Becoming the “High Priest of Hutu Supremacy”

This article reconsiders the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) “Media Trial” that followed in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. While both the original trial (2000–03) and its appeal (2007) have been widely analyzed, most observers have approached it as a case against three media bosses. This article suggests that the Media Trial was not only invested in the line between press freedom and criminal hate speech and, in relation to Ferdinand Nahimana, not solely concerned with his role at “hate radio” station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). Drawing on trial transcripts, other court records, and press coverage of the trial, I show how the tribunal actively interrogated Nahimana’s status as a historian and his research and scholarship as part of its judicial process. As such, I argue that the Media Trial helped codify the notion that Rwandan history had become “deadly” before the genocide and that the Rwandan historical field would need to be fundamentally transformed

Appeal · Criminal court · Genocide · Relation (database) · Scholarship · Tribunal · African history and culture studies · Law in Society and Culture · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts