Genocide in Rwanda

Genocide in Rwanda: Fundamental Questions Author: Liam Hogan
Genocide in
Rwanda
Fundamental Questions
Module Title: Origins, Development & Conflict Resolution
Student Name: Liam Hogan
Student I.D: 9843183
Module Code: IL5052
Lecturer: Prof. Dominic Murray
Date: January 10th 2003
Origins, Development & Conflict Resolution 1

"Genocide IV " by Epa Binamung

Introduction
1994. A boy of fourteen years. Relieved that the day’s toil at schooling has ended,
he decides to relax. The aroma of the meal being prepared to silence his stomachs
protests, comforts him. He drops his ridiculously heavy bag onto the floor with all the
grace of a wrecking ball operator. He sits on the floor of his living room, gazing in a once
slothful but now ethereal trance at the cathode ray tube altar before him. He glances at his
watch. The long hand stutters, competently he supposes, towards the dozen. The short
hand of the watch, as stubborn as ever, stares indiscriminately and unblinkingly on its
current victim. Le Cinq. This resultant eradicates his momentary hope that it’s a sick
directors idea of entertainment and profit generation. He ponders “So if it’s not a film.
Then. It’s. Real? “
The primary colour Red is prominent on the screen. Lifeless bodies of a slain
commune are heaped in a pile; their escaping blood has pooled together and pastes
nauseatingly to the soil. A blunted, claret stained machete lies ominously to the side. It
seems to grin. Footage is shown of a river, where the blood of thousands has dyed it an
unnatural burgundy. The pictures show the dismembered, the decapitated, the dead, and
the betrayed. A reporter speaks of a little girl’s body found which had been otherwise
intact apart from the fact that it had been flattened by passing vehicles to the thinness of
cardboard. Accounts are submitted of beheaded children, of the ripping out of pregnant
mothers wombs, and of a massacred orphanage. Carrion everywhere. Then the estimated
number of victims is announced. Over 800,000 people are assumed dead. “No” whispers
the now tainted boy. The inscription on the gate at Aushwitz “Never Again” now seems
meaningless and empty. The ultimate lesson of the 20th century not learnt. The questions
rage and burn chasms through his idealistic mind. They cascade in torrents. Questions.
Questions, which many parties never asked or answered. This essay will attempt to
unearth the facts behind the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994, how did it
happen? Why did it happen? What could have been done to prevent the conflict or stop
the killing from spreading? Did some international actors know this was going to happen?
Where was the United Nations during this time? These are the some of the questions that I
asked myself nine years ago. Now I have the opportunity to document my own answer.

Creation of the Division
Genocides are a modern phenomenon – they require organisation –and they are
likely to become more common in the future.
- Gerard Prunier
Research in social psychology shows that it takes very little to

generate group competition. Henri Taijfel (1970) conducted a
series of experiments to discover the minimal conditions that give
rise to discriminatory behaviour. The subjects were shown slides of
pictures by Klee and Kandinsky and asked to indicate which they
preferred. They were then led to believe that they had been divided
into groups according to their preference for one artist or the other.
Next they completed a task in which they allocated small sums of
money, and in which they could follow alternative strategies. Taijfel showed that group
discrimination could be produced by simply telling subjects that they had been allocated
to different categories, even though the categories themselves had no social distinction. It
would seem that a belief of subjects that they share membership in some sort of group or
team, even one randomly created, is sufficient to evoke a mild form of discrimination.
With this in mind let us trace through Rwandan history picking out significant moments
where the difference between the Hutu and Tutsi was crystallized and subsequently
embedded. For this experiment illustrates how the Hutu and Tutsi relationship could be
so eroded, controlled and manipulated as to become an objective of one to exterminate the
other.
To start it must be stated that the Hutu and the Tutsi could not even be described correctly
as two different ethnic groups. They both speak the same language and respect the same
traditions and taboos. There were some social differences though, but they were not based
on racial or ethnic divisions. It was this stereotype that was exaggerated by the colonisers
who supported one side against the other hence reinforcing and ultimately intensifying
tensions between the two groups.

