Théoneste Bagosora
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Colonel Théoneste Bagosora (born August 16, 1941) is a former Rwandan military officer. He is chiefly known for his role in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
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[edit] History and career
Bagosora was born in Giciye commune, Gisenyi préfecture, in Rwanda, of Hutu ethnicity. In 1964, he graduated from the École des officiers in Kigali with the rank of 2nd lieutenant, and continued his studies in France. During his military career he served as second-in-command of the École supérieure militaire in Kigali and as commander of Kanombe military camp.
He was appointed to the position of directeur du cabinet in Rwanda's Ministry of Defence in June 1992. Despite his official retirement from the military on September 23, 1993, he retained this portfolio until fleeing the country in July 1994.
[edit] Role in the genocide
“It seems that, inasmuch as there was a general organizer of the whole operation, this distinction has to go to Colonel Théoneste Bagosora.” (Prunier 1995:240)
Bagosora was born in the same northern region as Juvénal Habyarimana, the president of Rwanda from 1973 to 1994. He was linked to ‘le Clan de Madame’, known later as the akazu, a group associated with Agathe Habyarimana, the president’s wife, who was rumored to be a Hutu extremist and related to very powerful members of society. (Prunier 1995:167) He displayed a lust for power that was well known among extremists. (Off 2000:48).
Although, he was present at the negotiations of the Arusha Accords in August, 1993, he never supported them and is widely cited as saying, once everything was signed, that he was returning to Rwanda to prepare for the apocalypse. Luc Marshal, a Belgian Colonel, who was Romeo Dallaire’s Kigali sector commander, reported that Bagosora told him that the only way to solve Rwanda’s problems was to get rid of the Tutsi. (Off 2000:48)
Bagosora was responsible for establishing paramilitary ‘self-defense’ units, the Interahamwe, that would operate in every commune in the country. These groups were to act in concert with the local police, militas, and military authorities. Bagosora was also responsible for distributing arms and machetes throughout Rwanda. Between January 1993 and March 1994 Rwanda imported more than 500 000 machetes, twice the number than imported in previous years. (Meredith 2005:500-501). There were lists drawn up identifying people as enemies. The stage was set.
At about 8:15pm on the evening of April 6th, 1994 President Habyarimana was flying back to Kigali after a meeting when his plane was struck by two missiles fired from the ground. The plane crashed, killing everyone on board. While there is no conclusive evidence as to who is responsible for shooting down the plane, Colonel Bagosora and the akazu remain at the center of the conspiracy. Nonetheless, news of the President’s death was broadcast and the killings began. (Meredith 2005:507)
After the assassination, Colonel Bagosora along with Colonel Rwagafilita gathered supporters and convened a meeting of a Crisis Committee.(Off 2000:48-49) Romeo Dallaire, the UN commander was invited, and arrived to find the senior leadership of the Rwandan army. (Dallaire 2003:222). Dallaire rejected Bagosora’s proposal of having the military take control of the political situation until they could hand it over to the politicians and he reminded him that Rwanda still had a government headed by Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. Bagosora responded that Madame Agathe was incapable of governing the nation. A few hours later, Madame Agathe was murdered with her husband by members of the Presidential Guard and the army. (Dallaire 2003:245) After Bagosora's failed attempt to have the military take over the role of government, the group proceeded to pick a provisional government. The interim government was a multiparty group, but all came from the hardliner sections of their respective parties. (Prunier 1995:232-233)
Massacres began all over the country. Many prominent Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed right away, their names and addresses having been on lists. Radio Mille Collines broadcasted incitements to murder. Trucks began arriving to pick up scores of bodies. On the morning of April 7th, ten Belgian peacekeepers who had been guarding Prime Minister Agathe and who were witnesses to the government troops laying siege to her residence, were disarmed and taken to Camp Kigali, approximately 200 metres from where Colonel Bagosora was holding a meeting of military officers. The peacekeepers were murdered over the course of several hours by military personnel. During his testimony Colonel Bagosora admitted attending to the scene while the murders were in progress, although claiming he could do nothing to stop the killings. As anticipated, the death of the ten Belgian peacekeepers prompted the withdrawal of most peacekeeping troops from Rwanda, effectively clearing the way for slaughter.
In the next 100 days, more people were killed more quickly than ever before in history. The number of dead varies from 800 000 to 1 000 000 people depending on the source.
Bagosora fled into neighbouring Zaire. “Fed and protected in refugee camps supported by millions of dollars in international aid, the Hutu Power leaders were able to hold regular planning meetings and to recruit new members.” (Off 2000:248) With Bagosora actively involved, they rebuilt their military structures with the purpose of wiping out the Tutsi population.
Bagosora later moved to Cameroon with several other Hutu Power leaders. It was here that he was detained with André Ntagerura. In 1997, he first appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, to face thirteen counts of eleven different international crimes, based on the laws of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The joint trial with three other senior military officers charged as co-conspirators opened on April 2, 2002.
During his trial further evidence was submitted that in 1991 he and his three other co-accused helped to draft a document where they referred to the Tutsi ethnic group as the "principal enemy" which was widely distributed in the army. They were also accused of supporting the media outlets responsible for spreading hate messages and making lists of victims. (Guardian Unlimited, June 1, 2007)[1]
The trial wrapped up on June 1, 2007 after five years with Colonel Theoneste Bagosora claiming his innocence. A verdict is expected this year.
Théoneste Bagosora
AKA 'Colonel Death', AKA 'Rwanda's Milosevic'.
Country: Rwanda.
Kill tally: Over 500,000 Tutsis and thousands of moderate Hutus during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. (The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda estimates "some 800,000 Rwandans were killed." Other sources estimate that between 800,000 and one million were killed.)
Background: Pre-colonial Rwandan society is made up of three social groups - the Tutsi, the Hutu and the Twa. The Tutsi are a cattle-rearing elite. The Hutu are "commoner" farmers. The Twa are forest-dwellers.
Landlocked and inaccessible, Rwanda is one of the last areas of Africa to be exposed to Europeans. In 1899 the Tutsi king allows Germany to establish a protectorate over the country. Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 the Germans are chased out by troops from the neighbouring Belgian Congo. After the war the League of Nations, the forerunner to the United Nations (UN), confirms Belgian control.
In 1933 the group divides are entrenched when all Rwandans are registered as Hutu, Tutsi or Twa and issued with a racial identity card. About 15% of the population declare themselves as Tutsi, approximately 84% say they are Hutu, and the remaining 1% identify as Twa.
The colonial system serves to polarise Rwandan society. While the Tutsi elite comes to see itself as superior with a right to rule, the Hutu come to see themselves as an oppressed majority. More background.
Mini biography: Born on 16 August 1941 in the commune of Giciye in the northwest of Rwanda. He is a Hutu. According to Bagosora his family is "Christian and relatively well-off." His father is a teacher.
Bagosora will become an anti-Tutsi extremist, believing the Hutu are the "legitimate possessors of the region, where they lived 'harmoniously' with the Twa since the ninth century."
