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Dictionary of Gross Human Rights Violations


Rwanda, Gross Human Rights Violations in

 

Reburial ceremony at the Gisozi Genocide Memorial, Kigali, Rwanda.  Photo by Kjell Anderson

By - Kjell Follingstad Anderson

The Rwanda genocide of 1994 was remarkable both for its destructive fury and for the absolute failure of the international community to respond to this humanitarian catastrophe. The world bore witness as, in a period of only a few weeks, at least 800 000 (mostly “Tutsi”) Rwandans were slaughtered. The Rwandan media and leadership cadre played a decisive role in the incitement and mobilisation of the genocide.
 
The roots of the Rwandan genocide lay in the Belgian colonial regime where Tutsi and Hutu ethnic identity was reinforced and reinvented and these modified identities became the basis for the distribution of economic resources and political power. An ethnic history in the region was devised whereby Twa (pygmies) were the first inhabitants of “Rwanda” followed by the Bantu Hutus, and then the supposedly Ethiopian-origin Tutsis. The Tutsis were considered in this way to be ancient Christians (like the Ethiopians), who had lost their original language but who were the “natural rulers” of Rwanda.[1] Thus, the Belgian colonial regime favoured the Tutsis as a kind of ruling class.
 
In the post-colonial period the ethnic polarisation of Rwanda continued and actually intensified through a cycle of massacres and retaliation (not only in Rwanda but also encompassing Tutsis and Hutus in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Politics were soon reduced to a zero sum game. In 1959 genocide ensued and tens of thousands of Tutsis were killed in retaliation for an attempted assassination on a Hutu leader. Over one hundred thousand Tutsis also fled the country at this point. In the period immediately before the genocide, the population breakdown was 84% Hutu, 15% Tutsis, and 1% “other,” with the government being dominated by Hutu extremists who were opposed to a power-sharing agreement with rebel Tutsi forces.
 

The genocide began with the plane crash and death of Rwandan President Juvenal Habayrimana on April 6, 1994. Some analysts have argued that this event was premeditated by Hutu extremists in order to create a pretext for the genocide. The genocide was certainly well prepared. Hate propaganda and incitement dehumanised Tutsis prior to the genocide and during the genocide the media issued direct commands to killing squads. The government had also ensured the racial classification of all Rwandans, and organised, supplied, and supported the Interahamwe militia who did much of the killing. The Habayrimana government, and the extremist ruling clique in Rwanda at the time, was also supported financially, politically, and militarily by the French government. The French saw Habayrimana as a close ally in the French struggle to maintain influence in central Africa, and in the broader sense to shore up France’s waning status as a “great power.” Once it began, the genocide was carried out with deadly efficiency and in just a couple of months hundreds of thousands of people were massacred.

 

Skulls of genocide victims, Rwanda

 

 

Nyamata Church, Rwanda - the scene of a massacre.  Note the bullet holes in the ceiling.  Photo by Kjell Anderson

 

The international community responded to this killing in an incredibly inept manner. There were many warnings of the impending genocide both from the commander of UN forces on the ground in Rwanda (Roméo Dallaire) and others. As the genocide began the Security Council (and individual states) endlessly debated whether genocide was occurring in Rwanda. The UN presence was actually reduced shortly after the start of the genocide (subsequent to the kidnapping and murder of ten Belgian peacekeepers). The bottom line was that no country was willing to accept any risk to intervene to protect the people of Rwanda. 

After the genocide the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was created in 1994 by the UN Security Council to prosecute those responsible for the genocide. The Rwandan government, facing an enormous burden on its diminished judicial and penal system, has looked to alternative justice models such as Gacaca Courts (building on a traditional legal instrument) to achieve a sustainable justice and peace in the country. Yet, in spite of the international measures to punish the perpetrators after the fact, the Rwandan genocide exposed a lack of political will in the international community to take effective measures to prevent or interdict genocide. 

Mass grave at Gisozi Genocide Memorial, Kigali, Rwanda.  Photo by Kjell Anderson.


[1]              Thomas Turner, Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth & Reality, (London: Zed Books, 2007), p. 54-55.

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