Rwanda - Course and interventions Questionbank

Source A

Scott Straus, a professor of political science, interviewing a former supporter of Hutu extremists who had also confessed to killing civilians, in the collection of accounts Intimate Enemy. Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide (2006).

[President] Habyarimana was the parent of Rwanda. Habyarimana did nothing bad to Tutsis … No person in Rwanda thought “I am Hutu. You are Tutsi.” Habyarimana prevented all that. We intermarried. All that was disturbed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) war … We, the peasants, believed that the person who had killed the president was an enemy … they were Tutsis, so we believed the solution was to kill the Tutsi… We said we were defending ourselves against the enemy… All the things that happened in Rwanda were caused by the war between the RPF and the Rwandan government, and the people who are dead and the things that were destroyed, it was the RPF and the government in place that must answer for that.

Source B Photograph of Rwandan government soldiers atop a tank fleeing with civilians from advancing RPF forces (17 July 1994).

Source C

Linda Melvern, a British journalist, writing in the book Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide (2004).

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) Commander Dallaire met the Rwandan government, hoping to obtain permission to evacuate refugees in Kigali, [but] the government did not seem to be concerned by the horrendous ethnic killing. On 23 April, Dallaire travelled to see the RPF leader Kagame … The RPF was disappointed that the “international community” had not stated its disgust with the violent destruction of the opposition political parties and the total survival of the government and its leaders. Dallaire and Colonel Bagosora [Hutu extremist leader] then met on 28 April … Bagosora told Dallaire that the RPF was intending to conquer the whole country. His side had never refused to share power with the RPF. It was all the fault of the RPF for refusing to negotiate with the government … The swift military success of the RPF in the country created an atmosphere of fear among the [government’s] army … Some officers were planning to massacre all the people in Kigali who were sheltering in hotels and churches, the vast majority of them Tutsi … On 28 April, Oxfam [an international charity] issued a press release stating that the pattern of systematic killing of the Tutsi amounted to genocide … But another story now dominated the headlines: with thousands of people from eastern Rwanda fleeing the RPF advance, this was the fastest exodus [mass movement] of people the world had seen.

Source D

André Guichaoua, a professor of sociology, writing in the academic book From War to Genocide. Criminal Politics in Rwanda, 1990–1994 (2017).

[Even the] Rwandan government’s … most eager defenders doubted that the war against the RPF could be won … If defeat at the hands of the RPF could not be avoided, none of [the] Tutsi … should be left to profit from their victory … Their primary objective was to exterminate the potential political base for the RPF and its allies … From 12 April onward, government politicians linked their political futures to a conclusion of the war through genocide and the elimination of Tutsi … For its part, the RPF’s repeated refusals to negotiate fell in line with the government’s murderous strategy. When the RPF finally agreed to engage in discussions between 22 April and 14 May 1994, it refused to negotiate with the government’s representative. But there was no longer anything for the two sides to negotiate, the RPF did not want to hear anything more about a ceasefire. This is exactly what Dallaire confirmed in his message to the UN on 24 April, which summarized his conversation with Paul Kagame: “He did not appear interested in a ceasefire. His forces were winning the war and were going to continue fighting as long as they were winning.”

