Stop Genocide

Genocide in Rwanda: "A Distinctly Modern Tragedy"

by Michelle

Published April 07, 2009 @ 06:25PM PT

"Genocide anywhere implicates everyone."

-- Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story

The road blocks were up within hours.

On the evening of April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali, and carefully-laid plans to exterminate the country's Tutsi population, and any Hutus who did not subscribe to the hateful Hutu Power propaganda, were set into motion with alarming speed. Soldiers and militias began first with pre-drawn lists of prominent Tutsi and moderate Hutu politicians, but anyone with "Tutsi" written on their identity card was immediately at risk. The killing quickly spread throughout the country. The rest of the world sat idly by.

As I wrote last night, a single account can never do full justice to the various complex factors that led into the Rwandan genocide, and I make no pretense of doing so here. However, this post (which is less blog post, and more resource/background material) attempts to give at least a basic explanation of the how the genocidal ideology was shaped and implemented.

A Recipe for Genocide

The ethnic identities of Hutu and Tutsi began to solidify before the arrival of European colonists, but were made an intractable feature of Rwandan political and social life through colonial ideologies and practices. The racist narrative of Rwandan history assumed by the Europeans, which elevated the supposedly-racially superior Tutsi over the common Hutu masses, provided an imagined-yet-real  historical context for the genocide --- imagined because the "history" that provided the justification in many of the perpetrators minds is in fact a false construction,  real because the people involved believed it to be so.

It is necessary to clarify that history did not cause the genocide --- such an interpretation gives the event a quality of inevitability, which is equally as erroneous as the false premises that the genocide was based on --- but it is imperative to understand the (imagined) historical context which enabled the particular political character of Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities to achieve such a heightened level of relevance in Rwandan society.

Rather than an explosion of "ancient, tribal hatreds," as was promoted by the radical elements in the Rwandan government and initially widely accepted in international media, the genocide was, as Johan Pottier aptly put it, a "distinctly modern tragedy," diligently orchestrated by Rwanda's ruling elite, who manipulated the fears and historical memory of the population in order to maintain their hold on power in the wake of a failing economy, domestic and international discontent over the corrupt authoritarian regime, and the 1990 invasion and continued threat by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), an army of Tutsi exiles based in Uganda.

In early 1992 Habyarimana's party, Movement Révolutionaire pour le Développement (MRND), began equipping and training a party militia, the Interahamwe, followed in 1993 by the creation of a "civilian self-defense force." As part of a program of escalating violence, the militias trained and held (comparatively) small-scale, "practice" massacres of Tutsi in response to RPF actions or political threats.

A virulent anti-Tutsi and anti-opposition propaganda campaign worked to redefine the population into "Rwandans," presidential supporters, and "ibyitso" or "accomplices of the enemy," Tutsi and dissident Hutu. The methods used to incite fear in the Hutu population were extensive and elaborate: Radio and other mass communications asserted that Tutsis were eager for revenge against Hutus for past massacres, and fear over the return of the RPF exiles escalated. The regime's propaganda urged Hutus to protect themselves against an abstract, faceless evil, and portrayed all Tutsis as RPF collaborators.

100 Days

When Habyarimana's plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, the Presidential Guard and Interahamwe quickly began killing Hutu political opponents and Tutsi in Kigali. The RPF renewed their push towards the capital the next day, as the killing began to spread to the rest of the country.

The speed and efficiency with which the genocide commenced --- with militias canvassing the country, and local government officials quickly distributing stockpiled weapons and recruiting participants --- revealed meticulous planning on the part of the organizers. Radio stations broadcast hit lists and directed killers on where to find their targets. Most of the killing was a very intimate affair: Machetes were the genocidal weapon of choice, often more than one person was often required to kill another, especially after the blades began to dull. Victims were often killed by family and neighbors. In many other cases, militias surrounded schools and churches where their targets were seeking refuge.

In 100 days, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered, and both the massacres and the progression of the RPF --- which re-entered the country from Uganda after the genocide began --- towards Kigali displaced four million people (half the prewar population), with 2.3 million fleeing the country entirely.

Through the training of the militia, an intense propaganda campaign aimed at instilling fear in the mass population, and the escalating use of political violence, and manipulation of the imagined historical context, the Habyarimana regime was able significantly divide the Hutu and Tutsi populations. The imagined historical context allowed for the production and manipulation of highly politicized ethnic identities by the ruling elite, who desired to use the ethnic divide as a political tool to serve their own interests.

To See and Say Nothing

A small force of UN peacekeepers, put in place (ostensibly) to implement peace accords signed by the Rwandan government and the RPF in 1993, witness the rollout of the genocide. General Romeo Dallaire, head the force, issued repeated communiqués to UN headquarters in New York warning of the impending massacres and requesting a stronger mandate and additional support.

In what is now his most famous telegram, on January 11, 1994, Dallaire sent details, provided by a reliable informant, of four military weapons caches and a plan to exterminate the country's Tutsis. Dallaire made plans to seize the weapons, but was thwarted the following day by orders from New York that such action was beyond his mandate. National security reports, declassified several years ago, reveal that the Clinton Administration knew of the scale of the slaughter, but chose to plead ignorance and not intervene. France, a key supporter of Habyarimana, even intervened to protect the genocidal army from the advancing RPF rebels.

So Much More to this Sad Story

The story of how the international community abandoned Rwandan is complex, as is that of the genocide itself, nor does the story end with the last killings in 1994. But there's no way that I can do justice to all of it here. Alison Des Forges, for instance, took 771 pages to lay out all of the evidence of the lead up to and roll out of the genocide, as well as the international response --- and I strong encourage you to read it. I will post a list of other resources soon.

This post was adapted from papers written in college and graduate school by me, drawing on a variety of sources, and including my own general knowledge of the the subject (after several years of study).