A Comprehensive Coverage of the Rwandan Genocide

A People Betrayed: the role of the West in Rwanda’s genocide

Author: Linda Melvern

Year of Publication: 2009

Personal Notes, Interpretation and Implications for Ethiopia

By Mezemir Girma, Ethiopia. mezemirgirma@gmail.com; 251913658839; P.O.Box 445 Debre Birhan University, Debre Birhan, Ethiopia.

Prologue

I should briefly introduce myself before I treat the issue in question. I am a Lecturer in English Literature at Debre Birhan University, Ethiopia. My interest in Rwanda started in 2016, when I translated the book, “Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust”, into Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, and published it under the title “Hututsi”. Immaculee Ilibagiza is a genocide survivor who co-authored this book I translated. The details of this young woman’s agonies and the nightmare of Rwanda is unquestionably a startling revelation for young Ethiopians. As a matter of sheer coincidence, mine was the second translation of this book into Amharic. I discovered this a week before my book was published; however, I feel proud for doing so because my interpretation and translation reached new readers and brought my version of the book to the people.

Unexpectedly and as a result of the acceptance this book in translation received, I came to know book distributors and started my own library and bookstore in Debre Birhan town alongside my teaching job. This library has been giving the community a rare opportunity to read and discuss various issues. As to me, my reading about Rwanda was limited to the aforementioned book, Left to Tell, a copy of which I found at the University’s English Language Improvement Center (ELIC). In addition, I watched movies, documentaries and discussions on the genocide. I also read a few articles and initiated dialogues among Ethiopians in various meeting places and forums including radios and social media.  

I still do not know who brought that Rwanda’s book to the ELIC and with what intention. Nonetheless, I should be grateful as he/she/they enlightened me and caused such discussions and debates that could help reduce the genocide pandemic. 

Really, A People Betrayed!

This year I got a chance to read another book that I found comprehensive. Entitled “A People Betrayed: the role of the West in Rwanda’s genocide,” it has really broadened my understanding of Rwanda, her problems and the genocide. I should be grateful to the person who lent me this book. I should also invite you, my reader, to send me any Rwanda or genocide-related material.

I was immersed in this book. At times I forgot to note down the important points. I just took some notes that struck me thinking that they could help the reader to have an insight into the issue. It is the language of the book that dominates this writing. I should admit that it is not my English. However, I made some passing remarks at times. I knew what I am sharing with you cannot be a book review because my understanding of the issue is not a deep one both because of my profession and limited knowledge of Rwanda and genocide.

“The combination of the revelations about the speed, scale and intensity of the genocide, the failure to intervene when it was threatened and the suppression of information about what was actually happening is a shocking indictment of governments and individuals who could have prevented it but chose not to do so even when the evidence was indisputable. It is a terrible story, made worse because the true nature of it continues to be deliberately distorted and confused” (6) seems the theme of this investigative book written by an experienced British journalist.  

 100 years before the genocide

Rwanda is a country that was ruled by kings for centuries. The king who ruled Rwanda in 1890s, Rwabugiri, was a military genius but a political visionary. It was during his rule that, according to historians, the first systematic difference between Hutu and Tutsi evolved for his cattle rustlers were called Tutsi and the servants were called Hutu. A combatant was called Tutsi and a Hutu meant non-combatant. As most non-combatants were farmers, the elite eventually began to call all farmers Hutu. The identities altered, and the meanings evolved differently in different places. There existed many criteria for the classification Hutu and Tutsi, including birth, wealth in cattle, culture, place of origin, physical attributes and social and marriage ties. Although the word Hutu would also come to mean ‘subject’ or ‘servant’ and the word ‘Tutsi’ ‘those rich in cattle’, the differences were not solely based on wealth or class; there were Hutu and Tutsi in the same class. Tutsi pastoralists were as poor as their Hutu neighbors. But the word Tutsi did come to be associated with the central government. These groups were not tribes, for the people shared the ancestral stories, and spoke the same language, Kinyarwanda. Long before Rwanda became a state, people were speaking variants of the language and were widely settled in the region. There were no distinct areas of residence” (10-11).