However, the Hutu – Tutsi antagonism has become absorbed by the people themselves
even if it does not correspond to the anthropological distinction, and thus is politically
relevant. This is a phenomenon known as ‘Tribalism without tribes’.
No one really knows the exact origin of the Hutu and the Tutsi. The two groups speak the
same language, shared the same territory and acknowledged the same Tutsi king, Mwami.
By all accounts this should qualify Rwanda as a nation in the truest sense. Social
distinctions corresponded to a division of tasks, the Tutsi as cattle-raisers and the Hutu as
workers of the land. On average it was an integrated society. When the Germans arrived
they viewed the country, highly influenced by their contemporary scientific beliefs. None
more so, than the Hamitic hypothesis. Up until the beginning of the 19th century,
Europeans believed that the biblical story of Ham, Noah’s son, explained the origin of
Africa’s peoples. The book of Genesis tells how Ham and his descendants were cursed
for all eternity after he had seen his father naked. The ‘Blacks’ were believed to have been
descendants of Ham, their colour as a result of that curse. This theory protects the
church’s claim that all people originated from Noah, but there is no serious proof to back
this up.
Hence German and Belgian colonizers created a division by which they decided who
resembled the African stereotype, the Hutu and who resembled the Hamitic stereotype,
the Tutsi. Since they saw the Tutsi therefore as more like themselves and hence more
civilised they gave them all the political power. The Belgian colonisers reorganised the
customary relations between Tutsi lords and Hutu serfs and created chiefdoms and sub-
chiefdoms, thereby reinforcing the Tutsi domination. The result was that in 1959, 43 of
the 45 chiefdoms and 549 of the 559 sub-chiefdoms were under the control of the Tutsis.
It was at this stage that identity cards were introduced. (Destexhe, 1995: pg 38 - 40).
The Belgians also favoured Tutsi students; this was the policy from primary to tertiary
level education. A very small number of Hutu gained education. Up to this point it is can
be said that although the colonial powers did not invent the categories of Tutsi and Hutu
but that their policies played an essential role in creating an ethnic split that fuelled a
racial hatred.

The Hutu elite of that time began to define their own ethnic background. They saw
themselves as the indigenous and rightful rulers of Rwanda. They saw the Tutsi as
charlatans that had colonised ‘our’ land, nothing more than ‘Ethiopian invaders’.
The Belgians seeing that the majority of the population, the Hutu, was becoming restless
they decided to back that horse and instate policies that now discriminated unashamedly
the once favoured Tutsi. The Hutu became the ‘good guys’ who have been ‘dominated for
so long by the Tutsi’ and the Belgians now expressed ‘sympathy for the cause of the
suppressed masses’. In 1959 a series of riots allowed by the Belgians resulted in the
killing of more than 20,000 Tutsi. This was the turning point in Rwandan history. It led to
a huge exodus of Tutsi’s, the exclusion of all Tutsi from political life and a growing
authoritarianism practiced by a Hutu power base. Independence was declared in ’62.
From this moment on the Tutsi became the scapegoat in every political crisis.
At the beginning of the ‘70s, Hutu President, Kayibanda, imposed a quota on the Tutsi
who were allotted only 10% of the places in school, universities and civil service
positions. The economic situation led to further radicalisation, and further insistence on
ID cards. Juvenal Habyrimana then overthrew Kayibanda in a coup d’etat in ’73. There
were no massacres at all between ’73 and ’90, but the ethnic question remained very
much alive.
Then in 1990 following a speech by President Mitterand requesting African states to open
up to the democratic process, a protest was held in the summer asking for democratic
reform. Also in Uganda the RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, an army based on the Tutsi
diasporas that were in exile since the purges of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. They wanted
to return to their homeland and be treated as equals.
The extremist Hutus saw the RPF as ‘Tutsi aristocracy’ that could only speak English and
had no personal knowledge of Rwanda. After much pressure, President Habyarimana
began negotiations with the refugees. The RPF then invaded from Uganda on the
1stOctober 1990 to show their force and determination to become part of Rwanda again.
The Hutu hardcore read this as an invasion and willingness to take control of the entire
country. They spread a propaganda campaign based on fear, explaining over the radio and
newspaper that the Tutsi wanted a return to power and would totally suppress the Hutu
‘like before’. The slaughter of Tutsis occurred from 1991 to 1993, whilst the RPF battled

with the Rwandan army. Thousands of Rwandans fled the country during this time. Then
on the 4th of August 1993 the Arusha peace accords were signed, where a provisional
government was set up incorporating a power sharing executive comprising RPF leaders
and the current government. Hutu extremists were outraged. It seemed Peace was a
possibility. Then the President’s plane was shot down, no one has been found guilty so far,
but it said that it could be the work of Hutu extremists, as the rocket launcher used was of
French origin and they had, of course, been supporting the Rwandan government at this
point. This was the trigger of the genocide, as within hours almost all the political
opposition to Hutu power had been murdered along with their families.
This section of the essay shows how the coexistence of different social groups was
transformed into an ethnic problem. The present generation has internalized the colonially
modeled divide, with some groups deliberately choosing to play the trump card – some
regimes actually need ethnic division to reinforce and justify their positions.
“ It was the ethnic classification registered on identity cards introduced by Belgians that
served as the basic instrument for the genocide of the Tutsi people who were ‘guilty’ on
three counts: they were a minority, they were a reminder of a feudal system and they were
regarded as colonizers in their own country.” (Destexhe, 1995: 47)

