RWANDA

• April and June, 1994, over 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days. About 300,000 Tutsis survived the genocide.

Main Causes:

• 6 April 1994, DEATH OF PRESIDENT HABYARIMANA [Hutu]. His plane was shot down by a rocket attack. The people responsible are yet to be proved guilty. A French judge blamed current president, Paul Kagame, who at the time was leader of the Tutsi rebels. Kagame vehemently denies the attack, and argues that it was the work of Hutu extremists, in order to provide a pretext to carry out their well-laid plans to exterminate the Tutsi community.

• GROWING ETHNIC TENSION BETWEEN HUTUS [MAJORITY] AND TUTSIS [MINORITY]. This has grown since the colonial period. Both are similar, sharing the same language and inhabiting the same places. However, Tutsis are said to be taller and lighter than Hutus, and there origins are said to be in Ethiopia. When Belgian colonists arrived in 1916, they produced identity cards classifying people according to their ethnicity. The Belgians considered the Tutsis to be superior to the Hutus, and they thus enjoyed better education and jobs over the Hutus for the following 20 years. Resentment among the Hutus gradually built up, culminating in riots in 1959. More than 20,000 Tutsis were killed. When Belgians gave Rwanda independence in 1962, Hutus were left in power. Since then, they used Tutsis as the scapegoats for every crisis.

• 1990 RWANDAN PATRIOTIC FRONT (RPF) INVASION/THE CIVIL WAR. RPF was a rebel group formed mostly by Tutsis. Went into the war as an army of liberation and came out of it as an army of occupation. The RPF consistently failed to translate military victory on the field into political gains within the population. With every RPF advance, the numbers of the population displaced multiplied.  RPF came to distrust peasants, convinced they were backward and ignorant. The RPF found the role of coercion seemed to increase in direct proportion to military success. The spectre of Tutsi Power inside Rwanda was thus increasing, sitting uncomfortably with the Hutus. RPF killings suggest select killings that were more in the nature of reprisals or revenge as opposed to widespread slaughter.

• RISE OF ‘HUTU POWER’. Hutu Power became a mainstream ideology in the early 90s, as a result of the RPF invasions prior. This followed on from the ‘Hutu Nation’ rallying cry of the 1959 revolution. Increased tension between Hutus and Tutsis. At the core of the ideology was that Tutsis were a race alien to Rwanda, and were not an indigenous ethnic group. For Hutu Power, the Hutu were not just the majority, they were the nation. The ideology stressed that Tutsis intended to enslave Hutus and so must be resisted at all costs.

• BAHUTU MANIFESTO. A genocidal plan had existed since 1957, when the Hutu Emancipation Movement called the Parmahutu published this manifesto. It alleged a monopoly of power held by the Tutsi minority. This led to the overthrowing of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic in 1960. It was a regime that persecuted the Tutsis, and forced many to flee.

• RAPID POPULATION GROWTH/OVERPOPULATION. King and Elliot state that rapid demographic growth (which they call demographic entrapment) was by far the single most important cause: ‘It is the concurrence of all these and other factors that made population pressure critical. It was inevitable that the pressure would express itself by reopening the tribal fault line’. A Neo-Malthusian analysis was done by Andre and Platteau. Their study showed that there was an increase in landlessness and in inequality of land ownership. This ‘documents how the ‘Malthusian trap’ can result in bitter tensions between families, intra-community hatreds and violence’. Magnarella argues that the ultimate cause of genocide was ‘the country’s economic plight, caused in large part by the world economy and Rwanda’s growing imbalance in land, food and people that led to malnutrition, hunger…and fierce competition for land to farm’.

• MEDIA PROPAGANDA. Local print and radio fuelled the killings. The print media was believed to have started hate speeches against Tutsis in Rwanda. E.g. Kangura. Kangura published the infamous ‘10 Hutu Commandments’ which called upon Hutus to massacre Tutsis. Radio Rwanda was a radio station the government used before and during the genocide to incite violence.

Impact of Military Conflict:

• The genocide was directed by a Hutu Power group known as the Akazu. It was primarily carried out by two Hutu militias associated with political parties; the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi.

Role of International Actors/International Context:

• INTERNATIONAL MEDIA either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground.

• UN. On January 11, 1994, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire (UN Force Commander in Rwanda) notified the UN of weapons caches and Hutu plans to exterminate the Tutsis. Plans were also being made to fire on Belgians, in order to guarantee a withdrawal of Belgians. Dallaire made immediate plans for troops to intervene, but got a message from headquarters that his plan went beyond the mandate granted by UNAMIR and was forced to withdraw the plan. Had the right people in high positions made the decision to intervene rather than turn a blind eye, most of the killings could have been prevented. The situation proved ‘too risky’ for the UN to attempt to help.

• OTHER COUNTRIES, including Ghana, Canada and the Netherlands provided consistent support for the UN mission under Dallaire, although it was left without an appropriate mandate for the capacity to intervene from the UN Security Council. This is because the UN’s mandate forbids intervening in the politics of any country unless the crime of genocide is being committed.

• OPERATION TURQUOISE. French military operation in 1994 which provided the Hutu dominated government with extensive military and diplomatic support. However, what the French said the objectives of Operation Turquoise were merely to ‘maintain a presence…contributing to security and protection… and the establishment and maintenance of safe humanitarian areas’.