The Tutsi, for their fine features and variant from the common Negro or Bantu, are considered to be Semitic migrants from Egypt or Ethiopia. It is a common knowledge that there were long distance migrations in Africa. Therefore, this migration thesis may also work. However, as people become more beautiful and as their genes improve through the centuries, wouldn’t these Tutsis be natives who became more beautiful? As far as I read, even members of the same family were divided as Hutu and Tutsi through the difference of their looks.  It is like what the Ethiopian Airlines does in Ethiopia – they may find a girl attractive and employ her and reject her sister they consider less appealing.

The Europeans and fast changes in Rwanda

In 1885 the Berlin Conference agrees that Ruanda-Urundi should become a German protectorate. In 1894, the first European, a German, Count Gustav Adolf von Gotzen, arrives in Rwanda. In 1911 a popular uprising in northern Rwanda is crushed by the German Schutztruppe and Tutsi chiefs, leaving bitterness among northern Hutu. In 1916 Belgian troops chase out the Germans and occupy both Rwanda and Urundi. In 1923 Ruanda-Urundi becomes a mandated territory of the League of Nations under the supervision of Belgium. In November 1931, the King Mwami Musinga, who was against colonization, was deposed by the Belgian administration and replaced with one of his pliant Christian sons. Christianity became a prerequisite for the membership of the Tutsi elite. King Mutara Rudahigwa was persuaded to Christianize Rwada. The catholic missions that were set up would deliver modern education mainly to the Tutsis who would acquire the best jobs until 1954. As a result, Hutu resentment intensified. In 1933 the Belgian administrators organized a census and everyone was issued with an identity card classifying them as Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. In 1945 the Belgian mandate was transferred to the UN Trust Territory. In 1957 a Belgian priest was the one who ratified a manifesto for the rebelling Hutu that demanded emancipation from the control of the Tutsi race and rule by the majority. They claimed that Rwanda had been run by Tutsi invaders who had enslaved the Hutu. Political parties were formed by the end of the 1950s. They were founded along ethnic lines. Whereas the Hutu party called for an end to Tutsi colonization before freedom from the Belgians, the Tutsi opposition party that was founded in 1959 was pro-monarchist and called for immediate independence from Belgium. 

Coups and Hutu Nationalism

King Mutara Rudahigwa dies in suspicious circumstances in 1959. In November the Hutu rebel, supported by Belgium. It was after the killing of their King that the Tutsis killed Hutu politicians and attacks resumed on Tutsi civilians as retribution. Two hundred Tutsis died and thousands flee for their lives to Burundi. Belgium places Rwanda under military rule. Hutu were favored by Belgian administrators. The Belgians openly favored them saying they were the masses. In 1960 Rwanda’s first municipal elections give Hutu a large majority. In January 1961 the monarchy is formally abolished by a referendum and republic is proclaimed. A new wave of violence against Tutsi emerged. As a result, more people fled the country. The Parmehutu Party leader Gregoire Kayibanda, a former school teacher, abolished the monarchy and became a president of the new republic in 1962. He was an authoritarian and secretive founding father of Hutu nationalism. The Nazism against Tutsi minorities led to accumulation of more than 130,000 refugees in neighboring countries. In 1964 this number would reach quarter of a million. Road blocks and curfews were set up to persecute Tutsis and their political leaders. Civilian Hutus were urged by the Radio in Kigali to fight any Tutsi they could find. Partly this was a fruit of the Tutsi ill-armed insurgency from neighboring countries. In the southern prefecture of Gikongoro local Hutu started to kill every Tutsi they found. About five thousand people were murdered, and in the most atrocious and cruel circumstances. At Shigira, near the border with the Congo, some hundred Tutsi women and children committed mass suicide by drowning themselves in the river to escape attacks by mass mobs. Professor Vullemin, a European educator in Rwanda, wrote to Le Monde that, “Most Europeans living in Rwanda appeared indifferent and considered the killing of the Tutsis in Rwanda as the proof of the ‘savagery of the negro’. The government, instead of organizing development programmes, was doing nothing more than encouraging racial hatred. The brutality of the killings was the product of carefully nurtured racial hatred.  How can I teach Under a UNESCO aid programme in a school where pupils are killed for the sole reason that they were Tutsi?”