How was it done?
A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict contributed to

false political assumptions and military assessments.
- UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
In the past, the Rwandan government had often mobilized the population for campaigns
of various kinds, such as to end illiteracy, to vaccinate children, or to improve the status
of women. It had executed these efforts through the existing administrative and political
hierarchies, requiring agents to go beyond their usual duties for a limited period of time
for some national goal of major importance. The organizers of the genocide similarly
exploited the structures that already existed—administrative, political, and military—and
called upon personnel to execute a campaign to kill Tutsi and Hutu presumed to oppose
Hutu Power. Through these three channels, the organizers were able to reach all
Rwandans and to incite or force most Hutu into acquiescing or participating in the
slaughter.
The organization that ran the campaign was flexible: primacy depended more on
commitment to the killing than on formal position in the hierarchy. Thus within the
administrative system, sub-prefects could eclipse prefects, as they did in Gikongoro and
Gitarama, and in the military domain, lieutenants could ignore colonels, as happened in
Butare. This flexibility encouraged initiative and ambition among those willing to
purchase advancement at the cost of human lives. To preserve appearances, an inferior
might obtain the approval of his superior for decisions he made, but those receiving the
orders knew who really had the power.
Individuals from other sectors—the akazu, the church, the business community, the
university, schools and hospitals—backed the efforts of the officials.
Soldiers and National Police, whether on active duty or retired, killed civilians. They also
gave permission, set the example, and commanded others to kill. Although fewer in
number than civilian killers, the military played a decisive role by initiating and directing
the slaughter. In the first hours in Kigali, soldiers of the Presidential Guard and the
paracommando and reconnaisance battalions, along with some National Policemen,

carried out the carnage in one neighborhood after another. Soldiers, National Police and
the communal police also launched the slaughter and organized all large-scale massacres
elsewhere in the country.
Witnesses in Kigali and other towns have identified as killers certain soldiers and
National Policemen whom they knew before the genocide. But elsewhere, witnesses
found it difficult to identify the persons or even the units responsible for given crimes
because soldiers and National Police wore the same uniforms and only sometimes wore
the berets of different colors which indicated the service to which they belonged.
Witnesses often say that soldiers from the Presidential Guard attacked them, but troops
from other army units or from the National Police may actually have committed some of
these crimes.
Regardless of the responsibility of individuals or units, the widespread and systematic
participation of military personnel throughout the entire period of genocide indicates that
the most powerful authorities at the national level ordered or approved their role in the
slaughter. Other officers, as shown above, have identified Bagosora, as the leader who
launched the genocide. General Bizimungu, named chief of staff with Bagosora’s support,
and Minister of Defense Augustin Bizimana at the least collaborated actively with
Bagosora, while officers in charge of the elite units, Majors Protais Mpiranya, François-
Xavier Nzuwonemeye, and Aloys Ntabakuze, as well as others like Colonel Tharcisse
Renzaho, Lieutenant Colonels Léonard Nkundiye and Anatole Nsengiyumva, Captain
Gaspard Hategekimana, and Major Bernard Ntuyahaga carried out the killings of Tutsi
and Hutu civilians.
On April 10, Colonel Gatsinzi, then temporarily chief of staff, and the Ministry of
Defense each ordered subordinates to halt the killings of civilians, using force if
necessary. The Ministry of Defense sent a second, weaker command on April 28 “to
cooperate with local authorities to halt pillage and assassinations.” But neither the general
staff nor the Ministry of Defense enforced the orders, leaving subordinates to conclude
that the directives had no importance. In fact, as some officers had observed from the
start, the authorities countermanded the official orders by another message, passed
discreetly to like-minded officers who executed the informal order to kill rather than the
official directive to stop the killings.

The military also led militia and ordinary civilians in slaughter, giving orders to citizens
directly and through civilian administrators. At the national level, civilian and military
authorities directed the population to obey these orders, insisting that civilians must
“work with,” “assist,” or “support” the army. According to a foreign witness, soldiers
taught hesitant young people to kill on the streets of Kigali. When the young people
balked at striking Tutsi, soldiers stoned the victims until the novices were ready to attack.
In the prefecture of Gitarama, soldiers said to be Presidential Guards drove around in a
black Pajero jeep, killing and inciting others to kill in the communes of Musambira and
Mukingi. Others launched the killing of Tutsi at a market in the commune of Mugina. In
Kivu and Kinyamakara communes in Gikongoro, soldiers or National Police directed
crowds gathered at market and people found along the roads to attack Tutsi. Soldiers led
killing in Cyangugu starting on April 7.
Soldiers and National Police distributed arms and ammunition to civilians discreetly
before April 6 and openly after that date. They also provided reinforcements in men and
materiel to civilians who found it impossible to overcome resistance from Tutsi.
Authorities, military, administrative, and political, engaged in deception with three
objectives in mind: they wanted to confuse foreigners in order to avoid criticism and
perhaps even to win support; they wanted to mislead Tutsi to make it easier to kill them;
and they wanted to manipulate Hutu into participating energetically in the genocidal
program. Sometimes a given strategy served more than one purpose and misled two or
even all three target audiences at once. The whole effort of deception was remarkably
coherent, with diplomats abroad proclaiming the same lies as those told at home and with
officials and politicians using the same pretenses in widely separated communities at the
same time.
Just as the organizers used genocide to wage war, so they used the war to cover the
genocide. Whether speaking in foreign capitals or at sector meetings out on the Rwandan
hills, representatives of the interim government always began with a reminder that the
RPF had invaded Rwanda in 1990 and from that deduced that the RPF was responsible
for all subsequent developments, including the massive killing of Tutsi by Hutu. Without
hesitation, they blamed the assassination of Habyarimana on the RPF, making it an
illustration of the larger theme of Tutsi aggression and ruthlessness.