Source A

P. Gourevitch. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998).

In the province of Kibungo, in eastern Rwanda, in the swamp and pastureland near the Tanzanian border, there’s a rocky hill called Nyarubuye with a church where many Tutsis were slaughtered in mid-April of 1994. A year after the killing I went to Nyarubuye with two Canadian military officers. We were in a United Nations helicopter, traveling low over the hills in the morning mists, with the banana trees like green starbursts dense over the slopes. The uncut grass blew back as we dropped into the centre of the parish schoolyard. A lone soldier materialized with his Kalashnikov, and shook our hands with stiff, shy formality. The Canadians presented the paperwork for our visit, and I stepped up into the open doorway of a classroom. At least fty mostly decomposed cadavers covered the oor, wadded in clothing, their belongings strewn about and smashed. Macheted skulls had rolled here and there. The dead looked like pictures of the dead. They did not smell. They did not buzz with ies. They had been killed thirteen months earlier, and they hadn’t been moved. I had never been among the dead before. What to do? Look? Yes. I wanted to see them, I suppose; I had come to see them – the dead had been left unburied at Nyarubuye for memorial purposes – and there they were, so intimately exposed. I didn’t need to see them. I already knew, and believed, what had happened in Rwanda. … at Nyarubuye, and at thousands of other sites in this tiny country, on the same days of a few months in 1994, hundreds of thousands of Hutus had worked as killers in regular shifts. There was always the next victim, and the next. What sustained them, beyond the frenzy of the first attack, through the plain physical exhaustion and mess of it? … The killers were killed all day at Nyarubuye. At night they cut the Achilles tendons of survivors and went off to feast behind the church, roasting cattle looted from their victims in big res, and drinking beer. (Bottled beer, banana beer … Rwandans may not drink more beer than other Africans, but they drink prodigious quantities of it around the clock.) And, in the morning, still drunk after whatever sleep they could and beneath the cries of their prey, the killers at Nyarubuye went back and killed again. Day after day, minute to minute, Tutsi by Tutsi: all across Rwanda, they worked like that.

Source B

Photograph of the corpses of Tutsi that litter the floor of a classroom at Nyarabuyu church, Rwanda, 1994.

Source C

“Heart of Rwanda’s Darkness: Slaughter at a rural church”, an article by Donatella Lorch, published in The New York Times on 3 June 1994.

The banner across the entrance to the red brick church here announces the celebration of a festival. A poster of Pope John Paul II is tacked on the main door and above it is a large white statue of Jesus, his arms beckoning. Inside are the remains of victims of a mass slaughter carried out by Government-trained militiamen in mid-April. In what they had hoped would be a refuge from the deadly irrationality of tribal and political violence, more than 500 members of the Tutsi tribe found their way to the church compound only to be shot or hacked to death by Hutu soldiers in classrooms, bathrooms and courtyards, and then left to rot. It appears that they were methodically hunted down,first in the church, then in the school and nally in the workshops near the soccer field. Residents say that probably 1,000 more were killed and buried in mass graves in the town, which is just inside the border with Tanzania. A frenzy of killing was evident at the rear of the compound. There, eight rooms are led with hundreds of corpses, shoulder to shoulder, and piled onto one another. One hundred more killed in a courtyard are now half skeletons, their esh in shreds. There are so many that it is impossible to walk through without treading on them. More corpses are hidden in the tall grass. “It took them two days to kill everyone in the church,” said Consolata Mukatwagirimana, 27, a Tutsi whose family was killed at home and who like the rest of the townspeople has been led to a camp 50 miles away. She accompanied reporters to the church. This village, now under control of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the rebel group led by the minority Tutsi tribe, appears typical of many devastated by regular Army troops or militiamen of the majority Hutu tribe in the early days of the two-month old civil war. The buildings are empty, the livestock is gone. Only corpses and the sound of the wind remain.

Source D

Flora Mukampore, a survivor from the massacre at Nyarubuye recalls what happened to her. She knew one of the killers personally.

Gitera was there. Imagine someone leaving their home and knowing their victim, knowing their names and the names of their 88 1 children. They all went there and killed their neighbours, their wives and their children. All the people they were cutting fell on me because I was near the door. My hair was all washed with blood. My body was drenched in blood and it was starting to dry on me, so the killers thought I’d been cut all over, they thought I was dead. I lay down on one side with only one eye open. I could hear a man come towards me and I guess he saw me breathe. He hit me on my head saying: “Is this thing still alive?” Immediately I heard my entire body say “whaaagh”. Something in my head changed forever. Everything stopped. When the wind blew and the cold passed through my body I woke up and went into the building but I didn’t realise that there were bodies around me. I didn’t remember what had happened. I just thought they were normal people and so I just slept among them like we had slept together before the killers came. Can you imagine living with the dead. At some point god helped me and made me unconscious because if I hadn’t been, I think I would have killed myself. But I was unconscious, and anyway killing yourself needs energy.

