Vom Bauern zum Jäger, vom Menschen zum Tier
Résumé
From Farmer to Hunter, from Human to Animal. Autobiographical accounts of
»manhunts« and »genocidal safaris« after the genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda
– Based on the self-description of a survivor of the Tutsicide, who saw himself as
»hunted game« in the context of a genocidal »safari« »without cameras«, the article
deals with the hunting metaphor with which the perpetrators also tried to describe
their murders in retrospect. While the survivor subtly evokes the colonial ideology
and its hunting traditions that had set the ethnic segregation in Rwanda in motion,
the statements of the three men who were questioned about their lives in Rilima
prison by the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld, reveal a lack of awareness of injustice. It is evident that they consistently regarded the victims as animals, some of
which could have been killed with great ease, but sometimes only after considerable
hardship. The »know-how« of real hunters, which correlated with varying degrees
of weaponry, is celebrated uncritically. In a sudden reversal, however, hunting and
farming no longer appear as separate professions. Instead, a perpetrator implies
that the prey – namely the mobile and immobile possessions of the murdered –
could be »brought in« through hunting, as in a harvest. One only had to bend down
to carry the new wealth home from the field. It thus becomes clear that the hunting motif provides access to the psychology of peasant perpetrators and their desire
to enrich themselves. Processes of communitisation become recognisable, in which
ultimately everyone could have been involved – namely as »drivers«.