The Dilemma of Affirmative Rehumanization: Words Are Just the Beginning
“Umuganda,” a monthly occurrence in Rwanda during which community members come together to help with work that would not otherwise be manageable for one person or family. Photo by Rwanda Government.
By Hyppolite Ntigurirwa
Introduction
Scholarship on the causes of group-based conflict tends to focus on dehumanization, which in itself centers on the verbal characterization of “the other,” but often lacks thorough explanations about the actual dehumanization and violence processes. Moreover, there is little post-conflict scholarship on what is required to rehumanize the victims of radical conflict. This article uses empirical data from post-genocide Rwanda to argue that the aftermath of the genocide against the Tutsi still requires perpetrators and survivors to redefine the other as equals through rehumanization processes to restore their dignity and wholeness. The data shows that words play a vital role in both dehumanization and rehumanization processes, but more importantly, further behaviors and coordinated actions that affirm the intention of each process are also crucial. As such, this article first examines how the names and language citizens used in Rwanda contributed to dehumanization and rehumanization processes. It then analyzes the power of demonstrated mutual actions—such as re-building genocide survivors’ houses together—to affirm these processes before, during, and after the genocide against the Tutsi.
Literature Review
Definitions and Manifestation of Dehumanization
By discriminating and viewing as inferior, a group with power (oppressors) is able to justify their hostile behavior (violence, injustice, massacre) toward another marginalized group (oppressed).[1] Dehumanization denies people their distinctive human attributes,[2] instead equating human beings with animals or inanimate objects[3] — and often with intention for violence.[4] In Dehumanization: An Integrative Review, Nick Haslam describes two distinctive forms of dehumanization: animalistic and mechanistic. For example, animalistic dehumanization occurred during the Holocaust when Jewish people were equated to “vermin” and “rats.” In the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Tutsi were equated to inyenzi (cockroaches) and inzoka (snakes). Thus, animalistic dehumanization occurs when members of the oppressor group denies the members of the oppressed group the uniquely human characteristics (e.g. civility, refinement, logic, moral sensitivity). By contrast, mechanistic dehumanization occurs when the oppressor denies the oppressed group characteristics of human nature, such as cognitive adaptability, warmth, and agency. They are seen as cold, rigid, lacking agency, and equated to machines or objects.[5] For example, the 17th-century activist and spiritual preacher Morgan Godwin notes that white American colonialists considered the indigenous communities as having some “resemblances of manhood, yet are indeed no men … unman’d and unsoul’d…[6] to be ranked among Brute Beasts, and treated accordingly.”[7]
Dehumanization gives a socio-political, false legitimization to the dehumanizers, believing they are “decontaminating” human society. The Hutu majority could slaughter the Tutsi population without regret or empathy since the latter were considered an epidemic or infestation that had to be annihilated. Tutsis’ lives were portrayed in media and in the Rwandan socio-political mainstream as evil; therefore, in the eyes of the oppressing Hutu, the Tutsis became the social nonpersons without the uniquely human traits, making it easier for the Hutu to brutalize them.[8]
Meaning and Foundation of Rehumanization
After dehumanization, reconciliation between survivors and perpetrators may begin by rehabilitating members of both groups’ perceptions toward one another. The rehumanization process requires both groups to acknowledge and understand that they share the same humanness. According to social psychologist Susan Fiske, this includes appreciating each other’s capacity for intent, thoughts, and feelings.[9] Given that rehumanization has been given little attention by social scientists, this article attempts to explain rehumanization by examining empathy as a means for creating a shared sense of equal humanness between the dehumanizer and the dehumanized. In 1909, psychologist Edward B. Titchener used the word empathy as a translation of the German term einfühlung (meaning “feeling into”).[10] Since then, several fields of science have attempted to explain empathy as a social phenomenon. Social psychologists Sara Hodges and Michael Myers explain that empathy involves a person imagining someone else’s experiences as their own without actually experiencing them.[11] Psychologist Derick Carpenter places empathy as “a necessary precursor to intimacy, trust, and belonging” that enables people to understand fellow humans’ emotional experience.[12] In the post-dehumanization process, relationships may be restored by the empathetic morality expressed through actions that treat everyone as though they display the same humanness—in other words, rehumanization.