In early April, Sindikubwabo described the violence as a spontaneous outburst of rage

sparked by “sorrow and aggressive feelings of frustration” after the assassination.
Kambanda explained that Habyarimana was “not an ordinary man, not a man like any
other,” and asserted that his killing created “a certain frustration among people, a certain
vague anger that made it impossible for people to keep control after the death of the head
of state.” The excuse of “spontaneous anger” echoed the attempts at justification during
the Habyarimana period when authorities attributed killings of Tutsi to uncontrollable
popular wrath.
The pretext of popular anger was meant not just to confuse foreigners about the organized
and systematic nature of the violence, but also to encourage Rwandans to feel justified in
participating in it. According to witnesses, many assailants declared during attacks that
Tutsi deserved to die because the Inyenzi had killed the president. After the militia leader,
Cyasa Habimana, led the slaughter of some 1,000 persons at the Saint Joseph center in
Kibungo, the bishop confronted him to ask why he had killed. The militia leader pointed
to the portrait pin of Habyarimana that he wore on his chest and said, “They killed him.”
In the days just after the plane crash, many Rwandans in the MDR stronghold of Gitarama
prefecture began wearing such portrait pins, which had not been seen in the region since
the end of the MRND monopoly of power in 1991. The widespread appearance of the
pins demonstrated the success of the campaign to make a martyr of the president.
In another reprise from the Habyarimana years, authorities occasionally tried to shift the
blame for violence from the guilty to someone else, even to the victims themselves. In the
first days of the genocide, military authorities claimed that it was not soldiers of the
Rwandan army but others wearing their uniforms who were slaughtering political leaders.
When they could not sustain this pretense, they assigned guilt to a few unruly elements
that were said to have disobeyed orders. Later, RTLM announcer Bemeriki asserted that
Interahamwe attacks on the Hotel des Mille Collines and the Sainte Famille church were
carried out by “people disguised as Interahamwe.” Soon after she claimed that Tutsi were
responsible for burning their houses as a way to trap and kill Hutu.
When the national authorities ordered the extermination of Tutsi, tens of thousands of
Hutu responded quickly, ruthlessly and persistently. They killed without scruple and
sometimes with pleasure. They jogged through the streets of Kigali chanting, “Let’s

exterminate them all.” They marched through the streets of Butare town shouting “Power,
Power.” They returned from raids in Kibuye singing that the only enemy was the Tutsi.
They boasted about their murders to each other and to the people whom they intended to
kill next.

International Responsibility
A lot of the world powers were all there with their embassies and their military
attachés, and you can’t tell me those bastards didn’t have a lot of information.
They would never pass that information on to me, ever.
- General Roméo Dallaire, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda
The Rwandans who organized and executed the genocide must bear full responsibility for
it. But genocide anywhere implicates everyone. To the extent that governments and
peoples elsewhere failed to prevent and halt this killing campaign, they all share in the
shame of the crime. The massacred innocent blood stains us all. In addition, the U.N. staff
as well as the three foreign
governments principally involved in
Rwanda bear added responsibility:
the U.N. staff for having failed to
provide adequate information and
guidance to members of the Security
Council; Belgium, for having
withdrawn its troops precipitately
and for having championed total withdrawal of the U.N. force; the U.S. for having put
saving money ahead of saving lives and for slowing the sending of a relief force; and
France, for having continued its support of a government engaged in genocide. In contrast
to the inaction of the major actors, some non-permanent members of the Security Council
with no traditional ties with Rwanda undertook to push for a U.N. force to protect Tutsi
from extermination. But all members of the Security Council brought discredit on the
U.N. by permitting the representative of a genocidal government to continue sitting in the
Security Council, a council supposedly committed to peace.

