Introduction

Despite the mutual pledges of friendship and understanding in the aftermath of the Barayagwiza crisis, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Rwandan government were soon enmeshed in a new confrontation that threatened the tribunal's independence and its hope for uninterrupted state cooperation. The government's determination to block Chief Prosecutor Del Ponte's investigation of Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) massacres of Hutu civilians would become the central battleground of state–tribunal conflict.

In the first part of this chapter, I examine the political context in which Del Ponte embarked on her investigations of the RPF in 2000. The idea of prosecuting atrocities committed by all sides of an armed conflict is a foundational principle of the contemporary ad hoc tribunals as well as the International Criminal Court. Yet Del Ponte's decision to probe the RPF's role in atrocities against Hutu civilians was controversial because in the aftermath of the genocide, the Tutsi-led RPF and the Tutsi population in general were widely recognized internationally as victims deserving sympathy, not scrutiny.

In the second part of the chapter, I examine the government's response to the tribunal's early attempts to prod Rwanda to cooperate with these investigations. The centerpiece of the government's response was a “counter-shaming” campaign against the tribunal aimed at undermining its reputation and diverting international attention away from the government's attempts to stop the RPF investigations. The government's counter-shaming offensive had two elements.