Source A

Wreckage of President Habyarimana's aircraft

Source B

Government of Rwanda, Committee of Experts, 2010. Extract from the Mutzini Report following the investigation of the 6 April 1994 crash of President Habyarimana’s Dassault Falcon 50 Aircraft

According to Sean Moorhouse, a British Army captain, the UNAMIR (II) team concluded that: “the Rwandan president’s airplane had been shot down by three Whites with the help of the Presidential Guard and that the shots from weapons which brought down the airplane were red from the Kanombe military camp.”

Source C

Taken from an article from the Global Researcher by Barrie Collins published in August 2008.

A former member of Paul Kagame's rebels, Aloys Ruyenzi told French judge Jean Louis Bruguiere in 2004 that he was in the room when Kagame gave the order to shoot down the president’s plane, and gave the names of all those who were present. The meeting took place between 2.00 p.m. and 3.00 p.m. on 31 March, 1994.

Source E

F.Reyntjens. Working paper "A Fake inquiry on a Major Event: Analysis of the Mutsinzi Report on the 6th April 1994 attack on the Rwandan President's aeroplane" (2010). University of Antwerp, Institute of Development Policy and Management The envirans of the airport and Masoke Hill in April, 1994

Google map dated 2008

Source F

F. Keane. Season of Blood: A Rwandan journey, pages 27–28 (1996).

The Arusha Accords were to be his death warrant. The extremists he had cultivated and the men who had grown rich during the days of the one-party state were not about to see their privilege disappear with the stroke of a pen. Now, instead of holding fast, Habyarimana was weakening, threatening to pull the house down around them. It was time to install a more reliable man. On the evening of 6th April as Habyarimana was returning from a session of negotiations at Arusha, two missiles were red at his jet as it landed in Kigali International Airport. The most likely explanation – one disputed by Hutu extremists and their French supporters – is that soldiers of the presidential guard based next to the airport red the missiles. There is another theory that members of the French military or security services, or mercenaries in the pay of France, shot down the aircraft. Although no proof has been produced, there are senior gures in the Belgian security services who think that the French may have wanted rid of Habyarimana, believing he was about to hand the country over to the RPF. The jet crashed close to the airport. Habyarimana was killed, along with the president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, and the chief of staff of Rwanda’s army, Deogratias Nsabimana. The MRND government immediately blamed the RPF – and by extension, all Tutsis – for the killing, suggesting somehow that RPF soldiers had managed to locate themselves next to the biggest army base in the country and murder the president. It was possible, of course, but highly improbable... The murder of the president would provide the perfect pretext for implementing the final solution to the Tutsi problem.

Source G

L. Melvern. Conspiracy to Murder: the Rwandan genocide, pages 263–64 (2004).

There is also another explanation, and this one was rst reported in Brussels by the Africa Editor of Le Sir, the journalist Colette Braeckman. Some weeks after the crash, in mid-June 1994, Braeckman reported in her newspaper that she had received a letter from someone calling himself “Thadee”, who claimed to be a militia leader in Kigali. He told her that two members of the French Detachement d’Assistance Militaire et Instruction (DAMI), had launched the missiles on behalf of the CDR party. Only four members of the CDR were involved. Those who red the missiles had worn Belgian army uniforms stolen from the hotel Le Meridien. They were spotted leaving Masaka hill by members of the Presidential Guard. The missiles had been portable, probably SAMs, originally from the Soviet Union. Braeckman reported that during the three days after the missile attack some 3,000 people living in the Masaka area were murdered.