Emotional and Cognitive Empathy: Manifestation of Rehumanization
This article highlights the emotional and cognitive manifestations of empathy in conflicts. Both perspectives reveal the ways humans can relate to one another. Social psychologists Meghan Healey and Murray Grossman explain that cognitive empathy occurs when individuals place themselves in someone else's position with the intent to better understand their experience .[13] It is the ability to imagine what it might feel like to experience someone else’s emotion. Humans can learn, through history and memory, to identify others’ emotional state and take responsible actions.[14] Hodges and Myers further explain emotional empathy in three facets: feeling the same emotion as the “other” person or group, feeling distress in response to the “other’s” pain, and feeling compassion toward the “other.” They explain that the correlation between emotional empathy and the willingness to help the “other” is positive. Furthermore, it is more likely that this component invites individuals to take action to help the “other” in oppression.[15]
Social scientist Mark Davis emphasizes two reasons that empathy might be associated with lower levels of conflicts. First, when both parties in conflicts understand the feeling of the oppressed, the victim’s feelings and effects of marginalization evoke the perpetrator’s compassion, which might lead to the oppressor ceasing the oppression. Second, in the post-conflict period, instead of revenge, the survivor’s compassion toward their oppressor’s confession and intent to change leads to a reconciliation.[16] This article emphasizes how expressing empathy and taking action that involve both survivors and perpetrators is crucial to recognizing, through cognitive and emotional components, that neither is less than human.
Methodology
The ethnographic approach for this research was purposefully chosen to describe and analyze the culture and behavior of genocide survivors and perpetrators[17] and to allow the researcher to capture social meaning from their words and shared activities.[18] The study's data collection involved interviews and participant observation of regular members of a well-established association in Rwanda called Ukuri Kuganze (Let the Truth Prevail). The association brings together genocide survivors and convicted perpetrators, and it uses everyday interactions as ways to reconcile, forgive, and reunite to help find common ground for a reconciled society. Group members work to combat the dehumanization and guilt left by the genocide by regaining their shared sense of humanness, dignity, and self-esteem. The researcher used open-ended interview questions to allow participants more space to express thoughts and feelings. In this article, to protect the identities of interview participants, they will be referred to as P1, P2, P3, etc.
Dehumanized Tutsi and Self-Dehumanized Hutu
Survivors and perpetrators were disassociated from their shared humanity in different ways. Dehumanization of the Tutsi started before 1994 and intensified during the genocide.[19] In interviews, participants identified dehumanizing names, such as:
Inyenzi: cockroaches
Inzoka: snakes
Igisebe: wound
Umuvumo w’u Rwanda: the curse of Rwanda
Indyarya: the liars
Umwanzi: enemy
Ibyorezo: disease
Abasazi: the mad
Sekibi: devils [20]
This terminology, according to a participant (P4), enabled perpetrators to kill Tutsis “without feeling that we [Rwandans] shared same humanness… we killed like dangerous animals.”[21]
At the same time, convicted perpetrators in the group explained how they had to dehumanize themselves as well. To be able to kill, the perpetrators of the genocide had to self-dehumanize by removing the “uniquely human” traits, equating themselves to dangerous animals, and naming themselves as experts in killing. Examples of these self-imposed names and meanings include:
Kikongo: a very dangerous animal (attributed to those who killed with a high degree of brutality)
Kabombo: a male buffalo (attributed to those who usually showed excitement to kill and usually targeted rich or powerful victims who were leaders)
Rurangiza: the almighty killer who does not leave anyone alive (attributed to those who killed and destroyed the properties of victims with extreme brutality)
Ruharwa: one who can kill a lot of people (attributed to those who spent an inordinate amount of time hunting down and killing a large number of people)
Rutamburwa intumbi: inescapable killer (attributed to those who killed with extreme “rage and ruthlessness”)
Ruvusha: a bleeder (attributed to those who killed their victims quickly)
Kimashini: big machine or robot (attributed to those who killed many people with ruthless, emotionless brutality)
Interahamwe: those who attack together (attributed to those trained to kill).[22]