A quota system was started, so the Tutsi, who were officially 9 percent of the population, a figure disputed by the Tutsi, got no more than this strict fixed quota. Civil servants and students were expelled after open tribunals to check identities.

The French and Habiyarimana: An Evil Company Against Tutsis

Major Juvenil Habyarimana, nation-wide anti-Tutsi campaign leader, and minister of defense seized power in a coup on 5 July 1973. Under his rule the quota system continues, Tutsis get marginalized and Hutus were the only soldiers who were commanded not to marry Tutsi women. Outside interference and support helped escalate the difference among the Hutu and Tutsi, and Belgium was replaced by France as a new supporter of the racist regime. “Every French president, from Degualle to Chirac, had retained a presidential prerogative in African policy making. The president had the power to dispatch troops overseas without reference to parliament or ministers, advised only by the unelected head of the African unit attached to the Elysee Palace” (302). The French openly supported what they called the majority legitimate Hutu government.

“In 1973, Juvenil Habyarimana starved to death 55 members of the former government” (27). This measure is more or less like Mengistu Hailemariam of Ethiopia summarily executed the leaders of the Emperor Haile Selase regime in 1974. Habyariana’s was a Hutu regime that “staged a fake attack on the capital” to accuse the Uganda-based rebel group the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Documents tend to testify that this regime can’t also be immune from the shooting down of the plane that carried its own leader, President Habyarimana, in 1994.  The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) did not have the access to the airport in Kigali then to execute the well-organized attack.

The French supported Rwanda because they wanted it to be a center of influence in the region where the British corner them. According to different estimates Rwandan refugees in neighboring countries numbered from one to two million. They started to organize themselves since the life they were leading where they were was miserable and they coveted to go back home. It was in the 1980s that they organized better. Then in 1987 they formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in Uganda. The RPF claims to be a multi-national party even if it is regarded as a Tutsi party. Its leader, Paul Kagame, was a member of Yoweri Museveni’s gorilla group that overthrew the Ugandan regime and took over. Kagame becomes a senior intelligence officer in Museveni’s government and the soldiers of the Ugandan regime include Rwandans who would later become RPF troops. The RPF launched an attack on Rwanda in 1990. It was very difficult for the regime to defend itself that the French assisted counter what they called an Anglo-Saxon invasion.     

Rumor has it that dictators and leaders of developing states have been victims of harmful traditional practices. A good example of this is given as follows: Habyariana’s secret room was accessed from a wardrobe. He had soothsayers and clairvoyants with their own bungalow for special rituals. (46, 47). Habyarimana’s wife had an Akazu, which literally meant little house, and named after a family circle from a northern village controlling power (48). This group consolidated power, was influential with bank accounts abroad for its members and used propaganda that set all Tutsis principal enemies, disseminated Nazi-like propaganda promoting a ‘pure Hutu race’. Regional division was promoted and consequently the Interhamwe was founded by the group.

Interhamwe, which can literally be translated as ‘those who attack together’, was a militia that was formed mainly to attack Tutsis. A strong French support even opposed to by French newspapers was causing a lot of troubles (51). The French Ambassador covered up the genocide. A death squad named Network Zero was set up. Farmers were ordered to kill in what was called ‘a collective work session’. Clear the bush; exterminate the Tutsi was the order of the day (53). Tutsis were disarmed so that they couldn’t defend themselves. Terrorist attacks were carried out by the state to blame the RPF and its supporters. (54)

Leon Mugesera, VP of the Hutu party MRND in Gisenyi and a political science professor addressed militants, “They (Tutsis) belong to Ethiopia and we are going to find them a shortcut to get there by throwing them into the Nyabarongo River” (55).