The Tutsi, on the other hand, "never had a country of their own to allow them to become a people" and are "masters of deceit," "dictatorial, cruel, bloody," "arrogant, clever and sneaky."
Bagosora pursues a career in the Rwandan Army. In 1964 he graduates from the Ecole des Officiers (School for Officers) in Kigali with the rank of second lieutenant. He undergoes military training in Belgium and France, receiving a certificate in advanced military studies from France's staff college.
He is made second-in-command of the Ecole Supérieure Militaire (Higher Military School) in Kigali then commander of the Kanombe Military Camp, also in Kigali. In June 1992 he is appointed directeur de cabinet (cabinet director) to the minister of defence.
Bagosora retires from the Rwandan Army on 23 September 1993 with the rank of colonel but continues to act as cabinet director to the minister of defence. He will retain this position up until the time he flees the country in July 1994.
1957 - On 24 March Grégoire Kayibanda, the editor of the Catholic newspaper 'Kinyamateka', and Catholic Bishop Perrudin publish a 'Hutu Manifesto' calling for the emancipation of the Hutu.
1959 - In November a Hutu rebellion overthrows the Tutsi monarchy. The so-called 'Hutu Revolution' stretching over the following half-dozen years will result in the deaths of about 20,000 Tutsi. Up to 300,000 more, including the king, flee to neighbouring countries. By 1991 the Tutsi will make up only about 8.4% of the population, or just over half the level declared in 1933.
1960 - Rwanda is granted limited autonomy by Belgium on 1 January.
The Parti du Mouvement de l'Émancipation des Bahutu (Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement - PARMEHUTU), headed by Grégoire Kayibanda, wins elections for an interim government and unofficially declares the country a republic. The use of group identity cards is maintained.
1961 - PARMEHUTU's successor, the Mouvement Démocratique Républicain (Democratic Republican Movement - MDR), wins an overwhelming majority in an UN-supervised election held in September. The Hutu-dominated party takes government, with Grégoire Kayibanda as president. An 80% majority also votes to end the monarchy.
The MDR will also win the elections held in 1965 and 1969.
1962 - In June a UN General Assembly resolution grants full independence to Rwanda. The first Rwandan republic officially comes into existence on 1 July.
1963 - In December several hundred Tutsi exiles from the 1959 revolution form a militia and attempt to invade Rwanda from neighbouring Burundi. The invasion force comes within 19 km of the capital Kigali before being defeated by the Rwandan Army.
During the conflict thousands of Rwandan Tutsi are killed by their Hutu countrymen.
1973 - The military, led by Defence Minister Major-general Juvénal Habyarimana, stage a bloodless coup on 5 July. Parliament is dissolved and all political activity is banned. Habyarimana, a Hutu from the northwest prefecture of Gisenyi, declares himself president of the second Rwandan republic.
As with the previous regime, the use of group identity cards is maintained.
Earlier actions to secure Hutu power are extended. Tutsi employment is restricted, especially in the public service. Hutu take complete control of the army.
For the first 10 years of Habyarimana's rule the economy does relatively well, although cronyism become rife, with Hutus from Habyarimana's home province receiving preferential treatment over those from the rest of the country.
1975 - Habyarimana declares Rwanda to be a one-party state under the Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement (National Revolutionary Movement for Development - MRND). Habyarimana is president of the state, president of the party and head of the army. He will remain president of Rwanda up until the time of his death in 1994.
1987 - Tutsi exiles based in neighbouring Uganda, along with some Hutu dissidents, form the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
The RPF seeks to overthrow Habyarimana and establish a multiparty democracy. At its core are Tutsi officers serving in the Ugandan army. The Front's armed wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), is commanded by Paul Kagame.
1988 - A sharp drop in the international price of coffee, Rwanda's main export, sees the economy falter. The situation is exacerbated by a drought that begins in 1989. At the same time dissatisfaction with Habyarimana begins to mount as evidence grows of corruption and favouritism towards Hutu from Habyarimana's home province. Critics of the regime begin to call for greater democracy.
1990 - On 1 October about 3,500 RPF operatives within the Ugandan Army desert with their equipment and move south over the border into Rwanda, heading for Kigali with the intent of unseating Habyarimana and implementing political reform. They are joined by about 3,500 Tutsi refugees.
Success for the RPF seems a real possibility until France, Belgium and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) send troops to Rwanda to support the defence. The RPF advance is halted then reversed. (France will later provide further assistance to the Rwandan Army, including military training.)
Pushed back across the Ugandan border and approximately halved in number, the RPF reorganises and begins a guerrilla war, attacking Rwanda from bases in Uganda.
The attempted invasion results in an escalation of violence against Tutsis in Rwanda. About a dozen massacres will take place prior to the 1994 genocide, with a death toll of about 2,000 Tutsis. No one will ever be brought to account for the killings.
Rattled by the RPF's attack, Habyarimana and several of his close associates begin to devise a strategy to incite hatred and fear of the Tutsis, unite the Hutu majority, and keep themselves in power.
1991 - In response to internal and international pressure and to the attack by the RPF, Habyarimana reestablishes Rwanda as a multiparty democracy.
At the same time, the MRND (now Mouvement Républicain National pour la Démocratie et le Développement) transforms its youth group, known as the 'Interahamwe' (Those Who Stand Together or Those Who Attack Together), into a militia.
Beginning in 1992 the Interahamwe receives military training from the Rwandan Army. It will commit its first atrocities at Bugesera in northwest Rwanda in March 1992, slaughtering Tutsis during one of several massacres committed in the run-up to the 1994 genocide.
1992 - In April a prime minister is appointed to a transitional government in preparation for multiparty elections in 1995. The transitional government is composed of the MRND, the MDR, the Parti Démocrate Chrétien (PDC - Centrist Democratic Party), Parti Libéral (PL - Liberal Party) and the Parti Social Démocrate (PSD). Habyarimana remains as president. The prime minister is from the MDR.
The new government soon makes changes in the army high command, rejecting Bagosora as chief-of-staff and installing him instead as directeur de cabinet (cabinet director) to the minister of defence.
In June the RPF recommences hostilities, winning a substantial foothold in the northeast of Rwanda. With the RPF again a real threat, and with internal opposition mounting, the transitional government goes to the negotiating table.
On 12 July a cease-fire agreement between the RPF and the transitional government is signed in Arusha, in the northeast of Tanzania. The agreement calls for political talks on a peace accord and power sharing. The cease-fire takes effect on 31 July. The talks begin on 10 August. The first protocol of the so-called Arusha Accords is signed seven days later.
Habyarimana, the MRND, elements within the army, and the Interahamwe largely reject the talks and accords. Habyarimana fears that granting too many concessions to the RPF could provoke a coup. His head of military intelligence, Anatole Nsengiyumva, predicts that, in the event of major concessions, the military will kill the political leaders responsible while the general Hutu population will massacre their Tutsi neighbours then flee the country.