Genocidaires used these to self-associate with the essence of brutal animals and killing machines, while disassociating themselves from a common Rwandan social identity. Thus, perpetrators and survivors could not be understood as one human group. Self-dehumanization is an important part of the process of training for ethnic cleansing and participation in mass violence. A participant (P6) who was trained in a Hutu paramilitary group noted that “our trainers [in killing] used to call some of us these names depending on how aggressive someone was believed to be, so we could start becoming excited to kill.”[23]
The diagram below summarizes this dehumanization and self-dehumanization prior to and during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
Figure 1: Summary Diagram of (self)-dehumanization prior to and during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.[24]
Reconstructing Relationships and Selves
Just as language and terminology are powerful in the dehumanization process, they are also powerful in the rehumanization process. On October 3, 2017, I attended “umuganda,” a monthly occurrence in Rwanda during which community members come together to help with work that would not otherwise be manageable for one person or family.[25] In this instance, we were reconstructing a house for a genocide widow in a Murama village in Rwanda’s eastern province. At the beginning of umuganda, standing in a semicircle in the banana and cassava fields, the leader addressed the thirty people in attendance as “bavandimwe,” a Kinyarwanda word meaning “brothers and sisters.” The leader started with a prayer requesting the “Almighty God” to strengthen the journey of kugarura agaciro ka muntu (“rebuilding human dignity”) for the “brothers and sisters” lost in the genocide against the Tutsi.
One of the beneficiaries of the houses being built by the association was a woman referred to herein as P1. She was unable to perform physical work due to injuries inflicted by machetes and a club during the genocide. The same attack during which she was injured killed her husband and some of her children. Members of the association call her shangazi (“aunt”), a popular word used in Kinyarwanda borrowed from Swahili language. One of her attackers, a man in his late 50s, referred to as P2, was also attending umuganda. The man referred to the survivor as mama not as shangazi.
When the umuganda was over, I invited the woman and her attacker for a short conversation. When I asked P1 how she felt when P2 referred to her as mama, she said, “As a survivor, I am happy that I now have human value to this extent where the community can come to help me find shelter… There was a time when some of these people could only meet to go and kill, and some of them would run and hide… I can now feel that I am a valued human being.”[26]
I asked P2 why during umuganda he referred to P1 as mama and not shangazi. He told me that the other group members call her shangazi to help her feel that she still has family and to express care for her. However, for himself, “I feel I am obliged to offer more than that, as I am the one who killed some of her children … I started calling her ‘mama’ after I confessed to her and she forgave me… And that is to make her feel that I owe her human respect like what I owe to my own mother.”[27] In the same conversation, P1 referred to the man as “my son, who was trapped in genocide ideology and thought of me and his ‘brothers and sisters’ [P1’s children] not as human as himself ….”[28]
Rwandans are attempting to rebuild unity and relationships destroyed by the dehumanization phenomena and genocide against the Tutsi. Through renaming, participants have taken on new words to refer to each other as a way of “feeling reconciled as one people and [to] rebuild our relationships lost [in] our conflicted history,” as one participant (P8) argued. Such words mainly include terms showing parent–child and family member relationships. These familial names and words of endearment invoke that these members are people to cherish, love, and respect—and who belong to the same human society. Examples include:
Umubyeyi: a parent
Mama: mom
Papa: dad
Shangazi: [a Swahili word – usually used in Kinyarwanda] aunt
Abavandimwe: brothers and sisters
Imfura: accountable and honest person
Inshuti: a friend
Other renaming words include metaphors referring to animals, such as ntama w’Imana (lamb of God, meaning that person is calm, kind and humble like a sheep) and inuma (dove, suggesting that a person is peaceful and friendly). This suggests that words and naming are important to reinvite broken trust between perpetrators and survivors by reattributing the same “human morals and values.”[29] This then prepares the ground for relationship reconstruction.
