IRISH PEACE INSTITUTE OPEN DIALOGUE SERIES

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IRISH PEACE INSTITUTE OPEN DIALOGUE SERIES

• Rwanda Genocide Are we Responsible?
• 12 March 09
• University of Limerick
• Presentation by Arnold Kashembe

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Africa
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Rwanda Brief Description

• The population of Rwanda was estimated at 9
  million in 2004. It has been estimated that the
  country lost 35-40 of its population to death or
  displacement during the 1994 genocide.
• The ethnic make-up is approximately 85 Hutu, 14
  Tutsi and 1 Twa.

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Rwanda Genocide

• The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of
  hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu
  political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power
  ideology. Over the course of approximately 100
  days, from the assassination of Juvénal
  Habyarimana on 6 April up until mid July, at
  least 500,000 people were killed. Most estimates
  indicate a death toll between 800,000 and
  1,000,000.

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Root causes of genocide

• The genocide had its roots in the Hutu-Tutsi
  ethnic divide and related sporadic violence,
  which had resulted in a large number of Tutsi
  refugee in the nations around Rwanda by 1990.
• In that year, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF),
  a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees,
  invaded. The Rwanda Civil War, fought between the
  Hutu regime, with support from France and the RPF
  with support from Uganda, vastly increased the
  ethnic tensions in the country and led to the
  rise of Hutu Power, an ideology that stressed
  that the Tutsi intended to enslave Hutus and thus
  must be resisted at all costs.

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• The assassination of Habyarimana in April 1994
  was the proximate cause of mass killing of Tutsi
  and pro-peace Hutus carried out primarily by two
  Hutu militias associated with political parties
  the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi.
• The genocide was directed by a Hutu Power group
  known as the Akazu.

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Preparation of genocide

• The killing was well organized with the Rwandan
  militia numbered around 30,000 nationwide, with
  representatives in every neighborhood. Some were
  able to acquire AK-47 by completing requisition
  forms. Other weapons, such as grenades, required
  no paperwork and were widely distributed. Many
  members of the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi were
  armed only with machetes.

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Media Propagenda
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• The cover of the December 1993 issue of Kangura.
  The title states, "Tutsi Race of God", while the
  text to the right of the machete states, "Which
  weapons are we going to use to beat the
  cockroaches for good?". The man pictured is the
  second president of the First Republic, Grégoire
  Kayibanda, who made Hutu the governing ethnicity
  after the 1959 massacres.

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Media

• Media played a crucial role in the genocide
  local print and radio media fuelled the killings.
  Among them were
  
• The state-owned newspaper Kangura
• Radio Rwanda
• Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines

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Initial Events

• On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying Rwandan
  President Juvénal Habyarimana, and Cyprien
  Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi, was
  shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali. Both
  presidents died when the plane crashed.

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• On April 6 and April 7 the staff of the Rwandan
  Armed Forces (RAF) and Colonel Theoneste Bagosora
  clashed verbally with the UNAMIR Force Commander
  Lieutenant General Dallaire, who stressed the
  legal authority of the Prime Minister, Agathe
  Uwilingiyimana, to take control of the situation
  as outlined in the Arusha Accords.

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The Genocide
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UNAMIR and the International Community

• UNAMIR was hampered from the outset by resistance
  from numerous members of the United Nations
  Security Council from becoming deeply involved
  first in the Arusha process and then the
  genocide. In the midst of the crisis, Dallaire
  was instructed to focus UNAMIR on only evacuating
  foreign nationals from Rwanda

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United States

• The US government was reluctant to involve itself
  in the "local conflict" in Rwanda and refused to
  label the killings as "genocide", a decision
  which then-President Bill Clinton later came to
  regret in a Frontline television interview.

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France

• On 5 August 2008 a commission of officials from
  Rwanda's Justice Ministry accused the French
  government of knowing of preparations for the
  genocide and helping to train the ethnic Hutu
  militia members who helped plan the genocide and
  participated in the killings. The report accused
  33 senior French military and political officials
  of involvement in the genocide

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Belgium

• On the 6 April 1994 the RTLM accused the Belgian
  peacekeepers of having shot down or helping to
  shoot down the president's plane. This
  broadcast has been linked to the killing of ten
  Belgian UN troops by soldiers of the Rwandan army.

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Aftermath

• Approximately two million Hutus, participants in
  the genocide, and the bystanders, with
  anticipation of Tutsi retaliation, fled from
  Rwanda to
• Burundi,
• Tanzania,
• Uganda, and for the most part
• Zaire (D.R. Congo)

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• In October 1996, an uprising by the ethnic Tutsi
  Banyamulenge people in eastern Zaire marked the
  beginning of the First Congo War, and led to a
  return of more than 600,000 to Rwanda during the
  last two weeks of November.

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• A massive repatriation was followed at the end of
  December 1996 by the return of 500,000 more from
  Tanzania after they were ejected by the Tanzanian
  government. Various successor organizations to
  the Hutu militants operate in eastern DR Congo to
  this day.

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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

• Currently based in Arusha, Tanzania. The UN
  Tribunal has jurisdiction over high level members
  of the government and armed forces, while Rwanda
  is responsible for prosecuting lower level
  leaders and local people.

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War Rape

• In 1998, the ICTR made the landmark decisions
  that the war rape during the Rwanda genocide was
  an element of the crime of genocide.
  
• It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000
  Rwandese women and girls had been raped.
  

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Implications in the Great Lakes Region

• War in the Eastern Congo
• Conflict in Burundi
• Armed Genocidaires in refugee camps in Tanzania
  resulting in insecurity in Kigoma, Kagera and
  Rukwa Regions
  
• Conflict in Uganda