The rational behind the Rwanda genocide

Résumé du document

Over 1 million Tutsis were brutally murdered by their fellow compatriots over a period of three months, as a reaction to the demise of President Habyarimana in early April 1994 in a plane crash. Several warnings had been issued by NGOs and the RPF but because they were not taken seriously and only ten percent of the U.N. troops remained in the land to enforce peace. The Hutus were safely able to carry out their plan because it appeared that the world would not take exception to their actions and that they would not be sanctioned. As one killer remarked "this job was meeting no opposition, because it really had to be done." (Hatzfeld 2005, p. 231). Encouraged by their government and supported by the national army and militia groups (e.g. the Interahamwe) the Hutus were attempting to exterminate all Tutsis from the country. The genocide started off by killing Hutu opposition. Tutsi politicians or even well-off Tutsis, were on top of the killing list, revealing that it was a carefully worked out plan. Very few people managed to survive by hiding in forests, hills, and marshes and only a relatively small group of rich Hutu and Tutsi were able to seek refuge in the famous Hotel des Mille Collines. At a killing rate five times as high as that of the Jews by the Nazis in 1945, with five out of every six Tutsis killed, the brutality and importance of this event is undeniable. To understand how such genocide was able to erupt and what drove normal peasants to commit such atrocities, one must consider several aspects of the history and background of the Rwandan people.

Extraits

[...] Most importantly the president was now subject to international criticism because of his one-party state system and the U.N. as well as other African countries and France pressurized him into making changes. These negotiations ultimately led to the Arusha Peace Agreements signed August 1993 in Arusha, Tanzania. The agreement involved allowing repatriation of refugees, reinstallation of people displaced by the war, power sharing and last but not least the fusion of the Rwandan Army and the RPF. Signing these agreements meant losing a vast amount of power for the president and his party. [...]

[...] The RPF was eventually recognized into the Rwandan Army Finally one must analyze the role the U.N., Western countries and even African countries played in letting this genocide happen because as many survivors point out they seemed to have been abandoned by the rest of the world and certainly by the West which had the military power to defend the Tutsi. critical issue relating to Rwanda was the international community's failure to make the distinction between a civil war and genocide” (Khan 2000, p196). Between August 1993 and April 1994 the RPF claimed to have repeatedly informed the Security Council, the Force Commander and important ambassadors in Kigali that genocide was being planned. [...]

[...] Regrettably the warnings were not taken seriously. The most important one was made to General Dallaire and “significantly this indication came not from the likely victims, who were prone to exaggerate, but from the circle of the genocide planners” (Khan 2000, p. 197). Alarming warnings were acknowledged about military confrontation, high ethnic tensions, likely assassinations and descent towards civil war but none about planned killings of the civil population. Even NGOs warned about planned massacres. As to why these warnings were not heeded there are several theories/explanations. [...]

[...] troops leaving only 250. One could assume that with the about 2500 troops that at the outset were located in Kigali and other cities to ensure the Rwandan Government would respect the agreements made in Arusha many deaths could have been prevented. Considering that so many killers were only armed with clubs and machetes a U.N troop seemed like an important threat and at the beginning this is also what held Hutus back from killing. They feared the international community would intervene. [...]

[...] The chiefs were responsible to provide the Belgians with food, designate men (who e.g. were used to 'steal' cattle from other countries to return to Rwanda when the rinder-pest broke out), road workers and porters. After 1926 a directive instructing the Territorial Administrators tried to control this behaviour, which had become more and more obvious. This clientship can be divided up into two types: ubuhake and umuheto. The first of which was actually a cattle-clientship, concerning mostly Tutsi and their chiefs. [...]