Rwandan genocide
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.[4][5] During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the actual number of fatalities is unclear, and some estimates suggest that the real number killed was likely lower.[6][5][7] The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.[8]
"Tutsi Genocide" redirects here. For the killings of Tutsi in Burundi, see 1993 ethnic violence in Burundi. For the 1963/1964 killings, see Rwandan Revolution.Rwandan genocide
7 April – 19 July 1994
- Hutu-led government (led by Théoneste Bagosora)
- Interahamwe (led by Robert Kajuga)
- Impuzamugambi (led by Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Hassan Ngeze)
- Other militias and gangs financed by Félicien Kabuga
- local Hutu extremists
Anti-Tutsi sentiment, Hutu Power
In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from their base in Uganda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War. Over the course of the next three years, neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage. In an effort to bring the war to a peaceful end, the Rwandan government led by Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana[9] signed the Arusha Accords with the RPF on 4 August 1993. The catalyst became Habyarimana's assassination on 6 April 1994, creating a power vacuum and ending peace accords. Genocidal killings began the following day when majority Hutu soldiers, police, and militia murdered key Tutsi and moderate Hutu military and political leaders.
The scale and brutality of the genocide caused shock worldwide, but no country intervened to forcefully stop the killings.[10] Most of the victims were killed in their own villages or towns, many by their neighbors and fellow villagers. Hutu gangs searched out victims hiding in churches and school buildings. The militia murdered victims with machetes and rifles.[11] Sexual violence was rife, with an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women raped during the genocide.[3] The RPF quickly resumed the civil war once the genocide started and captured all government territory, ending the genocide and forcing the government and génocidaires into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
The genocide had lasting and profound effects. In 1996, the RPF-led Rwandan government launched an offensive into Zaire, home to exiled leaders of the former Rwandan government and many Hutu refugees, starting the First Congo War and killing an estimated 200,000 people. Today, Rwanda has two public holidays to mourn the genocide, and "genocide ideology" and "divisionism" are criminal offences.[12][13]
Prelude
Preparation for genocide
To what extent the Rwandan genocide was planned in advance of the assassination of Habyarimana continues to be debated by historians.[97] Prosecutors at the ICTR argued, but were unable to prove, that the defendants planned the genocide prior to Habyarimana's assassination.[98]
In 1990, the army began arming civilians with weapons such as machetes, and it began training the Hutu youth in combat, officially as a programme of "civil defence" against the RPF threat,[99] but these weapons were later used to carry out the genocide.[100] In particular, the Hutu Power leaders organized a paramilitary or militia force known as the Interahamwe ("those who stand together") and the Impuzamugambi ("those who have the same goal").[101] These groups served to provide auxiliary slaughterhouse support to the police, the gendarmerie and the regular army.[102] These militias were primarily recruited from the vast pool of Hutu internally displaced persons driven from their homes in the North, and claimed a total membership of 50,000 on the eve of genocide [102] Rwanda also purchased large numbers of grenades and munitions from late 1990; in one deal, future UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his role as Egyptian foreign minister, facilitated a large sale of arms from Egypt.[103] The Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) expanded rapidly at this time, growing from less than 10,000 troops to almost 30,000 in one year.[99] The new recruits were often poorly disciplined;[99] a divide grew between the elite Presidential Guard and Gendarmerie units, who were well trained and battle ready, and the ordinary rank and file, respectively.[104]
In March 1993, Hutu Power began compiling lists of "traitors" whom they planned to kill, and it is possible that Habyarimana's name was on these lists;[93] the CDR were publicly accusing the president of treason.[93]
The Power groups believed that the national radio station, Radio Rwanda, had become too liberal and supportive of the opposition; they founded a new radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). The RTLM was designed to appeal to the young adults in Rwanda and had extensive reach. Unlike newspapers that could only be found in cities, the radio broadcasts were accessible to Rwanda's largely rural population of farmers. The format of the broadcasts mirrored Western-style radio talk shows that played popular music, hosted interviews, and encouraged audience participation. The broadcasters told crude jokes and used offensive language that contrasted strongly with Radio Rwanda's more formal news reports.[105] Just 1.52% of RTLM's airtime was dedicated to news, while 66.29% of airtime featured the journalists discussing their thoughts on different subjects.[106] As the start of the genocide approached, the RTLM broadcasts focused on anti-Tutsi propaganda. They characterized the Tutsi as a dangerous enemy who wanted to seize the political power at the expense of Hutus. By linking the Rwandan Patriotic Army with the Tutsi political party and ordinary Tutsi citizens, they classified the entire ethnic group as one homogeneous threat to Rwandans. The RTLM went further than amplifying ethnic and political division; it also labeled the Tutsi as inyenzi, meaning non-human pests or cockroaches, which must be exterminated.