In July 1994 and subsequent months, Rwanda showed a landscape of devastation. The infrastructure was destroyed, mutilated bodies were lying in the open, genocide survivors were wandering around in search of relatives and thousands of orphans were in need of care. Two million people had fled to Tanzania and Zaire and four hundred thousand ‘old refugees’ from Uganda and Burundi had returned, occupying the houses abandoned by those who had left even temporarily. To add to the confusion, the former regime's army, defeated but not disarmed, still remained a threat in nearby Kivu. Rumours of counter-attacks abounded. From the beginning of 1995, the prefectures of Gisenyi, Kibuye and Cyangugu increasingly became the scene of raids and infiltration. All over the country, lone Interahamwe militiamen continued to kill Tutsi people.

The biggest problem was the absence of a judicial system able to prosecute the genocide perpetrators according to the rule of law. There were only a handful of judges and procurators and they had no means at their disposal. The once-disciplined RPF army, now filled with angry survivors and opportunists, either proceeded to extra-judiciary executions or sent suspects to jail on the basis of unverified denunciations. In this atmosphere of rage, greed and paranoia, every Hutu was a suspect, even those who had taken risks to rescue Tutsi people during the genocide. As Jean-Paul Kimonyo pointed out, ‘the experience of the massive participation [of the local population] in the genocide produced among the survivors the conviction that the Hutu were collectively guilty’.

This chaotic situation could be interpreted in two manners. It could be regarded as proof that the new regime was as culpable of human rights abuse and as ethnically biased as its predecessor, or it could be seen, conversely, as the result of the trauma generated by the genocide. Collective trauma, also called cultural trauma, occurs, according to Jeffrey Alexander, when ‘members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways’.