Meanwhile, on 21 September, Army Chief-of-staff Colonel Déogratias Nsabimana issues a top-secret memorandum to his commanders identifying and defining "the enemy" as:
"The Tutsi inside or outside the country, extremist and nostalgic for power, who have NEVER recognised and will NEVER recognise the realities of the 1959 social revolution and who wish to reconquer power by all means necessary, including arms."
Bagosora instructs the general staffs of the army and police to establish lists of the enemy and their accomplices. The lists are maintained and updated by the Intelligence Bureau of the army. They will be used in the 1994 genocide to target victims.
1993 - Early in the year Bagosora sketches out elements of a program to create a regional-based "civilian self-defence force" of non-professional recruits commanded by retired soldiers or other military men. He attempts to implement the program, distributing firearms to Hutu communes in the northwest, but is countermanded by the minister for defence.
However, by November the proposal has been largely accepted by senior army officers and in early 1994 a document called 'Organisation de l'Auto-Défense Civile' (Organisation of Civilian Self-defence) is produced.
According to Human Rights Watch the document states that the civilian force will defend against not only uniformed RPF combatants but also "disguised RPF" and their "accomplices". While overall coordination will come from the ministries of interior and defence, all levels of government will be involved in implementing the plan, from "the presidency and the military general staff down to the level of the administrative sector."
Soldiers and political leaders distribute firearms to militia and other Habyarimana supporters in 1993 and early 1994, but Bagosora concludes that firearms are too costly to distribute to all participants. He advocates arming most of the young men with weapons such as machetes. Businessmen close to Habyarimana import enough machetes to arm one in every three adult male Hutu.
At the same time, recruitment to and training of the Interahamwe is expanded.
On 8 February the RPF violates the cease-fire and launches a massive attack all along the northern front. The Rwandan Army is rapidly driven back. Though the cease-fire is soon reinstated and the peace talks continued, the move leads to a rise in politically directed violence within Rwanda. Most of the abuse is directed against opponents of the MRND.
Late in July donor-nations along with the World Bank hand Habyarimana an ultimatum - sign the final Arusha Accords or international funding for his government will be halted. With an already weak economy buckling under the cost of the war and associated military spending, Habyarimana has no choice.
The accords are signed on 4 August. They provide for a transitional period leading up to elections for a democratic government. During this period power will reside with a broad-based transitional government in which the RPF will be represented. All refugees will be allowed to return, the RPF will be merged with the national army and the size of the combined force will be halved. A UN peacekeeping force (the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, or UNAMIR) will be stationed in Rwanda to oversee the transition.
The UNAMIR force will number about 2,500 troops, including 440 Belgians, 942 Bangladeshis, 843 Ghanaians, 60 Tunisians and 255 others from 20 countries. Under its rules of engagement the force, commanded by General Roméo Dallaire, is to use weapons "normally for self-defence only." The use of force for deterrence or retaliation is forbidden.
While the broad community welcomes the peace, hard-line Hutus, especially within the armed forces, see the accords as a sell-out.
Bagosora is completely opposed to the accords and scorns those Hutu who had signed it as "House Hutu and opportunists." According to charges that will be laid against him by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda following the genocide, Bagosora publicly states "that the solution to the war (is) to plunge the country into an apocalypse in order to eliminate all the Tutsi and thus ensure lasting peace."
On 3 December General Dallaire, the commander of UNAMIR, receives a letter from three senior officers in the Rwandan Army warning that "massacres ... are being prepared and are supposed to spread throughout the country, beginning with the regions that have a great concentration of Tutsi."
According to the officers, politicians opposed to the MRND would be assassinated in a plan initiated by Habyarimana and supported by a handful of military officers from his home province.
Later in December Belgian intelligence agents report that, "The Interahamwe are armed to the teeth and on alert. Many of them have been trained at the military camp in Bugesera. Each of them has ammunition, grenades, mines and knives. They have been trained to use guns that are stockpiled with their respective chiefs. They are all just waiting for the right moment to act."
1994 - On 11 January General Dallaire sends a telegram to his superiors describing a build-up of the Interahamwe and warning that all Tutsi in Kigali are being targeted for extermination. The telegram says that an Interahamwe informant has revealed a plan to kill a number of Belgian soldiers in the UNAMIR contingent "and thus guarantee Belgian withdrawal from Rwanda." It says that the informant has also disclosed the location of a "major weapons cache." However, the UN vetoes a proposal to seize the weapons.
UN heavyweights like the United States, the United Kingdom and France also refuse to consider requests to broaden UNAMIR's mandate.
On 6 April unknown assailants shoot down an aeroplane carrying President Habyarimana and the president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, as it prepares to land at Kigali. Both men are killed. The chief-of-staff of the Rwandan Army also dies in the crash.
Coincidentally, the minister of defence, the chief of Army Intelligence Services, and the officer in charge of operations in the Army General Staff are all out of the country.
In the ensuing power-vacuum Bagosora takes charge, closing out the Prime Minister and leader of the MDR, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and initiating steps that will eliminate all legitimate claimants to government and all opposition within the armed forces. He fails, however, to have himself officially installed as the country's leader.
Undeterred, Bagosora begins issuing orders for the extermination of Rwanda's Tutsi population. The Presidential Guard and other elite troops loyal to Bagosora, backed by about 2,000 militia, target prominent Tutsi leaders and officials named on pre-prepared lists.
Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian peacekeepers sent to protect her are among the first victims. The Belgians are killed about 100 metres from where Bagosora is attending a meeting. He does nothing to intervene.
On 8 April Bagosora and his cohorts select an interim government composed solely of supporters of the so-called 'Hutu Power' movement. Jean Kambanda is appointed as government leader.
The Rwandan Army, the UN and the international community accept the move. The interim government is installed the following day.
The Hutu Power leaders now have the political means to coordinate and carry out genocide.
The Presidential Guard, the elite Reconnaissance and Paracommando battalions, the National Police and militia groups begin rounding up and killing Tutsis in Kigali. Hutus who had opposed the Habyarimana Government or were critical of Hutu Power movement are also pursued.
According to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, "From April to July 1994, by virtue of his position, his statements, the orders he gave and his acts, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora exercised authority over members of the Forces Armées Rwandaises (Rwandan Army and National Police), their officers and militiamen. The military and militiamen, as from 6 April 1994, committed massacres of the Tutsi population and of moderate Hutu which extended throughout Rwandan territory with the knowledge of Colonel Théoneste Bagosora."
The UNAMIR peacekeepers try to maintain some order but are muzzled by UN headquarters in New York, where the US, the UK and France continue to block any attempt to broaden the mission's mandate. The peacekeepers are allowed to help evacuate foreigners but prevented from stopping the genocide or assisting Tutsis to escape. The are forced to stand by and watch.
The violence spreads beyond Kigali.
Broadcasts by Radio RTLM (Radio Télévision des Mille Collines) and Radio Rwanda encourage ordinary citizens to join in on the slaughter, issuing directives, naming victims, providing instructions for the erection barriers and conduct of searches, and inciting the continuation of the genocide. Tutsi are characterised as 'Inyenzi' (cockroaches) who should be exterminated and their dead bodies thrown into the Nyabarongo River. Both stations have close ties with the MRND.