From 1990 on, influential donors of international aid pressed Habyarimana for
political and economic reforms. But, generally satisfied with the stability of his
government, they overlooked the systematic discrimination against Tutsi, which violated
the very principles that they were urging him to respect. They discussed but did not insist
on eliminating identity cards that showed ethnic affiliation, cards that served as death
warrants for many Tutsi in 1994.
When the Rwandan government began massacring Tutsi in 1990, crimes that were solidly
documented by local and international human rights groups and by a special rapporteur
for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, some donors protested. At one point, the
Belgian government went so far as to recall its ambassador briefly. But none openly
challenged Rwandan explanations that the killings were spontaneous and uncontrollable
and none used its influence to see that the guilty were brought to justice.
In addition, the lack of international response to the 1993 massacres in Burundi
permitted Rwandan extremists to expect that they too could slaughter people in large
numbers without consequence. In September 1993, U.N. staff and member states wanted
a successful peacekeeping operation to offset the failure in Somalia. They believed that
Rwanda promised such success because both parties to the conflict had requested the
U.N. presence and because the agreement between them, hammered out in a year of
negotiation, seemed to have resolved all major issues.
Faced with escalating costs for peacekeeping operations, the U.N. staff and
members wanted not just success, but success at low cost. Demands for economy, loudly
voiced by the U.S. and others, led to the establishment of a force only one third the size of
that originally recommended and with a mandate that was also scaled down from that
specified by the peace accords. Peacekeeping staff had proposed a small human rights
division, which might have tracked growing hostility against Tutsi, but no money was
available for this service and the idea was dropped.
Belgium, too, wanted to save money. Although it felt concerned enough about
Rwanda to contribute troops to the force, it felt too poor to contribute the full battalion of
800 requested and agreed to send only half that number. Troops from other countries that
were less well trained and less well armed filled the remaining places, producing a force
that was weaker than it would have been with a full Belgian battalion.

As preparations for further conflict grew in February 1994, the Belgians were sufficiently
worried by the deteriorating situation to ask for a stronger mandate, but they were
rebuffed by the U.S. and the United Kingdom, which refused to support any measure that
might add to the cost of the operation. The concern for economy prevailed even after
massive slaughter had taken place. When a second peacekeeping operation was being
mounted in May and June, U.N. member states were slow to contribute equipment needed
for the troops. The U.S. government was rightly ridiculed for requiring seven weeks to
negotiate the lease for armored personnel carriers, but other members did not do much
better.
A January 11, 1994 a telegram from General Roméo Dallaire, commander of the U.N.
peacekeeping force, to his superiors was only one, if now the most famous, warning of
massive slaughter being prepared in Rwanda. From November 1993 to April 1994, there
were dozens of other signals, including an early December letter to Dallaire from high-
ranking military officers warning of planned massacres; a press release by a bishop
declaring that guns were being distributed to civilians; reports by intelligence agents of
secret meetings to coordinate attacks on Tutsi, opponents of Hutu Power and U.N.
peacekeepers; and public incantations to murder in the press and on the radio. Foreign
observers did not track every indicator, but representatives of Belgium, France, and the
U.S. were well informed about most of them. In January, an analyst of U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency knew enough to predict that as many as half a million persons might
die in case of renewed conflict and, in February, Belgian authorities already feared a
genocide. France, the power most closely linked to Habyarimana, presumably knew at
least as much as the other two. In the early months of 1994, Dallaire repeatedly requested
a stronger mandate, more troops and more materiel. The secretariat staff, perhaps anxious
to avoid displeasing such major powers as the U.S., failed to convey to the council the
gravity of warnings of crisis and the urgency of Dallaire’s requests. The paucity of
information meant little to the U.S. and France, which were well informed in any case,
but it led other council members with no sources of information in Rwanda to misjudge
the gravity of the crisis. Instead of strengthening the mandate and sending reinforcements,
the Security Council made only small changes in the rate of troop deployment, measures
too limited to affect the development of the situation.

Conclusion
…Because each one’s need to maintain his own respect for himself was more
important to him than his popularity with others – because his desire to win or
maintain a reputation for integrity and courage was stronger than his desire to
maintain his office – because his conscience, his personal standard of ethics, his
integrity or morality, call it what you will – was stronger than the pressure of
public disapproval – because his faith that his course was the best one, and
would ultimately be vindicated, outweighed fear of public reprisal.
- John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
There is no doubt that the perpetrators of this crime against humanity are the ones who
take the individual responsibility for what they committed. From the hate filled
propagandists of Radio Collines Millnes to the Hutu committing murder under duress,
they are responsible for their actions and are being held accountable where possible. They
all are guilty in committing the worst crime in the history of the world – Genocide.
From the point of view of a ‘western’ student, I feel the need to attribute some blame to
the International actors who closed their eyes to this tragedy. The main player was of
course the U.S., the most powerful nation in the world. But they were not willing to do
anything. In 1993, in Somalia 30 U.S troops were killed, this is fewer than the number of
taxi drivers murdered every year in New York. However, the policy, which followed this,
PDD-25, clearly stated that the U.S had to begin to refuse some of the many demands
made on it by the UN. The U.S blocked all attempts to send help to the region and even
reduced the UN force from 2500 to 370 troops.
The unfortunate Tutsi were the first victims of this new policy. The Security Council
betrayed the victims of the genocide and the entire human race by denying that what was
occurring in Rwanda was genocide. The ‘g’ word as it was referred to, had become a
vocabulary equivalent of the Ebola virus – no one wanted anything to do with it. The legal