Source Q

Statement by Madeleine Albright, US Ambassador to the UN, April 1994

The United States deeply regrets the tragic loss of life in Rwanda. We are committed to supporting peace and reconciliation, but we must recognise the limits of international engagement. The United Nations has deployed peacekeepers under a mandate to monitor the Arusha Accords. Those forces were never designed for combat operations. Expanding their role requires careful consideration of costs, risks, and the willingness of member states to contribute troops. We are exploring ways to deliver humanitarian assistance and to support negotiations between the parties. However, we cannot and should not impose a solution by force. The responsibility for peace rests ultimately with the Rwandan people themselves. The international community can help, but it cannot substitute for reconciliation within Rwanda. Our priority must be to protect our own citizens, assist refugees, and encourage dialogue. We must not allow the tragedy in Rwanda to derail UN peacekeeping elsewhere or to repeat mistakes made in Somalia.

Source R

Extract from Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story (1999)

The international response to the Rwandan genocide was characterised by hesitation, denial, and abandonment. Even as killings were reported daily, the Security Council voted in mid-April 1994 to reduce UNAMIR from 2,500 troops to 270. The killing of Belgian peacekeepers was used as justification for withdrawal, though the massacres clearly demanded reinforcements. The US and other powers avoided the term “genocide,” aware that acknowledging it would legally oblige them to act. While thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered, foreign nationals were swiftly evacuated. Only in late May did the Council authorise an expanded mission, but by then hundreds of thousands were already dead. France’s Operation Turquoise, launched in June, saved lives in the south-west, but also allowed perpetrators to flee into Zaire. The failure of the international community was not one of ignorance: UN officials, human rights groups, and journalists provided ample evidence. It was a failure of will, as major powers judged Rwanda to be of little strategic value.

Source S

Photograph, Kigali, April 1994

Source T

Testimony of Roméo Dallaire to the Canadian Parliament, 1998

We were not asking for miracles. We knew the situation was deteriorating long before April. I sent cables warning of planned massacres, caches of weapons, and extremist propaganda. My requests for reinforcements and a stronger mandate were denied. When the killings began, I had fewer than 3,000 men, lightly armed, poorly supplied. Within weeks, the Security Council cut us to under 300. We did what we could: we sheltered thousands in safe sites, sometimes with nothing more than a few rifles and our presence. But with even a few thousand well-armed troops, properly supported, I am convinced we could have stopped much of the slaughter. Instead, the great powers dithered. They evacuated their own nationals and left Rwandans to die. France came later, but its intervention was as much about protecting its allies in the old regime as about saving civilians. The world failed Rwanda not because it could not act, but because it chose not to.

Source Q

Speech by Paul Kagame to the Rwandan Parliament, July 1994

The Rwandan Patriotic Front has ended the genocide and restored order to our country. We are rebuilding from ashes. The killers have fled, but justice will be done. Rwanda will no longer be a land divided by ethnicity. We must unite as one people, Rwandans, not Hutu or Tutsi. To achieve this, we will hold accountable those who organised and carried out the killings, while protecting innocent civilians from revenge. Refugees must return home in safety, and displaced persons must be resettled. Our country’s institutions must be reconstructed to serve all citizens equally. The international community failed us during our darkest hour, but now we call on them to support reconstruction, not to lecture us. The path will be difficult, but we are determined: never again will Rwanda be torn apart by genocide.

Source R

Extract from African Rights, “Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance” (1995)

The victory of the RPF ended the genocide but did not end Rwanda’s suffering. More than two million people fled into neighbouring Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi. Among them were civilians, but also génocidaires who regrouped in refugee camps, launching raids back into Rwanda. These camps, supplied by international aid, became bases for violence. Inside Rwanda, the new government faced the impossible task of resettling refugees, rebuilding institutions, and pursuing justice. With prisons overflowing, thousands were detained in inhumane conditions. The creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in late 1994 promised accountability but was slow, expensive, and remote. By contrast, the government launched local Gacaca courts, involving communities in justice, but critics warned of bias and limited protections for the accused. While the RPF pledged reconciliation, reports of reprisals against Hutu civilians complicated its claims. Rwanda’s post-genocide path was marked not only by recovery but by new cycles of displacement, violence, and strained relations with neighbours.

Source S

Photograph, Rwandan Refugee Camp in Goma, Zaire, 1994. The photograph shows thousands of Rwandan refugees crowded together in makeshift shelters of plastic sheets and tents. 