The country's borders are closed to prevent Tutsi from escaping. Identity cards are checked at roadblocks. Those identified as Tutsi face almost certain death. Women and girls are routinely raped before being killed. Others are held as sex slaves.
Politicians and government officials campaign in support of the genocide. District administrators help with the coordination. Soldiers and police direct the major massacres. The Interahamwe and other militia do much of the actual killing, though tens of thousands of ordinary citizens also take part, either willingly or under duress. Membership of the militia swells from about 2,000 to between 20,000 and 30,000.
On 26 April the program for a "civilian defence force" as set out in the 'Organisation of Civilian Self-defence' document is formally announced on Radio Rwanda. The program is run from Bagosora's office and administered by military officers loyal to him.
According to a Human Rights Watch briefing paper, "In the weeks before its formal establishment, as in the weeks after, the civilian self-defence system was used to mobilise ordinary civilians to hunt Tutsi civilians who had been identified with the military enemy. Using the civilian self-defence effort against non-combatants, military, administrative and political authorities transformed the system from a potentially legitimate form of self-defence into a violation of international law; by defining the group to be targeted as Tutsi and seeking their elimination, the authorities transformed the self-defence system into a weapon for genocide."
The killing goes on until the beginning of July. It will leave over 500,000 Tutsis dead. (The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda estimates "some 800,000 Rwandans were killed." Other sources estimate that between 800,000 and one million perish.) Thousands of Hutus opposed to the genocide are also killed. Men, women and children; the old and the young; the healthy and the sick; the rich and the poor; the elite and the humble; no one is spared. In just 100 days three quarters of the Tutsi population are exterminated. It is the most ferocious massacre in modern history. Most of the killing is done with machetes.
Up to two million Hutu and Tutsi Rwandans will flee the country and up to one million will be internally displaced. By early August an estimated one-quarter of the pre-war population of Rwanda has either died or fled the country.
Meanwhile, the international community sits by and watches but does not take action.
A telegram sent by General Dallaire on 8 April informs the UN that Tutsi are being slain solely because of their race.
"The appearance of a very well planned, organised, deliberate and conducted campaign of terror initiated principally by the Presidential Guard since the morning after the death of the head of state has completely reoriented the situation in Kigali," the telegram states.
"Aggressive actions have been taken not only against the opposition leadership but against the RPF ..., against particular ethnic groups (massacre of Tutsi in Remera), against the general civilian population ... and against UNAMIR ... which has resulted in fatal and non-fatal casualties. The particularly barbarous murder of the 10 captured Belgian soldiers emphasises this situation."
However, the UN fails to name the massacre as genocide. Dallaire instead is directed to protect his soldiers, monitor and report on events, assist with humanitarian aid and, after renewed hostilities break out between the Rwandan Government and the RPF, to try to effect a cease-fire.
On 13 April Belgium withdraws its troops from UNAMIR. The Bangladeshi troops depart soon after. One thousand French, Belgian, and Italian troops rushed in to evacuate foreigners also depart. Three hundred US Marines dispatched to the area are halted in Burundi.
The administration of US President Bill Clinton advocates the total withdrawal of the UNAMIR force.
In an article in the September 2001 edition of 'The Atlantic Monthly', Samantha Power writes, "During the entire three months of the genocide Clinton never assembled his top policy advisers to discuss the killings. ... Rwanda was never thought to warrant its own top-level meeting. When the subject came up, it did so along with, and subordinate to, discussions of Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Whereas these crises involved US personnel and stirred some public interest, Rwanda generated no sense of urgency and could safely be avoided by Clinton at no political cost."
On 21 April the Security Council votes to cut the size of UNAMIR to 270 men. All but 503 of the troops are withdrawn on 25 April. They will not return until after the genocide.
On 30 April the Security Council warns Rwandan leaders that they could bear personal responsibility for violations of international law but fails to characterise the killing as "genocide" as this would legally oblige it to act to "prevent and punish" the perpetrators.
On 17 May the UN resolves to send a second UNAMIR force of 6,800 mainly African troops and policemen to Rwanda with powers to defend civilians. However, deployment is delayed until after the genocide has ended, principally because of bickering between the US and the UN over who will foot the bill and provide the equipment.
On 8 June the Security Council formally acknowledges that "acts of genocide" had taken place in Rwanda. Use of the phrase is one step short of naming the killing as "a genocide" and so does not oblige the UN to intervene.
In late June the French government sends 2,500 troops to establish a safe area in the southwestern part of the country. A French contingent is also stationed in the northwest for several weeks.
The RPF ends the cease-fire and resumes its military campaign on 7 April, the day after Habyarimana dies in the plane-crash. The war rages at the same time as the genocide, with the RPF also committing atrocities, but no where near the scale of those incited by Bagosora and his cohorts. A mission sent by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) later estimates that from April to August the RPF killed between 25,000 and 45,000 persons.
The Rwandan Army is quickly defeated by the RPF. Kigali falls on 4 July. The war ends on 16 July.
The Rwandan Army flees northwest across the border to Zaire, followed by the interim government, members of the Hutu militias and some two million Hutu refugees.
Bagosora flies out of the country on 2 July, reportedly under the protection of French soldiers. He eventually he settles in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Though the war is over the killing is not yet done. Retaliatory violence by Tutsi claims several thousand lives, including that of the Roman Catholic archbishop of Kigali.
Refugees in camps set up in Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi perish from disease, starvation and exposure. More than 20,000 die in a cholera epidemic.
While many Tutsi refugees will return to Rwanda, including refugees who had fled in the 1960s, the repatriation of Hutu refugees is slower. Some fear reprisals but many are also intimidated into remaining in the camps by the militia who fled there with them.
The refugee militias, coordinated and armed by Bagosora, among others, continue their violence, launching cross-border raids.
In Rwanda, the RPF bans political parties that participated in the genocide, including the MRND, and appoints a multiparty Transitional National Assembly headed by Pasteur Bizimungu, a moderate Hutu, to oversee a transition to civilian rule. A multiracial cabinet of 16 Hutus and six Tutsis is formed. Ethnic identity cards are abolished and the Arusha Accords are adopted by the transitional government as its constitutional base.
Meanwhile, the UN votes to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try the organisers of the genocide. The tribunal will have its headquarters at The Hague in the Netherlands, running in concert with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The trial chambers will be located in Arusha, Tanzania.
The tribunal will indict 81 people for genocide-related crimes. The maximum sentence it can hand down is life imprisonment.
1996 - Following the outbreak of civil war in eastern Zaire in October 1996 and the routing of Hutu militias from refugee camps by Rwandan troops, about 800,000 Rwandan refugees move back to their homeland. However, several hundred thousand are pushed deeper into Zaire.
By the end of Zaire's civil war in May, tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees have been killed in the fighting or have died of disease or starvation.