“French soldiers were seen controlling checkpoints in Kigali, demanding to see identity cards, arresting Tutsi and passing them over to the Rwandan army. The anti- Tutsi behavior of French soldiers was noticeable” (57). In Kigali the French president Mitterand was laughingly called MItterahamwe (58).

As Evil as Bogosora

All effort was made by the international community to assist in the Arusha Accords (held between the RPF and the Rwandan Government), yet PRF dominance and the government’s division weakened it. Two or three years before the actual genocide, thousands of Tutsis were killed in Kigali alone.

ICTR (the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) believed Bogosora and other officials “From late 1990 until July 1994 conspired among themselves and with others to work out and plan with intent, to exterminate the civilian Tutsi population, so that they could remain in power” (68).

Purported fear of the Tutsi’s return to power and a lust for power bring Hutu leaders together in the exclusion and planning to kill. Bogosora, a foreign educated officer, was the mastermind.

A plot was not readily available except for spoken words by officials and members of the Hutu to exterminate the Tutsis. The idea of a whole scale genocide seems to develop through time.

A list of people that the MRND and Reseau Zero called RPF accomplices and Tutsis was made ready for killing. It was Bogosora who coordinated this. “The idea of genocide was sometimes openly expressed. ‘They are very few,’ Colonel Rwagafilita told a French army officer in October 1990. ‘We will liquidate them’” (73)

From 1990 to 1994 tens of millions of dollars were spent on weapons and farm equipment purchase. To prove this, records are available at the national bank. Hutu elites had also stalk at hand. South Africa and Egypt sold arms to the genocidieries. It took 112 million USD to purchase arms, grenades, machetes and farm equipment that can be used to kill civilians.

The Hate Radio: Radio-Television Libre Des Mille Collines (RTLM) – a share company.

RTLM worked hard to demonize the Tutsis. The ten commandments of Hutu power were promoted. A policy of rape was adopted. PM Agate was called a rat. A critical propaganda weapon to disseminate the hate! Yes, no more than this hate radio.

New World Order and High hopes for UN Success

The UN was busy, unwilling, and almost unable to undertake the peace keeping operations that were growing steadily throughout the world. The US had the Somali peace keeping problems. The Rwanda case came without everyone’s preparation and knowledge of the real situations on the ground, a smoldering volcano than a mere civil war.

The Peacekeepers: The UN arrives: “At the outset Dellaire had gone to the UN headquarters in New York, where he discovered how low a priority Rwanda really was. “ (95) “He was a hard worker. And he was obstinate.” (96)

Ill-equipped Dellair, UNAMIR.

The informant about secret plans and stock by a secret group of extremist politicians was not heeded to. The peacekeepers didn’t have the mandate to stop the arms dissemination among the civilian Hutu.

Peacekeepers in trouble: Feb to April 1994

600 RPF troops were brought to Kigali to defend the RPF politicians to be involved in the new government. The formation of the new government failed. Killings continued in Kigali and it was not uncommon to see piles of dead people.

Two or three months before the genocide there was an intense preparation to kill the Tutsi.

“There had been a plan to kill the president on 23 March, but it was cancelled” (122).

The UN Security Council: 5 Apr 1994

The Arusha Accords if applicable, would not allow the Hutu to rule as they wanted owing to RPF strength in capacity and negotiations. There were pressures on the US administration from the congress. They were, therefore, disinterested and anti-UN.

The UK Foreign Office was disinterested in Rwanda, a Francophone and a problem area in the Franco British relationship. This is politics and the UK had no humanitarian involvement. 

On April 6, in Tanzania, Habyarimana agreed on a power sharing and a meeting with the opposition right away.

