Asbarez writes that “Genocide and Denial: The Armenian, Jewish, and Tutsi Genocide” was hosted by and held at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in conjunction with CNLG (National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide) in Kigali, Rwanda from July 17 to 18.
The newspaper adds: “the Memorial Centre house is a museum that includes exhibits on the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, the Bosnian genocide, and genocide in Darfur. The two-day conference featured papers by distinguished scholars from the United States, Europe, and Rwanda. Its primary focus was the analysis of denial as a facet of genocide’s aftermath. The Rwandan media including Rwanda TV covered the conference and The Rwandan New Times ran a feature article “Scholars Discuss Impact of Genocide Denial.”
The Master of Ceremonies and conference co-organizer, playwright Bianca Bagatourian, called the conference to order on Tuesday morning July 17, noting that many things, including “the legacies of denial perpetrated by the Turkish state, anti-Semitic groups, and Hutu nationalists, connect the three unambiguous cases of genocide in the twentieth century.” Because denial is always an issue following genocide, Jean-Pierre Karegeye, Tom Ndahiro, Jose Kagabo, and Hadley Rose all discussed various dimensions of the denial issue in Rwanda today, and Rose discussed the problems that arise in drafting genocide ideology laws.
Noted Holocaust scholar and conference participant, Deborah Lipstadt emphasized that: “Denial of genocide whether that of the Turks against the Armenians, or the Nazis against the Jews, or the Hutu against the Tutsi is not an act of historical reinterpretation. Rather, the deniers sow confusion by appearing to be engaged in a genuine scholarly effort. The abundance of documents and testimonies that confirm the genocide are dismissed as contrived, coerced, or forgeries and falsehoods. . . . Denial of genocide strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators.”
Conference co-organizer Peter Balakian later stated that “denialism is the final stage of genocide, as it attempts to falsify history and create a counterfeit universe for the survivors and their legacies, and it must be studied and analyzed in order to be exposed for the ethical problems it creates.”
The conference included a dynamic combination of lectures and presentations that dealt with facets of genocide and dimensions of denial”.