obligation was that it was to be prevented and stopped. This mentality of Washington D.C
was actually more akin to that of Las Vegas, and one of a poker game.
Problem: Somalia. Response: Intervention. Result: Failure. Conclusion: No more
interventions.
The fact that our only response ended up being humanitarian assistance condemns us
further. Human life is so much more than mere biology and human need cannot be fully
met by humanitarian action alone, although this seems to be our general response to such
tragedies. Humanitarian aid is similar to the case of an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff.
It’s worth nothing to the dead. These people could have been saved. We should have not
let this happen. Bosnia could have been prevented. Kosovo could have prevented. But the
political will is not there. Unless there is quid pro quo, the richest nation in the world is
having none of it.
We live in a rapidly polarizing world, but even so it is not hard to see the moral
bankruptcy when comparing the current military build up in Iraq, to the failure to get
involved in Rwanda. Over 200,000 U.S and British troops are in Kuwait awaiting
deployment. If they are deployed it will be at a cost of 100 billion dollars. The objective?
– Oil, power and control. General Dallaire requested just 2,000 more troops and he could
try to prevent the worst Genocide since the holocaust. He was ordered to pull out.
This is not right. Things must change.
It is the moral responsibility of each one of us, citizens of this planet, to contribute
something to prevent this unique event from being forgotten. This is mine.

Appendix A
The eight stages of Genocide
1.Classification:
At this stage, social groups are classified into “us versus them.” Traditional Rwandan
society was already classified into three groups, Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa. A Tutsi royal clan,
the Ganwa, ruled the country. Although many African historians have pointed out that the
groups did not fit the normal definition of ethnic groups, since they shared the same
language, culture, and religion, there was nevertheless preferential endogamy, marriage
within the group, and a key characteristic of ethnic groups as well as of castes. In this
strictly patrilineal society, a person took the group identity of his or her father. Mixed
marriages did not result in mixed children. These groups came to be seen as “castes,” by
their German and Belgian colonial rulers, who ruled indirectly through the Tutsi elite.
Germans and Belgians developed the “Hamitic hypothesis” that Tutsis were the lost tribe
of Ham and had migrated from Ethiopia. The racist theories of the colonial era attributed
superiority to Tutsis because of their aquiline noses and other “white” features. Tutsis
were given preference in education, the church, the economy, and the government service.
Colonial rulers thus exacerbated the traditional classification divisions. Ironically, the
Hutu Power movement adopted these same theories, in order to portray Tutsis as foreign
invaders who had dispossessed Hutus of rightful control over Rwanda. The most
notorious expression of the Hamitic hypothesis was in the famous speech by Léon
Mugesera on November 22, 1992 when he said the Tutsis “belong in Ethiopia and we are
going to find them a shortcut to get them there by throwing them into the Nyabarongo
River “[a source of the Nile.] This became an all too prophetic statement.
2. Symbolization:
At this stage, the classifications are symbolized. Groups are given names and other
symbols (yellow stars, for example) and are required to wear them either by cultural
tradition or laws. In Rwanda, Belgium began to issue identity cards (ID’s) around 1926

and required them in the 1933 census. The identity cards included each individual’s
group identity, Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa. They thus reified group identity for each person, and
made changes from one group to another much more difficult.
There were many urges to abolish these ethnic ID’s, and that reform was included in the
Arusha peace agreement signed in August 1993. New ID cards were even printed. But
they were never issued. Hutu Power advocates wanted the ethnic designation retained.
We now know why. During the genocide, ID cards became facilitators of killing, because
they permitted the killers to quickly determine who was Tutsi. Those who refused to
show their ID’s at Interahamwe roadblocks were presumed to be Tutsi unless they could
quickly prove otherwise. Nearly all Tutsis were immediately murdered.
3. Dehumanization:
This stage is where the death spiral of genocide begins. The victim group is
dehumanized. It is called the names of animals or likened to a disease: vermin or rats,
cancer or plague, or in Rwanda, “inyenzi” – cockroaches. The reason this stage is
necessary is that it gives ideological justification to the genocidists, who claim they are
purifying the society. It overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. If the
other group is not human, then killing them is not murder.
In Rwanda, the dehumanization of Tutsis had already been a feature of genocidal
massacres in 1959, 1962, and 1972. In December 1990, the Hutu Power hate newspaper,
Kangura, published the “Ten Commandments of the Hutu.” They included the
injunction; “The Bahutu should stop having mercy on the Batutsi.” The Ten
Commandments called for continuation of the Habyarimana government’s policy that the
army is exclusively Hutu, and that officers are prohibited from marrying Tutsi women.
Cartoons and articles in Kangura referred to Tutsis as cockroaches and snakes, and
regularly expounded the myth that they had invaded from Ethiopia. Tutsis were “devils”
that ate the vital organs of Hutus. Twenty other extremist newspapers also published
regular hate propaganda against Tutsis. Radio Télévision Libres des Milles Collines
amplified the hate propaganda from 1993 onward, and brought it to every corner of
Rwanda using repeater antennae provided by Radio Rwanda, the government network.