In December another 500,000 refugees in Tanzania return to Rwanda.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Tribunal opens in Arusha. Trials began in early 1997, but progress is slow and the UN is criticised for mismanagement and poor organisation.
Jean Kambanda, prime minister of the interim, Hutu Power government, pleads guilty to genocide in May 1998 and is sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 September 1998. It is the first time a head of government has been found guilty of genocide.
The RPF government begins its own trials of mid-level genocide organisers in December 1996. By mid-1998 some 135,000 persons are incarcerated in prisons and communal lockups, most of them charged with genocide or related crimes. The Rwanda-based trials can hand down a maximum sentence of death.
Bagosora is arrested in Cameroon on 9 March after Belgium requests his detention and extradition on charges that he was responsible for the deaths of the 10 Belgian peacekeepers killed at the start of the genocide.
He will be transferred to the UN prison quarters in Arusha on 23 January 1997 for trial before the International Criminal Tribunal.
1998 - On 25 March US President Bill Clinton apologises for not having acted to stop the genocide.
"The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy," President Clinton says. "We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe havens for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past. But we can and must do everything in our power to help you build a future without fear, and full of hope."
Documents obtained by the National Security Archive under freedom of information legislation later reveal that US intelligence services had informed the Clinton administration of the scale and speed of the genocide within three weeks of its commencement. The documents show that administration refused to publicly name the slaughter as genocide because to do so would have required it to intervene.
UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan apologises to the Parliament of Rwanda on 7 May.
"The world must deeply repent this failure," he says. "Rwanda's tragedy was the world's tragedy. All of us who cared about Rwanda, all of us who witnessed its suffering, fervently wish that we could have prevented the genocide. Looking back now, we see the signs which then were not recognised. Now we know that what we did was not nearly enough - not enough to save Rwanda from itself, not enough to honour the ideals for which the United Nations exists. We will not deny that, in their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda."
1999 - In August Bagosora is charged on 12 counts by the International Criminal Tribunal, including "conspiracy to commit genocide, genocide, complicity in genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, (and) crimes against humanity."
The indictment against him states, "His rank, his office and the personal relations he had with the commanders of the units that were the most implicated in the events referred to in this indictment, and the fact that they were from the same region and shared the same political beliefs, gave him authority over those persons and over members of the militias, given the regionalist context in which power was exercised in Rwanda. ...
"Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, in his position of authority, ... participated in the planning, preparation or execution of a common scheme, strategy or plan, to commit the atrocities set forth above. The crimes were committed by him personally, by persons he assisted or by his subordinates, and with his knowledge or consent."
Bagosora pleads not guilty.
2000 - In March Pasteur Bizimungu resigns as Rwandan president in protest against "Tutsi domination" in government. He is succeeded in April by Paul Kagame, the vice president and defence minister. Kagame, a Tutsi and the former head of the RPA, has long been considered Rwanda's real political leader. He becomes the first Tutsi president since the nation's independence.
2002 - Bagosora's trial commences on 2 April in Arusha before the First Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal.
He is tried along with three others - Brigadier-general Gratien Kabiligi (commander of Military Operations), Major Aloys Ntabakuze (commander of the Paracommando Battalion) and Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva (commander of Military Operations for the Gisenyi sector).
In what becomes a hugely drawn-out trial, the case for the prosecution continues until 14 October 2004, after hearing testimony from 82 witnesses.
The case for the defence does not begin until January 2005. Bagosora denies all charges.
"I do not believe in the genocide theory," he tells the tribunal in November 2005. "Most reasonable people concur that there were excessive massacres. ... They have labelled and continue to label me as the mastermind of the massacres. ... The accusations that I led the killings are malicious."
Meanwhile, the Rwandan Government turns to traditional local courts, the so-called Gacaca Courts, to address the enormous backlog of lower-level human rights cases arising from the genocide.
2003 - A new Rwandan constitution is introduced following a referendum in May. The constitution establishes the rights of citizens, prohibits political parties based on ethnic or racial groups and resolves to fight ethnic hatred.
Paul Kagame wins a multiparty presidential election held in August, receiving 95% of the vote. The RPF wins a landslide victory in legislative elections held over the following months.
2007 - Bagosora continues to deny any responsibility for the genocide right up to the end of his trial on 1 June.
"I request people of goodwill to free their minds of intoxication and poison," he says in his final statement. "I solemnly declare that I did not kill anyone or issue orders for anyone to be killed."
The trial verdict awaits.
Comment: Anyone old enough to remember will never forget the images from the media coverage of the Rwandan genocide: footage of the dead and bloated bodies of murdered Tutsi sweeping down rivers; scenes of panic as refugees desperately tried to flee the terror; landscapes of degradation and squalor in refugee camps.
Viewing these images brought a feeling of disbelief and helplessness. What could be done to halt the carnage? Surely the UN and world community were working overtime to bring the killing to a halt? When would the genocide stop and those horrifying pictures leave our TV screens?
Little did we know how little was being done by world leaders. And little did we know how little it might have taken to reign in the genocidal mobs.
The Human Rights Watch report Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda makes a convincing case that even a relatively minor intervention by the world community could have been enough to prevent the killing descending into genocide. The architects of the genocide were not deaf to world opinion, the report argues. However, instead of hearing unambiguous condemnation of their actions they received signals that could be interpreted as a "green light".
By the time the UN, the US, the UK and France, among others, were forced from their wilful detachment by media and community outrage it was too late.
Genocide in Rwanda, 1994
Summary
The genocide in the tiny Central African country of Rwanda was one of the most intensive killing campaigns -- possibly the most intensive -- in human history. Few people realize, however, that the genocide included a marked gendercidal component; it was predominantly or overwhelmingly Tutsi and moderate Hutu males who were targeted by the perpetrators of the mass slaughter. The gendercidal pattern was also evident in the reprisal killings carried out by the Tutsi-led RPF guerrillas during and after the holocaust.
The roots of Rwanda's genocide lie in its colonial experience. First occupied and colonized by the Germans (1894-1916), during World War I the country was taken over by the Belgians, who ruled until independence in 1962. Utilizing the classic strategy of "divide and rule," the Belgians granted preferential status to the Tutsi minority (constituting somewhere between 8 and 14 percent of the population at the time of the 1994 genocide). In pre-colonial Rwanda, the Tutsis had dominated the small Rwandan aristocracy, but ethnic divisions between them and the majority Hutus (at least 85 percent of the population in 1999) were always fluid, and the two populations cannot be considered distinct "tribes." Nor was inter-communal conflict rife. As Stephen D. Wrage states, "It is often remarked that the violence between Hutus and Tutsis goes back to time immemorial and can never be averted, but Belgian records show that in fact there was a strong sense among Rwandans ... of belonging to a Rwandan nation, and that before around 1960, violence [along] ethnic lines was uncommon and mass murder of the sort seen in 1994 was unheard of." (Wrage, "Genocide in Rwanda: Draft Case Study for Teaching Ethics and International Affairs," unpublished paper, 2000.)
