Reminders of Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was an ethnic genocide that occurred in the small country of Rwanda, in East-Central Africa in 1994. The genocide was the result of centuries of differences and tension between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, and began instantly following the murder of Hutu President Habyarimana. In a span of only one hundred days, beginning on April 6, 1994, roughly 937000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in an attempt by Hutu extremists to exterminate the Tutsi minority. The world stood and watched as innocent people were slaughtered in the Rwandan streets, and failed to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Today, Rwanda is still afflicted by the genocide of 1994, and thousands of refugees remain and are oppressed in the countries surrounding Rwanda.
The small, land-locked country of Rwanda in East-Central Africa has existed since the fifteenth century. The country itself is one of the poorest in the world, and possesses the densest population distribution in all of Africa. (1) At times, the country has averaged eight hundred people per kilometer and the average mother gave birth to nine children. (2) The vast population overworked the land, and some families own no land at all due to its scarcity. The once productive soil has been overused and land is limited, making food scarce and causing families to starve. The nation is inhabited by the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa peoples. The Hutus and Tutsis both originated as small tribes based on lineage that came together to form the state of Rwanda, although the Hutus had lived there longer. (3) Together, the Hutus and Tutsis developed the Kinyarwanda language, shared religious beliefs and culture, and lived peacefully side by side. (4) The land was at one time productive and the population grew, helping Rwanda to become a significant nation in the eighteenth century. Over time, Rwandan status was based on wealth and number of owned cattle. The name “Tutsi” became defined as one who was rich in cattle, and the name “Hutu” came to mean one who was a servant or follower of the Tutsi. (5) The elite class was identified as the Tutsi, and those who were typical civilians were Hutu. This established hierarchy promoted a “feudal-type class system” in which Hutus served and Tutsis prospered. (6) Therefore, the Hutu-Tutsi “ethnicity” was primarily established by wealth and economic-class status, not lineage or physical characteristics. In fact, some wealthy Hutus were able to appeal to become Tutsi. Stereotypically, however, Tutsis are considered to be taller and light-skinned, with thinner noses, whereas Hutus are considered to be shorter, darker-skinned, and with wider noses. (7) Despite Tutsi domination in Rwanda, there was not an extraordinary amount of conflict. However, the colonization of Rwanda by Germany and Belgium further widened the gap between the Hutus and Tutsis and began an ideology of hatred and violence that became a characteristic of Rwanda.
The Country of Rwanda
Germany established colonial rule in the 1885 in Rwanda, ruling through the Tutsi king of Rwanda, Mwami. (8) The German colonists established that the Tutsis were the superior to the Hutus and were divinely ordained by God to rule. Such belief was related to the belief that the Tutsi simply looked more European than the Hutu. (9) The Germans used the ruling Tutsi class to acquire profit and thus, the German colonists firmly established Tutsi as an elite class superior to the Hutu.
Following World War I, Rwanda became a protectorate of Belgium, and Belgium further developed the sense of Tutsi superiority. The Belgians limited all official positions to Tutsi, and they removed all Hutu leaders in the current administration. Furthermore, Belgians limited education to the Tutsi only, and the Hutu were excluded. (10) The Belgian belief of Tutsi superiority created a “Tutsi monopoly of public life”, and this monopoly dominated Rwanda for generations. (11) The monopoly oppressed the Hutus, many of which resented the fact that they were below the Tutsi in society. In a final step to completely differentiate the Hutu from the Tutsi, the Belgian rulers conducted a 1930 census in which the population was defined as 14% Tutsi, 84% Hutu, and 1% Twa. (12) Following the Belgian census, Rwandans were required to carry identification cards that confirmed one’s tribal affiliation. Ethnic conflict and rivalry was inevitable and Rwanda, due to European influence, was ruled by the elite Tutsi minority presiding over the subordinate Hutu majority.