David Rawson, the U.S. Ambassador, said RTLMC’s euphemisms were subject to various
interpretations and he defended its right to broadcast as “freedom of speech.”
Is the incitement of genocide “protected speech”?
4. Organization:
All genocides are organized. At this stage, hate groups are organized, militias are trained
and armed, and the armed forces are purged of members of the intended victim group as
well as officers and others who might oppose genocide. Propaganda institutions, such as
the hate newspapers and radio station, are also strengthened and funded.
After the RPF invasion in October 1990, the Rwandan Armed Forces (Forces Armées
Rwandaises or FAR), the all-Hutu government army, expanded almost overnight from
5,000 to 28,000 men. It got considerable assistance in training and arms from the French
government. President Mitterand’s son, Jean-Christophe, headed the Africa office at the
Elysée Palace, and was a close friend of President Habyarimana. He was reputed to own
a plantation in Rwanda and to be personally involved in the arms trade. 600 French
paratroopers secretly took control of the counter-insurgency campaign. The Egyptian
government, with the intervention of Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali, sold $5.9
million in ammunition, rifles, mortar bombs, rockets, and rocket launchers to Rwanda on
28 October 1990. South African arms dealers were also a major source. Between 1990
and April 1994, Rwanda spent an estimated $112 million on arms, making it the third
largest arms purchaser in Africa, after oil-rich Nigeria and Angola. The purchases were
likely made with money diverted from loans by the World Bank.
It was the organization of extremist militias, however, that marked the organizational turn
toward genocide. In 1992 the Interahamwe, the militia of the ruling MRND party, was
organized. The Impuzamugambi, the militia of the CRD, an extreme Hutu Power party
organized by the Akazu elite to make the President’s MRND seem moderate by
comparison, soon followed it. These militias were secretly trained in camps run by
Rwandan army officers, armed with machetes, Kalashnikovs, and grenades from arms
shipments to the government.

5. Polarization:
Moderates are targeted and assassinated. Hate propaganda emphasizes the “us versus
them” nature of the situation. “If you are not with us, you are against us.” There is no
middle ground. Moderates who attempt to negotiate peace are denounced as traitors.
Rwandan moderates had formed several opposition parties and had won seats in
the National Assembly. On 6 April 1992, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a moderate Hutu, was
named Minister of Education. When she proposed ending the quota system that restricted
Tutsi access to higher education, twenty armed men attacked her in her home. In
November 1993, after she had been named Prime Minister in the government formed after
the signing of the Arusha Accords, Radio Télèvision Libre Des Milles Collines publicly
called for her assassination. She was one of the first officials to be murdered during the
genocide on April 7. (Her ten Belgian UNAMIR guards were also slaughtered. They had
been found with their own penises rammed in their mouths. This made the Belgian
governments decision to pull out mush easier). Kangura and RTLMC called anyone who
opposed Hutu Power an “accomplice” of the Tutsis and a secret ally of the R.P.F.
Joseph Kavaruganda, President of the Cour de Cassation (Supreme Court), another
moderate Hutu, was also targeted by the extremists. In January 1994, the head of the
Interahamwe in Rugendo threatened Kavaruganda, and he complained to the President on
January 15. On February 21, thugs broke into the Supreme Court building and did
considerable damage. On March 19, 1994, Captain Pascal Simbiyangwa warned Justice
Kavaruganda’s guards that the judge was a “cockroach” whose days were numbered and
that the group who would kill him had already been chosen. On March 23, 1994, an
Interahamwe, Enoch Kayonde told Justice Kavaruganda he could be killed at any time.
On the same day, Kavaruganda wrote a letter to President Habyarimana informing him of
these death threats and asking for protection against the Presidential Guard. His pleas
were to no avail. Justice Joseph Kavaruganda, was murdered on the first day of the
genocide.
It is significant that General Dallaire’s famous cable warning to the UN DPKO of
the coming genocide was entitled, “Request for Protection of Informant.” General
Dallaire’s informant asked to be evacuated from Rwanda, possibly after temporary
asylum in a foreign embassy. UN DPKO rejected the General’s plan. Thereafter, the

