'Justice cannot bring back the dead': Payam Akhavan recalls Rwanda horrors

CBC Massey Lecture 3: The Will to Intervene

Estimates varybut somewhere between 800,000 and one million people were killedin Rwanda in just 100 days back in 1994.

Most wereTutsis, massacred by Hutus, who were often their neighbours. AndPayam Akhavan, human rights lawyer, McGill prof and this year's Massey Lecturer, was stunned that there was no will to intervene.

• Listen to the first and the second lecture

"It was a Holocaust in the making, but not one concealed behind the walls of concentration camps," he said."It was unfolding in plain sight, and the world watched on television, and did nothing."

"Rwanda did not need to happen.": Payam Akhavan on RTLM's role in spreading the hatred, and preparing the stage for genocide

7 years ago

Duration 1:48

"Rwanda did not need to happen.": Payam Akhavan on RTLM's role in spreading the hatred, and preparing the stage for genocide

Akhavandid something, though.

In 1995, a year after the killings, he travelled there tohelpset up the newly established International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). The tribunal hoped to bringcriminals to justice,which can be a daunting task, something Akhavan explained inhislecture about Bosnia.

According to the ICTR, the tribunalindicted 93 individuals, 62 of whomwere sentenced.

"The problem isn't that radical evil is unstoppable.The problem is that we usually don't really care about hatred and violence unless it affects us directly," Akhavanexplains in his third lecture.

"Rwanda taught me that there is nothing inevitable about radical evil. Radical evil is a political construction. It's a political choice. It is predictable and is therefore preventable."

Key dates in Rwandan genocide, aftermath

• April 6 1994, evening: Rwandanpresident Juvenal Habyarimana's plane isshot down. He iskilled in the crash, which wasblamed on Tutsis.
• April-July 1994: Between 800,000 and one million people are killed, mostly Tutsis. Akhavan called it "a rate of mass murder far more efficient than the Nazi concentration camps."
• July 19 1994:After victories from the Tutsi-ledRwandan Patriotic Front, the genocide ends.

• 1995: Opening of the ICTRinArusha, Tanzania, with offices inKigali, Rwanda.
• July 9 1997: First ICTRtrial begins, againstJeanPaul Akayesu. Akayesu was mayor of Taba, Rwanda, where many Tutsiswere killed.
• December 31 2015: Closure of the ICTR.

Key quotes in Akhavan's third lecture

• "The dehumanization of others is always a precondition for their destruction. We cannot harm those for whom we have empathy. The killer, the torturer, must first convince himself that his cruelty is in the name of a greater good, a glorious act of cleansing and purification. The demonization of others is less about the reality of the victim, and more about the needs of the perpetrator; it is often no more than a projection of his own fragile self-image. As Jean-Paul Sartre famously said: "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him."

• "Extreme violence is impossible without hate propaganda. Such hatred though is instrumental, not impulsive. We may feel deep-seated resentment towards others, but the transformation of such impulses into an instrument of systemic violence, far from being a spontaneous crime of passion, requires careful premeditation and planning."

Payam Akhavan'sCBC MasseyLectures will be rebroadcast in August2018.

• August 1:Lecture 1 - The Knowledge of Suffering(recorded in Whitehorse)
• August 8:Lecture 2 - In Pursuit of Global Justice(recorded in Vancouver)
• August 15:Lecture 3 - The Will to Intervene(recorded in Montreal)
• August 22: Lecture 4 - The Oneness of Humankind (recorded in St. John's)
• August 29: Lecture 5 -The Spirit of Human Rights (recorded in Toronto)

The lectures arealso published in book formbyHouse of Anansi.