Whatever communal cleavages existed were sharply heightened by Belgian colonial policy. As Gérard Prunier notes, "Using physical characteristics as a guide -- the Tutsi were generally tall, thin, and more 'European' in their appearance than the shorter, stockier Hutu -- the colonizers decided that the Tutsi and the Hutu were two different races. According to the racial theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tutsi, with their more 'European' appearance, were deemed the 'master race' ... By 1930 Belgium's Rwandan auxiliaries were almost entirely Tutsi, a status that earned them the durable hatred of the Hutu." (Prunier, "Rwanda's Struggle to Recover from Genocide," Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99.) It was also the Belgians who (in 1933) instituted the identity-card system that designated every Rwandan as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa (the last of these is an aboriginal group that in 1990 comprised about 1 percent of the Rwandan population). The identity cards were retained into the post-independence era, and provided crucial assistance to the architects of genocide as they sought to isolate their Tutsi victims.
As Africa moved towards decolonization after World War II, it was the better-educated and more prosperous Tutsis who led the struggle for independence. Accordingly, the Belgians switched their allegiance to the Hutus. Vengeful Hutu elements murdered about 15,000 Tutsis between 1959 and 1962, and more than 100,000 Tutsis fled to neighbouring countries, notably Uganda and Burundi. Tutsis remaining in Rwanda were stripped of much of their wealth and status under the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana, installed in 1973. An estimated one million Tutsis fled the country (it is in part this massive outflow that makes the proportion of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 so difficult to determine). After 1986, Tutsis in Uganda formed a guerrilla organization, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which aimed to invade Rwanda and overthrow the Habyarimana regime.
In 1990, the RPF launched its invasion, occupying zones in the northeast of Rwanda. In August 1993, at the Tanzanian town of Arusha, Habyarimana finally accepted an internationally-mediated peace treaty which granted the RPF a share of political power and a military presence in the capital, Kigali. Some 5,000 U.N. peacekeepers (UNAMIR, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda) were dispatched to bolster the accord. "But Hutu extremists in [Habyarimana's] government did not accept the peace agreement," writes Prunier. "Some of these extremists, who were high-level government officials and military personnel, had begun devising their own solution to the 'Tutsi problem' as early as 1992. Habyarimana's controversial decision to make peace with the RPF won others over to their side, including opposition leaders. Many of those involved in planning the 1994 genocide saw themselves as patriots, defending their country against outside aggression. Moderate Hutus who supported peace with the RPF also became their targets." (Prunier, "Rwanda's Struggle ...") This was the so-called "Hutu Power" movement that organized and supervised the holocaust of April-July 1994.
Genocide and gendercide
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes liked to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.- W.H. Auden, The Shield of Achilles
On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana's plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile as it approached Kigali airport. Responsibility for the assassination has never been confirmed, but the speed with which the genocide was subsequently launched strongly suggests that the Hutu extremists had decided to rid themselves of their accommodationist president, and implement a "final solution" to the Tutsi "problem" in Rwanda.
Interahamwe militiamen at a roadblock in Kigali, April 1994.
With breathtaking rapidity, the genocide expanded from Kigali to the countryside. Government radio encouraged Tutsis to congregate at churches, schools, and stadiums, pledging that these would serve as places of refuge. Thus concentrated, the helpless civilians could be more easily targeted -- although many miraculously managed to resist with only sticks and stones for days or even weeks, until the forces of the Rwandan army and presidential guard were brought in to exterminate them with machine-guns and grenades. By April 21 -- that is, in just two weeks -- perhaps a quarter of a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered. Together with the mass murder of Soviet prisoners-of-war during World War II, it was the most concentrated act of genocide in human history: "the dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust." (Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998], p. 3.) (Gérard Prunier provides an even higher estimate: "the daily killing rate was at least five times that of the Nazi death camps." Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide [Columbia University Press, 1995], p. 261.) By the end of April, according to Human Rights Watch, "the worst massacres had finished ... perhaps half of the Tutsi population of Rwanda" had been murdered.
Rwandan men killed at one of the thousands of massacre sites.
During the war of 1994, and particularly as a result of the genocidal massacres which precipitated it, it was principally the men of the targeted populations who lost their lives or fled to other countries in fear. ... This targeting of men for slaughter was not confined to adults: boys were similarly decimated, raising the possibility that the demographic imbalance will continue for generations. Large numbers of women also lost their lives; however, mutilation and rape were the principal strategies used against women, and these did not necessarily result in death. (Judy El-Bushra, "Transformed Conflict: Some Thoughts on a Gendered Understanding of Conflict Processes," in Susie Jacobs et al., eds., States of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance [Zed Books, 2000], p. 73.)
The trend had been evident throughout the 1990-94 period, when numerous smaller-scale massacres of Tutsis took place, and when, according to Human Rights Watch and other observers, Tutsi males were targeted almost exclusively, as presumed or "potential" members of the RPF guerrilla force.
This Tutsi man survived an attack
by machete-wielding assailants.
It must be stressed that if such a new stage of killing can indeed be isolated, this does not mean that women and girls were immune to mass murder until that point. Although the number of women actually killed was substantially lower than the number of murdered men, many women (along with girl children) were massacred from the outset. They were also exposed to a wide range of horrific (if generally non-fatal) abuses. Notes Human Rights Watch:
testimonies from survivors confirm that rape was extremely widespread and that thousands of women were individually raped, gang-raped, raped with objects such as sharpened sticks or gun barrels, held in sexual slavery (either collectively or through forced "marriage") or sexually mutilated. These crimes were frequently part of a pattern in which Tutsi women were raped after they had witnessed the torture and killings of their relatives and the destruction and looting of their homes. According to witnesses, many women were killed immediately after being raped. Other women managed to survive, only to be told that they were being allowed to live so that they would "die of sadness." Often women were subjected to sexual slavery and held collectively by a militia group or were singled out by one militia man, at checkpoints or other sites where people were being maimed or slaughtered, and held for personal sexual service. The militiamen would force women to submit sexually with threats that they would be killed if they refused. These forced "marriages," as this form of sexual slavery is often called in Rwanda, lasted for anywhere from a few days to the duration of the genocide, and in some cases longer. Rapes were sometimes followed by sexual mutilation, including mutilation of the vagina and pelvic area with machetes, knives, sticks, boiling water, and in one case, acid. (Human Rights Watch, Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence During the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath [Human Rights Watch, 1996].)
Rwanda may in fact stand as the paradigmatic example of "genocidal rape," owing to the fact that many of the Tutsi women who were gang-raped have subsequently tested positive for the HIV virus. According to the UK Guardian, "rape was a weapon of genocide as brutal as the machete." "I was raped by so many interahamwe and soldiers that I lost count," said one survivor, Olive Uwera. "I was in hospital for a year afterwards. A few months after my child was born the doctors told me I was HIV-positive." Tests conducted on the 25,000 Tutsi women members of the Widows of Genocide organisation (Avega) showed that "two-thirds were found to be HIV-positive. ... Soon there will be tens of thousands of children who have lost their fathers to the machete and their mothers to Aids." (See Chris McGreal, "A Pearl in Rwanda's Genocide Horror", The Guardian [UK], December 5, 2001.