informant, who was personally opposed to the extermination plan, understandably

stopped informing UNAMIR about it. Physical protection of moderates is among the
most important steps that can be taken to prevent genocide at this stage. The UN refused
to do even that, although it was clearly within UNAMIR’s mandate.
6. Preparation:
During the preparation stage, plans are made for the genocide. Death lists are compiled.
Trial massacres are conducted, both as training for the genocidists, and to test whether
there will be any response, such as arrests, international denunciations, or sanctions. If
the murderers get away with their crimes, if there is impunity, it is a green light to finish
the genocide.
The trial massacres began in Rwanda soon after the Rwandan Patriotic Front
invaded. Hutus slaughtered 300 Tutsi civilians in Kabirira in October 1990. In January
1991, 500 to 1000 Tutsi were murdered in Kinigi. In March 1992, 300 Tutsi were
massacred by Hutu militias in Bugesera. No one was ever arrested for these crimes, and
there were no demands from international diplomats for such arrests. But the diplomatic
community knew about the crimes. Cables from the U.S. Embassy in February 1994
described the Interahamwe massacre of 70 Tutsis in Kigali between February 22 and 26.
On March 1, 1994, the Belgian ambassador reported that station RTLMC was
broadcasting “inflammatory statements calling for hatred – indeed for extermination.”
7. Extermination:
At this stage, the killing legally defined as genocide begins. Those who do it often think
they are “purifying” their society, by “exterminating” those who are less than human and
are a threat to them. In Rwanda, the mass murder began within hours of the crash of
President Habyaramana’s French plane on April 6, 1994. He was shot down after
conferring with regional leaders about implementation of the Arusha Accords, which he
had signed in August 1993. The Hutu Power elite saw the Accords as a direct threat to
their power, because they called for sharing power with the Rwandan Patriotic Front. To
this day, it is unclear who shot down the President’s plane. What is clear is that the Hutu
Power genocidists were well prepared, and began the slaughter immediately.

8. Denial:
During and after every genocide, the perpetrators deny they committed the crime. They
portray their murders as justified killing during war or repression of terrorism. They dig
up and dispose of the bodies and try to minimize the number of victims. They try to
blame the victims, often claiming that the victims’ own behavior brought on the killing.
They portray the murders as spontaneous outbreaks in response to the victims’
depredations, or as the actions of rogue army commanders, rather than as intentional
government policy. They challenge the veracity of the eyewitnesses and assassinate the
character of their accusers. The perpetrators claim to have been powerless to prevent the
killings by others, and even have the audacity to claim they assisted their victims. All of
these strategies of denial operated during and after the Rwandan genocide. The presence
of the Rwandan government representative at the very U.N. Security Council meetings
that considered the situation provided an ideal forum for such denial. Since the genocide,
despite massive evidence against them, this denial by perpetrators has continued both at
the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and in Rwandan courts and prisons.

Bibliography
1. Campbell, J. Kenneth. Genocide and the Global Village,

Palgrave Publishers, New York, 2001. 364.151 CAM
2. Igwara, Obi (ed.). Ethnic Hatred – Genocide in Rwanda,

ASEN Publications, London, 1995. 967.57104 IGW
3. Taylor, C. Christopher. Sacrifice As Terror – The Rwandan Genocide of 1994,

Berg Publishers, New York, 1999. 967.57104 TAY
4. Destexhe, Alain. Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century,

Pluto Press Publishers, London, 1995. 967.57104 DES
5. Johansson, Kurt and Chalk, Frank. The History and Sociology of Genocide,
Yale University Press, London, 1990. 364.15109

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Genocide in Rwanda: Fundamental Questions Author: Liam Hogan

Module Title: Origins, Development & Conflict Resolution

Student Name: Liam Hogan

Student I.D: 9843183

Module Code: IL5052

Lecturer: Prof. Dominic Murray

Date: January 10th 2003

Origins, Development & Conflict Resolution 1

"Genocide IV " by Epa Binamung

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Creation of the Division

Research in social psychology shows that it takes very little to

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How was it done?

A fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict contributed to

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In early April, Sindikubwabo described the violence as a spontaneous outburst of rage

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Origins, Development & Conflict Resolution 17

The eight stages of Genocide

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informant, who was personally opposed to the extermination plan, understandably

Origins, Development & Conflict Resolution 22

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1. Campbell, J. Kenneth. Genocide and the Global Village,

2. Igwara, Obi (ed.). Ethnic Hatred – Genocide in Rwanda,

3. Taylor, C. Christopher. Sacrifice As Terror – The Rwandan Genocide of 1994,

4. Destexhe, Alain. Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century,

Origins, Development & Conflict Resolution 24

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