Dark tourism: The heritagization of sites of suffering, with an emphasis on memorials of the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi of Rwanda

Abstract

Nowadays, there exists an international movement towards the extensive recognition as cultural heritage, or heritagization, of areas where wars, genocides and massacres have taken place. The phenomenon of seeing mass death, called dark tourism or the tourism of desolation, has become both an aim and a destination for visitors. The article examines this heritagization, with an emphasis on the memorials of the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi of Rwanda.