After World War II, Belgian rule was transferred to UN trusteeship, and the end of Belgian rule neared. European missionaries to Rwanda, which is roughly 80% Catholic, identified with the Hutus and encouraged the Hutu to overthrow of Tutsi power. (13) Before the Belgians completely pulled from Rwanda, the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement, known as PARMEHUTU, rose to power in what is known as the Revolution of 1959. (14) This revolution and Hutu rise to power destroyed the Tutsi monarchy and resulted in violence that killed 20000 Tutsi and forced nearly 300000 to flee to surrounding countries. (15) In the years that followed, the Rwandan government became a “one-party rule based upon Hutu nationalism.” (16) Hutu and Tutsi tensions grew, and violence between the Rwandan people spread. Tutsi rebels and guerrillas attacked Hutus, and Hutu government pogroms killed Tutsis and forced many more out of the country. After years of bloody violence, the Hutu Major General Juvenal Habyarimana seized power of the government with a promise to restore the unity and order of Rwanda. (17) He established the National Revolutionary Movement for Development, known as the MRND, and was supported by a close and personal network known as “akazu.” (18) Habyarimana and his administration lost support as Rwanda plunged into poverty and economic decline, and finally on October 1, 1990, the Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame invaded Rwanda in hopes of returning thousands of exiled Tutsis back into Rwanda, ending violence against the Tutsi, and removing Habyarimana from power. (19) In response to the invasion, Habyarimana created the campaign that would later result in the horrendous genocide of 1994.
Habyarimana countered the RPF threat with a campaign to turn the ordinary citizens into killers and instill hatred of Tutsis in all Hutu citizens. He created and trained militias known as the Interahamwe, or “Those Who Kill as One”, and the Impuzamugambi, or “Those With a Single Purpose”. (20) These militias, roughly 30000 men strong and constantly recruiting new members, conducted raids and murders that produced fear and greater division between Hutus and Tutsis. The Hutu newspaper “Kangura” preached hatred of Tutsis and established the “Hutu Ten Commandments”, which called on Hutus to avoid contact with Tutsis and have no mercy on the Tutsi “cockroaches.” (21) However, much of Rwanda was illiterate, and the radio served to be the most effective tool for hate-filled propaganda. The radio station Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines, or RTLM, spread the message of hate through the country and helped to found the movement known as Hutu Power. (22) Hutus feared that Tutsis would usurp government power and would once again oppress them, and at the urging of the government, regular civilians transformed into extremists committed to eliminating the Tutsi threat. In addition to mind altering propaganda, Hutu radicals began to import large amounts of weapons, particularly machetes, in preparation for the planned genocide. Rwanda was in an alarmed state of violence and tension, but peace efforts between Habyarimana and the RPF seemed to bring an end to the killing within reach.
The violence in Rwanda was impossible to conceal and in January 1993, the United Nations created an International Commission to investigate the current state of Rwanda. (23) The UN discovered that the Hutu government was the leading force behind the violence, and the following August, a pressured President Habyarimana signed a peace agreement with the RPF known as the Arusha Accords. (24) The peace agreement established separate land for the RPF rebels, proposed a power-sharing government, and called to downsize and merge the Rwandan and RPF armies. Many Hutu opposed the peace agreement and denounced it as treason, and Habyarimana, who tried to appease both the Hutus and Tutsis, signed the peace agreement whilst supporting the sabotage of it. In doing so, Habyarimana set himself up for an inevitable assassination, and this assassination in April 1994 became the ultimate catalyst for the impending genocide.