Reprisal killings of Hutus
As soon as the genocide broke out, the Tutsi-led RPF launched a concerted drive on Kigali, crushing Rwandan government resistance and bringing a halt to the genocide in successive areas of the country. RPF forces based in Kigali also took up arms, and succeeded in protecting a large number of residents from the holocaust. On July 4, 1994, Kigali fell to the RPF, and the genocide and "war" finally came to an end on July 18. There followed a massive flight of Hutus to neighboring countries, notably to refugee camps in Zaire, as well as largescale reprisals against Hutus who were alleged to have participated in the holocaust. Most of these reprisal killings also had strong gendercidal overtones. For example, in the town of Mututu, according to Human Rights Watch (Leave None to Tell the Story):
RPF soldiers asked children to go bring back the adults in their families who were hiding in the fields and bush. On June 10, after several hundred adults had returned, the soldiers directed them to assemble at the commercial center to be transported to a safer location to the east. The RPF reportedly killed a number of young men at the market place late in the afternoon and tied up some of the others. The crowd was directed to set out for the commune, about one hour away by foot. The soldiers reportedly killed some men on the way and threw their bodies in latrines or in a compost heap at a reservoir. In another report from the same area, witnesses said that RPF soldiers and armed civilians gathered men and adolescent boys at the home of a man named Rutekereza and then killed them.
In another case, a witness reported that "I saw the the RPF soldiers bringing bodies in trucks at night and throwing them in toilets at Mwogo, near where they had dug their trenches. They brought men already wounded with their arms tied behind their backs. They brought no women." Various other incidents cited by the Human Rights Watch investigators attest to the broad gendercidal pattern. In other instances, however, "The [RPF] soldiers killed without regard to age, sex, or ethnic group." (Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story.) The organization cites sources to the effect that between 25,000 and 45,000 Hutus were killed in all, though other estimates are higher.
How many died?
According to Gérard Prunier, "Because of the chaotic nature of the genocide, the total number of people killed has never been systematically assessed, but most experts believe the total was around 800,000 people. This includes about 750,000 Tutsis and approximately 50,000 politically moderate Hutus who did not support the genocide. ... Only about 130,000 Tutsis survived the massacres." Some, though, have taken issue with Prunier's (and others') estimates, alleging that the number of Tutsis in Rwanda was lower at the outbreak of the genocide than is generally believed. By these measures, "an estimated 500,000 Rwandan Tutsi were killed, or more than three-quarters of their population. ... The number of Hutu killed during the genocide and civil war is even less certain, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to well over 100,000." (Alan J. Kuperman, "Genocide in Rwanda and the Limits of Humanitarian Military Intervention," unpublished paper, 2000; see also Kuperman, "Rwanda in Retrospect," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2000.)
In February 2002, the Rwandan government released the results of the first major census that sought to establish the number of people killed in the genocide and during its prelude period (1990-94). It found that 1,074,017 people -- approximately one-seventh of the total population -- were murdered, with Tutsis accounting for 94 percent of the victims. ("More Than One Million Rwandans Killed in 1990's," Associated Press dispatch, February 14, 2002.)
The proportion of males among those killed can only be guessed at, but was probably in the vicinity of 75 or 80 percent.
Who was responsible?
The genocidal and gendercidal strategy was conceived and implemented by a small coterie of Rwandan government officials, led by the Hutu extremist Theoneste Bagosora, "a retired army Colonel who held the post of acting defense minister on the day Habyarimana was killed. In the hours and days after the assassination, Bagosora apparently orchestrated both the genocide and formation of an interim government to support it." Another key organizer of the holocaust was Mme. Agathe Habyarimana, wife of the murdered president and one of the very few women who have played a central role in the planning and perpetration of genocide. These leaders were able to exploit the highly-centralized nature of the Rwandan state (probably unparalleled anywhere in the world outside the state-socialist bloc): "The genocide happened not because the state was weak, but on the contrary because it was so totalitarian and strong that it had the capacity to make its subjects obey absolutely any order, including one of mass slaughter." (Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, pp. 353-54.)
The generally "low-tech" means by which the killing was carried out -- the murderers standardly used machetes or hoes -- required the involvement of a large proportion of the Hutu population. "Videotapes of the killings show that three or more killers often hacked on a single victim. Since the organizers wished to implicate as many people in the killing as possible, there may have been many more killers than victims." (Wrage, "Genocide in Rwanda.")
As is always true in cases of genocide and mass killing, the overwhelming majority of direct killers were male. According to Human Rights Watch,
[Rwandan] authorities offered tangible incentives to participants. They delivered food, drink, and other intoxicants, parts of military uniforms and small payments in cash to hungry, jobless young men. ... Many poor young men responded readily to the promise of rewards. Of the nearly 60 percent of Rwandans under the age of twenty, tens of thousands had little hope of obtaining the land needed to establish their own households or the jobs necessary to provide for a family. Such young men, including many displaced by the war and living in camps near the capital provided many of the early recruits to the Interahamwe, trained in the months before and in the days immediately after the genocide began. (Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story.)
Gérard Prunier similarly emphasizes both the class and gender dimension of the recruitment for genocide:
The social aspect of the killings has often been overlooked. In Kigali the Interahamwe ... had tended to recruit mostly among the poor. As soon as they went into action, they drew around them a cloud of even poorer people, a lumpenproletariat of street boys, rag-pickers, car-washers and homeless unemployed. For these people [men] the genocide was the best thing that could ever happen to them. They had the blessings of a form of authority to take revenge on socially powerful people as long as they were on the wrong side of the political fence. They could steal, they could kill with minimum justification, they could rape and they could get drunk for free. This was wonderful. The political aims pursued by the masters of this dark carnival were quite beyond their scope. They just went along, knowing it would not last. (Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, pp. 231-32.)
But it was not only such men who perpetrated the atrocities. One of the most unusual aspects of the Rwanda genocide is the prominent role of women in the slaughter. The major study of this phenomenon was carried out by African Rights in 1995. Summarizing its findings, the organization reported:
A substantial number of women, and even girls, were involved in the slaughter in countless ways, inflicting extraordinary cruelty on other women, as well as children and men. Women of every social category took part in the killings. ... The extent to which women were involved in the killings is unprecedented anywhere in the world. This is not accidental. The architects of the holocaust sought to implicate as much of the population as possible, including women and even children. ... Some women killed with their own hands. ... Women and girls in their teens joined the crowds that surrounded churches, hospitals and other places of refuge. Wielding machetes and nail-studded clubs, they excelled as "cheerleaders" of the genocide, ululating the killers into action. They entered churches, schools, football stadiums and hospitals to finish off the wounded, hacking women, children and even men to death. Some women have been accused of killing or betraying their own husbands and children. Above all, women and girls stripped the dead -- and the barely living -- stealing their jewellery, money and clothes. Other women told the killers where people were hiding, often screaming out their names as the terrified quarry ran for their lives. Some women, including a nun currently hiding in Belgium, provided the petrol with which people were burnt alive. ... There is no evidence that women were more willing to give refuge to the hunted than men. Some mothers and grandmothers even refused to hide their own Tutsi children and grandchildren. Some women forced out people taken in by their husbands. Many nurses at the CHK Hospital in Kigali and at Butare's University Hospital gave the militia and soldiers lists of patients, colleagues and refugees to be killed. (Excerpts from summary of African Rights report, Rwanda - Not So Innocent: When Women Become Killers, August 1995.)