Confession and truth-telling are critical steps in individual and collective rehumanization. Examples of this occurred at a June 2016 reconciliation forum, hosted by an England-based charity called Force for Change (CFOR) in partnership with the Rwanda-based organization Global Ecovillage Rwanda. During the forum, genocide survivors and convicted perpetrators engaged in exercises processing memory, truth, and trauma. Survivors continuously expressed the pain they live with for not knowing the entire truth about their loved ones’ deaths in the genocide.
One middle-aged woman survivor (P13) told the story of how she survived an attack of a man (P37), who was present at the forum. She said he was like a “killing machine… I am sure he doesn’t honestly know how many Tutsi he killed.”[30] Kneeling, P37 said, “I am really asking for forgiveness from you and all [participants].” After several minutes of tears and choked silences, P13 reached out a hand to P37 and told him to stand up. The two stood side by side with their arms across each other’s back, facing the other participants. The survivor continued, “I would love to tell [P37] that I forgive him and that I will not think and look at him as a ‘killing machine,’ but rather a fellow human being and brother…”[31] The perpetrator confessed about an “animal-like act [killing]” and cried for “forgiveness.”[32] This affirmed that he sought to be integrated back into the community as a human, not as a killing machine or animal-like.
Words Are Not Enough
Many of those who dehumanized the Tutsi through words may not necessarily have been the actual killers. However, it seems evident that these words were a crucial entry point to and motivators for killing the Tutsi. Violent words are not the same as violent acts, but they can incite people to commit violence through their ability to provide motive and justification. In other words, acts of violence affirm dehumanizing words. Does this work in the same way when it comes to rehumanization?
On many occasions during this research, survivors spoke about not receiving compensation for their damaged properties. Participant (P5) linked some of this delay to continued dehumanization: “I have so many properties that have to be paid back by the perpetrators. However, it has never been paid, and this is not because the families can’t pay, but because they still consider that they did not damage the property of a human being like them.”[33]
Didace Kayinamura, the leader of Ukuri Kuganze, said in an interview that they “do the activities such as building houses for [their] members as not only a way of economically supporting the members but also to show that perpetrators changed for good.”[34] P1, a beneficiary of a house that the association members built, said, “I always saw the perpetrators as ‘killing animals’ no matter what nice words they could tell me until at least I saw them participating in the building of this house I live in ….”[35]
Beyond positive language and dialogue, empowering survivors and holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes is a crucial step in affirmative rehumanization. As P6 said, allowing a space where survivors and perpetrators can speak about their experiences “opens a room for resilience.” On the other hand, integration and inclusion of the perpetrators in the community’s social life makes “us [perpetrators] feel that we did wrong to the same human being like us.”[36]
Another participant (P21) highlighted that to feel human again requires initially being told that they are forgiven, but additional acts make them feel integrated into a community:
“It took me years to feel I am human again … after you have killed many people and you are being held accountable, you are ashamed … you realize that you are probably not a human like others rather a dangerous killer … and when you confess survivors may say they forgive you but you won’t realize that they have considered you as a human again until their acts validate their forgiveness.”[37]
A Kinyarwanda saying states “Kora Ndebe Iruta Vuga Numve” (“better someone acts and I see than someone talks and I listen”). Hence, the affirmation for rehumanization occurs when, instead of considering the “other” as a cold, rigid, object, both survivors’ and perpetrators’ acts strongly portray the intent to welcome all Rwandans as equal human beings. Through this ethnographical observation, it is shown that words contribute to the initiation of dehumanization and rehumanization; furthermore, concrete actions from the acts of perpetrators and survivors validate both phenomena.