President Habyarimana
President Habyarimana spent his few living days of April 1994 in peace talks intended to result in a shared government with the RPF. During Habyarimana’s flight back to the Rwandan capital of Kigali on April 6, 1994 a missile shot from the ground struck the French plane, killing Habyarimana instantly. The assassins and their motives for killing Habyarimana are still unknown. The assassination might have been performed by “the extremists of the majority Hutu tribe, soldiers and civilians alike, as the signal to unleash the holocaust.” (25) The UN believed that Hutus had killed the president for planning to share power with the RPF, but the blame instantly fell on the Tutsis, whom the Hutu believed killed the President due to dissatisfaction with the peace talks or out of sheer hatred. (26) The assassination ignited the genocide, and the built up hated and violence finally climaxed with the Tutsis as a scapegoat. As chaos broke out in the streets of Rwanda, the radio beckoned the Hutu “to bring down the harvest” against the “tall tree” Tutsis. (27)
The assassination was the perfect means that the Hutu radicals and militias needed to instantly wreak havoc upon the Tutsi. Neighbors turned on each other, militias rounded up Tutsi and moderate Hutus for execution and Tutsi men, women and children of all ages were murdered. Previous opponents to the government were targeted and killed. The radio read the lists of targeted individuals and the location of such targets. The killers, “demons in human form”, relentlessly went town through town searching for the enemy. (28) The militias and the radio urged normal citizens to take up arms and kill the Tutsi by any means possible. The Hutus who refused to partake in the genocide risked death for they “either took part in the massacre or…were massacred [themselves].” (29) In rare circumstances, particularly those of Paul Rusesabagina and his Hotel des Mille Collines, some Hutu were able to bribe militia to spare both their own lives and the lives of Tutsis. The genocide was led by militia soldiers and National Police and filtered down to the local level, thus establishing “hierarchies, [in which] organizers carried out a killing campaign, a perversion of previous campaigns that called on citizens and officials alike to contribute extra efforts for some public good.” (30) As the killing progressed, it evolved from murders in the street to collective executions. The Interahamwe and other militias rounded up Tutsi with the help of neighbors or ID cards, and placed the Tutsi in schools, churches, hospitals, and other areas where a mass execution was possible. One such incident occurred in a church in Rakura when 800 people were forced into the Church by the Interahamwe. The Interahamwe began the execution with grenades, and finally stormed the church, killing any survivors with machetes and bayonets. The scene was so brutal that “two wooden crucifixes had been washed away, carried by the river of blood that flowed down the sloped floor.” (31) More than two thousand were killed in a similar fashion at Kibuye church. (32)
The primary method of killing was with machetes or clubs because it was a cheap and effective way to wage genocide. Although some Tutsi were fortunate enough to bribe Hutus and save their lives, others bribed Hutu simply be shot, rather than hacked to death. The preparation, propaganda, militias, and recruitment of the genocide gave birth to the most efficient genocide in history. The death rate was five times greater than the rate of Nazi camps of WWII, and the daily rate averaged more than 11500 murders a day and surged to 45000 deaths per day in some instances. During such periods, every two seconds there was a kill, and such periods lasted for days. (33) Although many Hutu were persuaded that their actions were in “self-defense”, the killing was undoubtedly genocide. Despite the brutality of the genocide and moral dilemmas, “Three Pillars” upheld the constant killing in Rwanda: the Hutu fear of the Tutsi minority, the acceptance of the Catholic Church, and the French aid for the francophone Hutu government with money, supplies, and weaponry in Operation Turquoise. (34) The genocide that began on April 6, 1994 lasted for 100 days, ending only with the defeat of the Hutu regime by Paul Kagame and the RPF in July 1994. In the 100 day period, an estimated 800000 Rwandans died, although some figures point to a number exceeding one million. (35) During the three month atrocity that decimated Rwanda, nearly as alarming as the genocide itself was the utter lack of aid and relief from the rest of the world; a world which watched death and genocide unfold and did nothing.
Child Wounded by a Machete Attack
The United Nations was the first to attempt to institute peace in Rwanda, but the effort was greatly restricted by supplies and finances and ultimately failed. The United Nations established the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) to attempt to keep peace. (36) UNAMIR was led by Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire, who despite constant efforts and warnings to prevent genocide, was severely limited and ignored. Months prior to the genocide, Dallaire received information from an informant that the Hutus were planning to exterminate the Tutsis and kill Belgian troops to cause a withdrawal. Furthermore, Dallaire learned of the location of Interahamwe weapon caches. The UN did not agree with Dallaire and failed to heed the warnings, and sadly “everything [that] Dallaire’s informant told him came true three months later.” (37) Dallaire continuously requested more troops to add to the inadequate number of UNAMIR and Belgian troops and for the permission to stop the killings, rather than