Four Days in Kigali: 6-9 April 1994.

When the airport air traffic controller asked for a fire brigade to attend to the rocket hit presidential plane, a presidential guard put a gun to his head and warned him (135).

Why would the USA offer rewards of millions of Dollars now for the whereabouts or hands of criminals of the Rwandan genocide? Why didn’t they assist in the efforts to stop the genocide?

At 6:00 AM on 7 Apr Radio Rwanda announced the death of the president and the army was given red light to kill Tutsis (141).

The Interhamwe had already started killing and road blocks were set up. Some Tutsis didn’t want to flee because they thought they would be killed progressively (141). The gendermere (military police) and presidential guard turned killers. “I saw a lecturer from the university giving arms to the Interhamwe and telling them to do a good job,” said a survivor (152).

In Kigali checking ID cards of people at road blocks took long and it became an irritation for the militia that they singled out those who were tall, with straight noses and long fingers. And they killed those who looked educated and richer than others (152).

“There was a pile of Identification cards with the ethnic designation of Tutsis burned in an attempt to eradicate all evidence that these people had existed”. (156).

The genocide exposed: the withdrawal of expats became a choice for the West.

The French were free to move in Kigali in the early days of the genocide while UNAMIR troops were being identified and killed.

Air transport resumed for the French. ICRC and MSF had a slight permit of taking the wounded, except male Tutsis, to the new hospital they founded on a hilltop. It was not immune from shelling, though. Bradol, an MSF staff who collected the wounded said, “There was no anarchy. No chaos. In Kigali there was order.

Articles by experts who saw and knew the case, even who lived there, in Rwanda, were rejected by Western news agencies/papers (168).

The genocide was termed as ‘tribal anarchy’ by the west. Dellaire was ordered to evacuate. He declined this. He asked for 2500 troops to double his personnel and do his best. Tanks and other big apparatuses would scare the gangs and help him close the hate radio.

My understanding: RPF would not attack because of the ceasefire. So, they couldn’t rescue Tutsis. The soldiers who came to rescue the expats should not have left. They could have stopped the genocide of the north and Kigali or its southward expansion.

The secret meetings of the security council:

There was no American interest in Rwanda - An American official.

RTLM helped locate Tutsis. They organized killings. On 12 April 1500 RPF fighters entered Kigali. However, they were locked in the building with their fellow fighters there and it took them three months to move out and free the city. The southward attack from Uganda, breaching the ceasefire, was in three directions/fronts. The government soldiers were three times their number in personnel and apparatus.

“The genocide was a conspiracy at national level but without the complicity of the local and national civil and military authorities, the large scale massacres would not have taken place” 184

Tutsis gathering to safe places months before the genocide. What does this mean? Why would they let be suffer like this? Dying progressively really makes sense here.

Change in mandate was required for UNAMIR. The issue and role of the interim government also needs a scrutiny.   

Genocide spreads

Using nail-studded clubs among other brutal means of killing! How inhumane can one become! How animalistic can propaganda makes people!

In Butare, a city known for its tolerance, at the university students, representing Hutu Power searched the university to pull out Tutsi from their hiding places. (192)

The Amhro stadium was shelled by the soldiers.

In three weeks 100,000 to half a million were killed. (199)

The world shuts the door

There was a French effort for ceasefire even still the genocide was underway even if they help the interim government.

Three hundred people sheltering at hotel des mille Collins were massacred. (209)

“America could not solve other people’s problems. Nor could America build their states for them” An American official (213)

Kagbayi was described as a concentration camp with 30, 000 people trapped in community centers.

A representative of the interim government, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the minister of family and women’s affairs told a reporter during the genocide, “Rwandans are a peaceful people, but the militia has been armed in order to weed out ‘Tutsi extremist infiltrators’ sent by the RPF. The Tutsi plan is to exterminate all the Hutu “(216).

