S. academics Christian Davenport and Allan Stam estimated
that more than one million deaths occurred in Rwanda from April through July
1994,1 concluding that the
“majority of victims were likely Hutu and not Tutsi.” Initially sponsored by the
ICTR, but later dropped by it, the Davenport-Stam work
shows convincingly that the theaters where the killing was greatest correlated
with spikes in RPF activity (i.e., with RFP “surges,” in their terminology), as
a series of RPF advances, particularly in the month of April 1994, created
roving patterns of killing. In fact, they describe at least seven distinct
“surges” by the RFP (e.g., “they surged forward from the North downward into the
Northwest and middle-eastern part of the country”), and every time, an RPF
“surge” was accompanied by serious local bloodbaths.2
Then, in late 2009, Davenport-Stam reported what they called the “most shocking
result” of their research to date: “The killings in the zone controlled by the
FAR [i.e., the Hutu-controlled Armed Forces of Rwanda] seemed to escalate as the
RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced,
large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings
largely decreased.”3
With these facts, Davenport-Stam
appeared to link the mass killings of 1994 to RPF actions. This work also
suggests that the mass killings were not directed against the Tutsi population.
Moreover, a number of observers, as well as participants in the events of 1994,
claim that the great majority of deaths were Hutu, with some estimates as high
as two million.4
Yet Davenport-Stam shy away from
asserting the most important lesson of their work: not only that the majority of
killings took place in those theaters where the RPF “surged,” but also that the
RPF was the only well-organized killing force within Rwanda in 1994, and the
only one that planned a major military offensive.5
Clearly, the chief responsibility for Rwandan political violence belonged to the
RPF, and not to the ousted coalition government, the FAR, or any Hutu-related
group. But Davenport-Stam are inconsistent on the question of likely
perpetrators, with their evidence of probable RPF responsibility contradicted by
assertions of primary responsibility on the part of the FAR.6
In short, their work does not break
away from the mainstream camp, overall. However, they do acknowledge that forms
of political violence took place, other than a straightforward Hutu “genocide”
against the minority Tutsi—in itself, a rarity in Western circles. As with the
suppressed Gersony report, the Davenport-Stam findings caused great dismay at
the United Nations, not to mention in Washington and Kigali. Davenport and Stam
themselves have been under attack and in retreat since they were expelled from
Rwanda in November 2003, upon first reporting that the “majority of the victims
of 1994 were of the same ethnicity as the government in power” and have been
barred from entering the country ever since.7
The established narrative’s 800,000 or more largely Tutsi deaths resulting from
a “preprogrammed genocide” committed by “Hutu Power” appears to have no basis in
any facts, beyond the early claims by Kagame’s RPF and its politically motivated
Western sponsors and propagandists.