The government too has recognized the power of language and action as well. The utilization of the so-called ethnic identities on national identity cards was banned after the genocide, and citizens included in the reconciliation courts (were not to be referred to as “Tutsi” or “Hutu.”[38] Moreover, laws are in place now that forbid “divisionism,” “furthering genocide ideology,” or “threatening, intimidating, degrading through defamatory speeches, documents or actions which aim at propounding wickedness, inciting hatred or taking revenge.”[39] This suggests that rehumanization has to be about rebuilding relationships among Rwandans, and language is central to that endeavor. Therefore, calling Rwandans by the so-called ethnic identities (Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa) can be divisive and poses a threat to the collective rehumanization and Rwandan reunification.
The actions of all entities contribute to affirming how words are used in all steps toward both dehumanization and rehumanization. There are records of Tutsi students being denied the access to proceed to higher education that was given to then Hutu students.[40] This act could be described as one of many affirmations of the dehumanization process that led to the genocide against the Tutsi. In the aftermath, the government created a genocide survivors’ fund to provide support to survivors, including education, shelter, and medical insurance. This revives the feeling of humanness that was lost in the dehumanization process. [41] Other social welfare programs like mutuelle de santé (health insurance) are in place for every Rwandan citizen, including the convicted genocidaires. Members of Ukuri Kuganze have expressed how having access to this health insurance program helps them to feel that they are still considered as Rwandan in spite of their crimes.
Conclusion
Through ethnographic data, this paper shows that words and naming are vital for both dehumanization and rehumanization phenomena. In addition to words, just as crucially, actions affirm and validate the dehumanization or rehumanization processes.
Leading up to the Rwandan genocide, words and naming were central to the dehumanization process, with Tutsi being equated to rats and cockroaches. At the same time, naming was used to equate Hutu to killing machines and animals so as to embolden them and quell reluctance leading up to the slaughter. Thus, Tutsi were dehumanized while Hutu perpetrators self-dehumanized.
As a result of this lost sense of humanity, neither group could feel a true sense of dignity or wholeness in the aftermath. Both parties need to have their humanity restored through redefining their relationships and affirming their commitment through action. Reconciliation is only achievable first through mutual recognition of the respective forms of dehumanization that occurred, particularly in regard to naming and discourse. This first step in rehumanization restores human values in both survivors and perpetrators. It is also vital, nevertheless, to solidify the language of reconciliation as rehumanization through shared intentional actions aimed at physically restoring dignity and humanity. These material actions are a demonstration of honest restoration, atonement, and forgiveness. Only then is there hope for a future of reconciliation.
About the Author
Hyppolite Ntigurirwa joined Yale University as a World Fellow in 2020 and continues as a research fellow at the Schell Center for International Human Rights (2021). He is an artist, activist, and founder of Be the Peace, an organization focused on halting the intergenerational transmission of hate. AEGIS Trust Rwanda supported this research.
Endnotes
Albert Bandura, Bill Underwood, and Michael E. Fromson, “Disinhibition of aggression through diffusion of responsibility and dehumanization of victims,” Journal of Research in Personality 9, pp. 253-269, https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(75)90001-X.
Linda LeMoncheck, Dehumanizing women: Treating persons as sex objects. (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985).
Daniel Bar-Tal, “Delegitimization: The Extreme Case of Stereotyping,” Stereotyping and Prejudice: Changing Conceptions, edited by D. Bar-Tal, C. F. Graumann, A. W. Kruglanski, and W. Stroebe. (New York: Springer, 1989).
David Livingstone Smith, "Paradoxes of Dehumanization," Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 2, 2016, pp. 416-43.