[107] Leading up to the genocide, there were 294 instances of the RTLM accusing the Rwandan Patriotic Army of atrocities against the Hutu, along with 252 broadcasts that call for Hutus to kill the Tutsis.[106] One such broadcast stated, "Someone must ... make them disappear for good ... to wipe them from human memory ... to exterminate the Tutsi from the surface of the earth."[108] By the time the violence began, the young Hutu population had absorbed months of racist propaganda that characterized all Tutsis as dangerous enemies that must be killed before they seized control of the country. The RTLM's role in the genocide earned it the nickname "Radio Machete" as it related to their incitement to genocide.[109] A 2014 study by Harvard Kennedy School researcher David Yanagizawa-Drott found that approximately 10% of the overall violence during the Rwandan genocide can be attributed to this new radio station.[110] Gordon Danning, a researcher with the free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education questioned the assumption of that paper that media availability correlated with media consumption.[111]
During 1993, the hardliners imported machetes on a scale far larger than what was required for agriculture, as well as other tools which could be used as weapons, such as razor blades, saws and scissors.[112] These tools were distributed around the country, ostensibly as part of the civil defence network.[112]
In October 1993, the President of Burundi, Melchior Ndadaye, who had been elected in June as the country's first ever Hutu president, was assassinated by extremist Tutsi army officers. The assassination sparked the Burundi Civil War between Burundi's Hutu and Tutsi and the Burundi genocide, with 50,000 to 100,000 people killed in the first year of war.[113][114] The assassination caused shockwaves, reinforcing the notion among Hutus that the Tutsi were their enemy and could not be trusted.[115] The CDR and the Power wings of the other parties realised they could use this situation to their advantage.[115] The idea of a deliberate and systematic genocide, which had first been suggested in 1992 but had remained a fringe viewpoint, was now top of their agenda, and they began actively planning it.[115] They were confident of persuading the Hutu population to carry out killings, given the public anger at Ndadaye's murder, as well as RTLM propaganda and the traditional obedience of Rwandans to authority.[115] The Power leaders began arming the interahamwe and other militia groups with AK-47s and other weapons; previously, they had possessed only machetes and traditional hand weapons.[116]
On 11 January 1994, General Roméo Dallaire, commander of UNAMIR, sent his "Genocide Fax" to UN Headquarters.[117] The fax stated that Dallaire was in contact with "a top level trainer in the cadre of Interhamwe-armed [sic] militia of MRND." The informant—now known to be Mathieu Ngirumpatse's chauffeur, Kassim Turatsinze,[118] a.k.a. "Jean-Pierre"—claimed to have been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. According to the memo, Turatsinze suspected that a genocide against the Tutsis was being planned, and he said that "in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis".[119] Dallaire's request to protect the informant and his family and to raid the weapons caches he revealed was denied.[119]
The ICTR prosecution was unable to prove that a conspiracy to commit genocide existed prior to 7 April 1994.[120] The supposed mastermind, Théoneste Bagosora, was acquitted of that charge in 2008, although he was convicted of genocide.[121][122] André Guichaoua, an expert witness for the ICTR prosecution, noted in 2010:
Killing of the Twa
The pygmy people called the Batwa (or "Twa") made up about 1% of Rwanda's population. A report shows that the group has been described as people who lived in forests and off lands, but currently the Twa are dispersed in the country in smaller groups while integrating into society.[210] Although the Twa were not directly targeted by the genocidaires,[211] an estimated 10,000 of a population of 30,000 were nonetheless killed. They are sometimes referred to as the "forgotten victims" of the Rwandan genocide.[2] In the months leading up to the genocide, Hutu radio stations accused the Batwa of aiding the RPF and Twa survivors describe Hutu fighters as threatening to kill them all.[212]
Commemoration
In March 2019, President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo visited Rwanda to sign the Kigali Genocide Memorial Book, saying, "The collateral effects of these horrors have not spared my country, which has also lost millions of lives."[366] On 7 April the Rwandan Government initiated 100 days of mourning in observation of the 25th anniversary of the genocide by lighting a flame at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. Dignitaries from Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Niger, Belgium, Canada, Ethiopia, the African Union and the European Union attended.[367] At the national level, the annual commemoration programs are known as Kwibuka and commence with an official week of mourning observed from 7 to 13 April, known as Icyunamo. During this period, work is suspended, and various events take place locally, nationally, and among the Rwandan diaspora across the globe. These events provide opportunities for survivors to share their testimonies, fostering remembrance and reflection on the tragic events that occurred.[368]
Ethnic distribution of Tutsis in 1983. 0% Tutsi • 45.5% Tutsi
Map showing the geographical strongholds of the Rwandan political parties at the beginning of April 1994. Unknown / vacant / partyless • MRND • MDR • PSD • PL • ★ Tutsi burgomaster • ★ Unclear / complicated
