Rwanda
In 1994, 800,000 men, women, and children were murdered, mostly Tutsi and some moderate Hutu, by the Interim Government of Rwanda, Rwandan Armed Forces, The Presidential Republican Guard, and Interahamwe (Hutu militias). Flying back from a peace conference in Tanzania, Rwandan President Habyarimana and President Ntaryamira of Burundi, both Hutus, were shot down over Kigali on April 6, 1994. Hutu Power extremists immediately launched the genocide to destroy the entire Tutsi population under the cover of Rwandan civil war. The genocide was led by a Hutu Power clique known as the Akazu, which came from top levels of the Rwandan government. They trained and armed militias and incited genocide months in advance.
Historical Background:
Rwanda’s population in 1994 consisted of 85% Hutu, 14% Tutsi, and 1% Twa. Hutus and Tutsis shared a common language and culture. Most were Roman Catholics. There had been many inter-marriages, but a person’s “ethnic” identity was determined solely by his or her father’s ethnicity. German and Belgian colonizers favored Tutsis in government employment, education, the church, and business, which resulted in Hutu resentment. Belgians introduced identification cards noting ethnic identity in 1933. Ethnicity was kept on ID cards after independence in 1959.
In 1959, Hutus overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and began massacres of Tutsis. Tens of thousands of Tutsis fled to neighboring countries such as Uganda and Burundi. Tutsi refugees formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in 1987.
In 1990, the RPF invaded Rwanda with a force of 7,000 fighters from Uganda and a civil war began. Tutsis in Rwanda were suspected of being accomplices of the RPF. Hutu opposition parties to the President’s MRND were labeled traitors by the Rwandan government. Hutu hate radio and newspapers incited genocide.
A ceasefire to the civil war was signed in 1993 in Arusha, Tanzania. The United Nations sent a peacekeeping force (UNIMIR) to monitor implementation of the Arusha Accords. However, the UN Security Council refused to provide adequate numbers of well-armed troops to enforce it.
The Interim Government, Prefects, Mayors, Rwandan Armed Forces, and Gendarmes organized systematic genocide, but most of the killing was done by Hutu militias, the Interahamwe. Ordinary people, including shopkeepers, teachers, priests, and farmers were encouraged to join the genocide. The killers often knew their victims personally. It is estimated that 200,000 people participated in the perpetration of the genocide. During approximately 100 days until mid-July, 1994, 800,000 people were killed. The genocide and civil war finished simultaneously when the RPF took military control of the entire territory of Rwanda.
In Resolutions 955 (1994) and 978, The United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try top leaders of the genocide. Over 50 have been tried and over thirty have been convicted of genocide. 100,000 local “gaçaça” trials have been held, usually followed by community service. Rwanda is now in the midst of a lengthy process of reconciliation.
Tensions between Hutu deniers and Tutsis who continue to lead Rwanda have not yet fully healed the schisms underlying Rwanda’s post-genocidal recovery. The Rwandan government has launched a positive educational program to overcome many years of division. Rwanda has returned to rapid economic growth, religious freedom, and improvement in health.
Madeleine Albright, Rwanda, and Darfur: How Genocides Happen Eric Reeves, 12 June 2014 Last week the New York Times reported (June 3, 2014) on a significant trove of UN diplomatic cables sent before and during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and recently declassified. All are marked "confidential" and are extraordinarily revealing of the thinking at the time by many Security Council members, and particularly the Clinton administration's Permanent
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By Edmund Blair REUTERS 12 June, 20134 Gunfire broke out on Thursday for a second day on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Congolese official said, after months of relative calm in the volatile region. Congolese and Rwandan officials each accused the other's armies of mounting cross-border raids on Wednesday that prompted heavy fire between the two forces. Reports suggested the gunfire on Thursday morning was short-lived.
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Rwanda 20 years on: the tragic testimony of the children of rape Lindsey Hilsum, The Guardian 7 June 2014 Two decades after the 1994 genocide, a television journalist returns to hear the extraordinary testimony of women who were raped during the violence – and of the children born as a result When Josiane Nizomfura was 12, she wanted to get a glimpse of her father, so she sneaked out of school and went to the public trial where her mother was
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U.N. Cables Reveal a Turning Point in Rwanda Crisis By Mark Landler 3 June 2014 WASHINGTON — On April 12, 1994, six days after a plane carrying Rwanda’s president was shot down, setting off a wave of killings, Madeleine K. Albright, the American ambassador to the United Nations at the time, sent a cable to the State Department proposing that the United States take the lead in pushing to withdraw the United Nations peacekeeping force operating
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Kigali Genocide Memorial opens global centre for humanity By Collins Mwai, The New Times Rwanda 9 April 2014 The Government has expressed its commitment to continue supporting Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre at Gisozi that yesterday marked its 10th anniversary as a place of memory and a centre for education to prevent genocide in the country and elsewhere in the world. This was said by the Minister for Youth and ICT, Philbert Nsengimana, during
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Have they healed yet? Western dreams about Rwanda By Rebecca Tinsley, openDemocracy 25 April 2014 Shattered societies cannot be mended with pills or analysis or technology or foreign aid. Our need to hear that Rwanda is ‘healing’ tells us more about ourselves than it does about Rwanda. For the last ten years I have been involved in development projects in Rwanda. This month, in April 2014, Rwandans are marking the twentieth anniversary of
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Following Orders in Rwanda The New York Times, The Opinion Pages, By JEAN-MARIE KAMATALI
APRIL 4, 2014 ADA, Ohio — I met my client Pierre in a southern Rwandan prison in 1998. “The authorities ordered us to kill Tutsis,” he explained. It was, he was sure, a defense that could lighten his sentence. He had pleaded guilty to killing about half a dozen Tutsis in Rwanda’s genocide four years before. The new Tutsi-led government was now trying
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Wall St. Journal’s Howard French subjects Rwanda’s Paul Kagame to double standards. 28 April 2014 By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach No sooner had I returned from the twentieth anniversary commemorations of the Rwandan genocide in Kigali than I saw Howard French’s assault on the man universally credited with stopping the mass killings, President Paul Kagame. In his Wall Street Journal op-ed (“How Rwanda’s Paul Kagame Exploits US Guilt,” 19 April
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Sobs, cries as Rwanda marks 20th anniversary of genocide CNN , By Marie-Louise Gumuchian April 8, 2014 Rwanda held solemn commemorations Monday to mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, with many survivors overcome with emotion as they relived the trauma of the killings that left 800,000 people dead. Official mourning, which began three months ago with a flame of remembrance touring towns and villages across the small central African
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Genocide in Rwanda: could it happen elsewhere? Opinion: New fault-lines of conflict are springing up across the African continent The Irish Times, By Paul Cullen 7 April 2014 It was only a brief visit, but even after almost two decades, the stench of death stays in the memory. Closing my eyes, it isn’t hard to visualise again the fetid mess of bones and skulls and rags that filled the small church at Ntarama where 5,000 perished. Outside, the
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