Nick Haslam, “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review,” In Personality and Social Psychology 10, no, 3, 2006, pp. 252–264.
Morgan Godwyn, Negro’s and Indians Advocate Suing for Their Admission into the Church or a Persuasive to the Instructing and Baptizing of the Negro’s and Indians in our Plantations. (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 1680).
Morgan Godwyn, A Brief Account of Religion, in the Plantations, with the Causes of the Neglect and Decay Thereof in Those Parts.’ Some Proposals Towards Promoting of the Gospel in Our American Plantations. (London: D. F. Brokesby, 1708).
Simon, J. D. 2015. “The Politics of Dehumanization: Beyond ‘Inyenzi.’” In Confronting Genocide in Rwanda: Dehumanization, Denial, and Strategies for Prevention, edited by J. D. Gasanabo, J. D. Simon and M. Ensign. Bogotá, Columbia: Apidama Ediciones.
Susan T. Fiske, “From dehumanization and objectification to rehumanization: neuroimaging studies on the building blocks of empathy.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1167, 2009, pp. 31-4, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777639/.
Karsten Stueber, "Empathy," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2019, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/empathy.
Sara D. Hodges and Michael W. Myers, “Empathy,” Encyclopedia of Social Psychology edited by Roy F. Baumeister & Kathleen D. Vohs (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing, 2007), http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/socialpsychology/n179.xml
Derrick Carpenter, “How to Develop Empathy in Your Relationships,” Verywellmind.com, February 14, 2020, https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-develop-empathy-in-relationships-1717547.
Meghan L. Healey and Murray Grossman, “Cognitive and affective perspective-taking: Evidence for shared and dissociable anatomical substrates,” Front Neurol 9, June 2018, pp. 491, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29988515/.
Ibid.
Hodges and Myers, “Empathy.”
Mark H. Davis, “Empathy, compassion, and Social Relationships,” The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science edited by Emma M. Seppälä et. al. 2017, https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190464684.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190464684-e-23.
Alan Bryman, Social Research Methods, 3rd ed, (New York: Oxford University Press., 2008).
John D. Brewer, Ethnography (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2000).
Group interview conducted in Bugesera district with the author
Semi-structured group interview in Nyamata, Rwanda with members of Ukuri kuganze Association and the author, August 12, 2017.
Ibid.
For context, in Rwandan history prior to the genocide, interahamwe signified members of Rwandan army units; in the early 1990s, it was associated with the youth militia wing of National Revolutionary Movement for Development (Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement), an official single party created in 1975, with whose help Habyarimana ruled Rwanda (see Mamdani 2001).
Ibid 20.
Hyppolite Ntigurirwa, “Summary Diagram of (self)-dehumanization prior to and during the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,” 2021.
Organic Law 53/2007 Governing Community Works (November 17, 2007) and Prime Ministerial Order Number 58/03: determining the attributions, organisation, and functioning of community work supervising committees and their relations with other organs (August 24, 2009).
Interview in Murama village, Bugesera, Rwanda with members of Ukuri Kuganze and author, October 3, 2017.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Haslam, “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review.”
Interview and forum in Kicukiro, Rwanda with author, June 2016.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Interview in Bugesera, Rwanda with P5 and author, August 2019.
Interview in Bugesera, Rwanda with Didas Kayinamura and author, October 2019.
Field visit Bugesera, Rwanda in a conversation with the author, April 2020.
Ibid.
Interview in Bugesera, Rwanda with P1 and author, December 2019.
Philip Clark, The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Justice Without Lawyers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Government of Rwanda. Law n°18/2008 of 23/07/2008 Relating to the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Ideology. Kigali: Official Gazette.
Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda.
Government of Rwanda. N° 69/2008 of 30/12/2008 Law relating to the establishment of the Fund for the support and assistance to the survivors of the Tutsi genocide and other crimes against humanity committed between 1st October 1990 and 31st December 1994, and determining its organization, powers and functioning.