Bizimana, the minister of defense, also told the same reporter that people had been afraid that they would be wiped out by the Tutsi and RPF infiltrators. (217)

On 12 May Dellaire sent his plan to the UN to save 756,000 people trapped at the 91 sites. (217)

“Ethiopia offered an 800- strong battalion and Malawi promised an infantry company.  …. But all these countries wanted equipment for their troops and wanted the costs to be undertaken by the UN.”

This issue make me laugh. The dictators send troops to countries in problem to amass wealth for themselves. The Ethiopian case seems to be inspired by this factor.

Nick Hughes’ film, entitled 100 days, was shot at the moment of genocide.

Kigali on May 22, there was a 32 kilometers of exodus; 300 000 people were fleeing the RPF advance.

On 9 June Clinton agreed to take action.

On 25 May Butros Ghali admitted it was a genocide. (pp 220s)

For Valour

On 23 June, Operation Turqoise, a French peace keeping mission to Rwanda under a UN go ahead started operations. Was it to save the perpetrators of the genocide or for humanitarian purposes?

The Operation had 2,500 elite troops, 200 different types of military planes, jets and helicopters. One percent of the French military budget was used for this 60 day operation. Yet this was made after much death, after every Tutsi was killed and the extremist Hutu operation was over. There was no real intention to stop the genocide. Dellaire and Kagame were opposed to it.

Pruner, the French government’s advisor at the operation wrote later that, “there were no Tutsi left alive to be paraded in front of TV cameras as justification for intervention.” (238)

Kibuye French camp. In Kibuye, where there were 50,000 Tutsi population, only a few hundred were spared in the hills and hideouts where they sometimes made unarmed combat. They emerged from under shades inside cupboards and attics.

The French didn’t want to assist UNAMIR, but create their zone of control.

These people who sought shelter with the French would later be killed and raped by the Hutu.

The French aim was to provide a secure retreat for government officials and perpetrators of the genocide (240).

10,000- 13,000 Tutsis were saved by the French in spite of their unambiguous Hutu partisanship.

“In two days, about a million people fled to Zaire. It was the fastest and largest flight of people ever recorded.” (243). Like the killing was?

Two million people fled the country. Sixty percent of Rwanda’s population was now either dead or displaced.

In a country of 7 million people, 1 million had died. (246)

Starting from zero: 18 July 1994

Kagame became vice-president and 12 Hutu were among the 18 ministers (247).

The genocide convention

“Raphael Lamkin, a Polish lawyer, who coined the word genocide, is known as the father of the genocide convention... “ (252).

The first trial of the ICTR began in January 1997.

“In an initial interview with Kambanda by ICTR investigators he acknowledged that the progress of genocide had been discussed in cabinet meetings”

There has been a lack of collaboration for ICTR from governments like France.

Colonel Theobeste Bogosora said, “Me, I don’t believe that genocide took place” 24 October, 2005, Arusha.

120,000 perpetrators of genocide were detained in Rwanda.

Gacaca courts played a paramount role in peace and reconciliation.

“The regular Rwandan courts were used for those suspects deemed to have wielded power and influence; there were an estimated 3000 cases” (260)

Who killed Habyarimana? Location of assassins. Investigation. Court cases.

“In 2003 Rwanda had applied to join the British Commonwealth and English is now the language of commerce, education and media” (265).

 An American counted over 10, 000 bodies in Lake Kivu.

Rwanda was not a British sphere in Africa. (273)

USA and UK - their selfish and racist policies had aided the genocide. 277

There is little true humanitarianism among them .

Mein Kampf was translated into Kinyarwanda.

10 commandments of the Bahutu.

The misery and plight of a five years old boy I read in the book is unforgettable. He was running to hold the tyre of a UN peace keepers’ vehicle that was leaving the Tutsis for the killers. The Hutu killers laughed at the boy’s deeds.

Finally, I share with you the photos I took from Linda's book of the chronology of the genocide. I found it a great summary.