maintain a peace-keeping self-defense stance. His requests occurred in the months prior to and during the genocide. However, frugality and limited supplies caused Dallaire’s many requests to be cast off. Regretfully, Dallaire noted that he “could have stopped the madness had [he] been given the means.” (38) The troops stationed in Rwanda were permitted only to deter the violence, rather than stop it. Troops were not allowed to engage the militias, and instead were stationed near large gatherings of sheltered Tutsis to serve as protection. In several instances, however, the troops were forced to abandon their posts, and Hutu militias quickly swept in to exterminate the vulnerable Tutsis. Following the death of ten Belgian peacekeepers, the number of troops further became reduced by the Belgian pull out. (39) The focus of UNAMIR shifted to make the evacuation foreigners the priority, and little was done to help the Rwandan people. The Security Council even reduced the already small UNAMIR troops to 260 men. The remaining soldiers consisted of Dutch, Canadian, and African forces led by Romeo Dallaire. The United States did near to nothing to assist in Rwanda, possibly haunted by the recent failure in Somalia and reluctance to spend money and risk American loss of life. Rwanda was a “morality test” for the world and ironically, America was a nation “in whose capital a Holocaust Museum has been constructed with the words ‘Never again’… [America took] the vow of “Never Again”, and...it happened again.” (40)
The genocide that occurred was an obvious extermination of the Tutsi ethnicity. However, as the world watched the extermination unfold, the UN and responding nations feared the use of the word genocide, going so far as to refer to “acts of genocide.” Rather than addressing the Rwandan issue directly, the Western nation skirted the main issue to justify the lack of aid. Those involved with the peace and relief effort see Rwanda as one of their “greatest failures.” (41) Thousands or lives could have been saved, but “just so many things that could have been done...weren’t done.” (42) Rwanda was “the worst thing going on in the world at the time, and nothing was being done about it.” (43) However, others say that there wasn’t sufficient information that would have helped prevent the genocide, and others “wish it had been possible…to do more… [but] don’t think actually that [they] could have done more.” (44) The world response to the tragedy that unfolded in Rwanda is commonly seen as a large failure, but there is no surpassing the fact that as an excess of 800000 Rwandans were murdered, the world stood and watched it happen.
The end to the madness in Rwanda occurred when the RPF, led by Paul Kagame, invaded Rwanda and fought off the Hutu militias to seize the government in July 1994. Following the RPF victory, two million Hutus fled to Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. (45) Paul Kagame became the President of Rwanda and continues to rule to this day. Rwanda is still haunted by the massacres, and the country is still littered with the mass graves and bones of those who were slaughtered. The big issue following the Genocide in Rwanda was the vast number of refugees living outside of Rwanda. Hutu leaders, headed by Francois Karera, a notorious war criminal, controlled the distribution of food to the refugees, many of which became malnourished. The Hutu leaders had the intent on keeping the Rwandans out of Rwanda as mock “hostages” used to bargain with the Rwandan government. (46) Several Tutsi uprisings, one of which began the First Congo War, have enabled hundreds of thousands of refugee to return to Rwanda.
Rwanda Refugee Camp
Following the return of large numbers of refugees in 1996, Rwanda began to prosecute many of the war criminals of the 1994 genocide. In addition, the UN established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. (47) The UN Tribunal is responsible for prosecuting the high ranking official and leaders of the genocide and the Rwandan court is responsible for local officials. Despite the attempt at justice, thousands of soldiers and civilians who participated in the genocide remain unknown and unpunished. However, it is important to establish that the genocide was the result of the concentrated efforts of Hutu officials and not a total ethnic uprising. The Hutu people as a whole are not responsible for what happened during the Rwandan genocide, for many were merely influenced by the government and militias as pawns used in government extermination.
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda of Tutsis and Moderate Hutus is truly a dark chapter in the history of the world as a “failure of humanity.” (48) Centuries worth of tension, often created by European falsehoods, escalated to the point of genuine hatred and loss of human dignity. The Hutu government at the time truly possessed the “ability to manipulate age-old ethnic tensions and transform their larger uneducated population into a nation of murderers.” (49) Over 800000 lives were taken in 100 days, and the world did far less than it was able to in order to end the massacre. Rwanda still faces war and struggles with the issues of refugees and war criminals. Such issues leave future Rwandans and humans across the world responsible in ensuring that the world “does not repeat Rwanda.” (50) and that the world remains aware and intervenes in the “genocide--crimes against humanity-[that] is still happening” today. (51)
Endnotes
Bibliography
Great Links About the Rwandan Genocide
PBS Frontline: The Triumph of Evil
PBS Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda
Human Rights Watch: Leave None to Tell the Story-Genocide in Rwanda
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