The culpability of these women has been obscured by some feminists' attempts to depict women as the main victims of the mass slaughter. As Ronit Lentin notes, "Describing women and girls as the principal victims of the genocide ... obscured their roles as aggressors ... The involvement of women in the genocide and murder of Hutu political opponents failed to attract national and international attention, precisely because of the construction of women as the universal victims of that particular catastrophe." (Lentin, "Introduction," pp. 12-13.)
Controversy has raged since 1994 over the role of foreign governments and the United Nations in allowing the genocide to proceed. According to Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch,
During the early weeks of slaughter international leaders did not use the word "genocide," as if avoiding the term could eliminate the obligation to confront the crime. The major international actors -- policymakers in Belgium, the U.S., France, and the U.N. -- all understood the gravity of the crisis within the first twenty-four hours even if they could not have predicted the massive toll that the slaughter would eventually take. They could have used national troops or UNAMIR or a combined force of both to confront the killers and immediately save lives. By disrupting the killing campaign at its central and most essential point, the foreign soldiers could have disabled it throughout the country. ... Major international leaders were ready to collaborate on the common goal of evacuating their own citizens and expatriate employees, but they refused any joint intervention to save Rwandan lives. Instead they focused on issues of immediate importance for their own countries: Belgium on extricating its peacekeepers with a minimum of dishonor; the U.S. on avoiding committing resources to a crisis remote from U.S. concerns; and France on protecting its client and its zone of Francophone influence. Meanwhile most staff at the U.N. were fixed on averting another failure in peacekeeping operations, even at the cost of Rwandan lives. (See Human Rights Watch, "Ignoring Genocide", in Leave None to Tell the Story.)
On April 7, 2000, the sixth anniversary of the outbreak of the genocide, Belgium's prime minister apologized for the international community's failure to intervene. Guy Verhofstadt told a crowd of thousands at the site of Rwanda's planned memorial to the genocide that "A dramatic combination of negligence, incompetence and hesitation created the conditions for the tragedy." (Hrvoje Hranjski, "Belgium Apologizes for World's Inaction During Rwanda Chaos," Associated Press dispatch, April 8, 2000.)
As concerns the reprisal killings of Hutus by RPF forces, no central direction has been established analogous to the clear top-down direction of the genocide against Tutsis. Nonetheless, the apologetics and obfuscation proffered by top RPF leaders, including (now-president) Paul Kagame, strongly indicate a willingness to "turn a blind eye" to atrocities committed by RPF officers (both senior and junior) and common soldiers.
In the wake of the holocaust, the U.N. established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania. In September 1998, the Tribunal issued its first conviction on charges of genocide, against the former mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba, Jean-Paul Akayesu. As Rudy Brueggemann points out, this marked "the first time ever [that] a suspect was convicted by an international tribunal for the crime of genocide." A day later, the ICTR sentenced the former Hutu prime minister, Jean Kambanda, to life in prison; he had pled guilty to "genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and two charges of crimes against humanity." A total of thirty-two other Rwandan Hutu officials are currently awaiting trial. However, according to the Public Education Center of The New York Times, "after five years, the Tribunal's accomplishments are still often overshadowed by its failures. Its operations are slow, unwieldy, and at the worst of times unprofessional, and its own limited mandate conspires with international indifference to undermine its core message."
In Rwanda itself, some 120,000 people were jailed on allegations of participation in the genocide, and thousands died in the brutal and unsanitary conditions of the jails. As of April 2000, some 2,500 people had been tried, with about 300 of them receiving death sentences.
The scars of the genocide and subsequent reprisals will remain with Rwandans for generations, and may yet provoke another round of mass killing. Prunier writes: "Rwanda's economy remains badly damaged, with little hope of a quick recovery. There are several reasons for this, including the lack of roads, bridges, and telephone lines. Education is also suffering due to a shortage of schools, educational materials, and teachers, many of whom died in the genocide. ... Many Tutsis are increasingly convinced that the only way to ensure their survival is to repress the Hutus. Many Hutus believe they have been proclaimed guilty by association and that no one cares about their sufferings under the current Tutsi-led government. Extremists on both sides retain the belief that the only solution is the annihilation of the other. These groups are preparing for a future struggle, one that could include another wave of mass slaughter." (Prunier, "Rwanda's Struggle ...")
As noted by Judy El-Bushra, the gendercidal strategies pursued throughout the conflict have produced "a demographic imbalance [that may] continue for generations." (El-Bushra, "Transforming Conflict," p. 73.) According to David Gough, in certain parts of "Gitarama district in central Rwanda, scene of some of the worst excesses in 1994 ... adult males make up a mere 20% of the population." (Gough, "Husband-hiring hastens the spread of Aids in Rwanda", The Guardian [UK], February 8, 2000.)
The burden placed upon women survivors of the carnage has attracted considerable attention since 1994. Writes El-Bushra ("Transforming Conflict," p. 73): "In the areas most affected by the massacres -- for example in Bugasera in eastern Rwanda -- the proportion of women who have been widowed, raped or physically handicapped is very high. It is to a large extent these women on whom the responsibility for producing food is now falling. Their psychological as well as their physical status is therefore a major issue for the community's survival in the current stage."
El-Bushra also notes that "a major issue of concern to women in Rwanda is the impact of the demographic imbalance on marriages. Polygamy, which is not legally permitted in Rwanda, is often suggested as a means of solving the problems of the large number of widows and younger women whose prospects of marriage have become drastically reduced. Rivalry between women over potential husbands has become common, and an issue which sparks off heated debate." (El-Bushra, "Transforming Conflict," p. 74.) David Gough's profile of the Gitarama district (see above) states that "with so many men killed during the genocide, or later imprisoned for their part in it ... the practice of sharing men, known as kwinjira, has become so widespread ... that health officials say that it represents the greatest challenge to their efforts to combat the spread of Aids." Gough adds,
The spread of Aids and of kwinjira are also fuelled by poverty. With an annual income of 180 dollars (£110) per person, Rwanda is ranked by the World Bank as the world's third poorest country. Seventy per cent of all households fall below the poverty line. "If a woman has land and maybe some money then she can attract the services of young men," said Jerome Ndabagariya of CARE. "He does some work for her in the field and then some more work in the bedroom." A more affluent woman will give a man some food, maybe some beer or, in rare cases, money. In return he may well give her the Aids virus.
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