Source T

Testimony of a Hutu returnee, Gacaca Court, 2003

I fled with my family to Zaire when the RPF took Kigali. We were afraid of reprisals. Life in the camps was terrible: disease, hunger, and fear. The génocidaires controlled everything. They forced us to attend rallies, to give them our rations, and they said we must one day return to take Rwanda back. Some of us wanted to go home, but they threatened us. When I finally returned in 1996, the government allowed us to resettle. But things were not easy. People looked at us with suspicion. Some neighbours accused me of helping the killers, though I had done nothing. When Gacaca began, I testified to clear my name. I saw it as a chance to tell the truth, but others feared it was revenge. For me, it was difficult but necessary. Without it, how could we ever live together again? We had to face the past, even if it hurt.

Source Q

Speech by President Juvénal Habyarimana at a rally in Kigali, 1992

Rwanda is a small country with too little land and too many mouths to feed. We must always be vigilant against those who would divide us and weaken our nation. Certain elements, calling themselves the Rwandan Patriotic Front, have invaded from Uganda. They claim to speak for “all Rwandans,” but in truth they are agents of foreign powers. We cannot allow outsiders and their collaborators to dictate our future. History teaches us that the Tutsi minority has always sought to dominate the Hutu majority. Our revolution of 1959 gave power to the people, but now we face a threat that could undo those gains. The Hutu masses must stand united, ready to defend democracy and independence. We welcome peace talks, but never at the price of surrender. Any Rwandan who aids the enemy betrays not only his government, but also his family and his people. Let us be clear: Rwanda will remain free only if we remain vigilant and united against this menace.

Source R

Extract from Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (1995)

The roots of the Rwandan genocide can be traced to both colonial history and post-colonial politics. Under Belgian rule, the Tutsi minority was privileged as a supposed “superior race,” while the Hutu majority was marginalised. This created lasting resentment. The 1959 “Social Revolution” saw Hutu elites rise to power, displacing many Tutsi and forcing thousands into exile. These refugees never abandoned their claim to return, and in 1990 the RPF, largely made up of exiles in Uganda, invaded northern Rwanda. The war sharpened ethnic polarisation. The government, dominated by Hutu Power hardliners, portrayed all Tutsi as accomplices of the RPF. The Arusha Accords of 1993, intended to share power, only deepened mistrust: Hutu extremists saw them as capitulation, while Tutsi doubted the government’s sincerity. By early 1994, Rwanda was a tinderbox: poverty, overpopulation, political stalemate, and virulent propaganda converged to make mass violence not only possible, but likely. The genocide was not inevitable, but the conditions for catastrophe were firmly in place.

Source S

Cover of Kangura magazine, Issue No. 6 (early 1990s). The magazine routinely published propaganda portraying Tutsis and political moderates as traitors or foreign agents, fueling suspicion and hostility.

Headline text: “The President said there are many who act like birds.”

Subheading: “Will these men help him with that???”

Smaller line: “This committee led by Nkubito Alphonse is said to be siding with the Inkotanyi and their accomplices, sweating more than the thieves themselves.”

French line at bottom: “The issue of the protocol of national reconciliation between Rwandans, as seen by J.H. Gitera.”

Source T

Testimony of a Tutsi survivor, interviewed by the UN Commission of Experts, 1994

I was born in Rwanda, but my parents were driven out during the troubles of 1959. We lived in Uganda as refugees. I returned after the Arusha Accords, believing peace was possible. Instead, I found suspicion everywhere. Hutu neighbours said we were RPF spies. At every roadblock I was asked for my papers and threatened. The local officials told people that Tutsi had too many children and would take the land. When the president’s plane was shot down, they said it was proof of the RPF plot. The truth was that ordinary Tutsi like me had nothing to do with it, we just wanted to live peacefully. But the government radio told Hutus that we were enemies. I saw friends who had once shared meals with me suddenly treat me as an invader. Old fears from colonial times mixed with the war of the 1990s. In the end, history and lies trapped us.