Assigning Blame in Rwanda
DESOUZ, LEO J.
Assigning Blame in Rwanda How to break the cycZe of revenge in ethnic conflict BY LEO J. DESOUZA ON SEPTEMBER 26, 1996, THE Unj ted Nations’s International Criminal Tribunal for...
...The Hutu were determined,” claims Karera, “not to allow the Tutsi to repeat history...
...Prisoners cannot sit or lie down for lack of space...
...therefore, there is no feeling of fraternity whatsoever between them and us...
...They determined that the killings had been organized, encouraged, even ordered by the Hum government officials at the highest level, whose intent had been to wipe out the Tutsi from Rwanda...
...It was a pathetic sight...
...Implementation of the agreement, however, was slow...
...They were slain with stones and axes, machetes and clubs, hand grenades and guns...
...Television photographers and newspaper reporters told the tragedy as it unfolded, without reference to events in Burundi or what had previously transpired in Rwanda...
...The initial assault was repelled by the Hutu government, but skirmishes continued through 1991 and 1992...
...in Egypt, the Copts...
...In 1963, about 10,000 Tutsi were killed following an Inyenzi attack from Burundi...
...Francois Karera, a senior politician in the former Hutu government, now an exile in eastern Congo, was a young teacher in 1959 when the Hutu rose up for the first time...
...Across the country, the Tutsi were massacred in their homes, in open fields, along broad roads, and even as they hid in the bushes...
...Tutsi students from schools...
...Some 400 Hum were to be charged with planning and organizing the massacres...
...Theirs was a slow and peaceful infiltration...
...In another “safe” church, a Hutu mob swarmed in, haclang and clubbing frightened women and children to death...
...The Europeans were always attracted to the Tutsi...
...Comparisons to the Nazi extermination of the Jews have been tossed around...
...But while it’s advisable to punish the Hutu leaders who incited the population to commit the atrocities, it is a grave mistake to go after the low level perpetrators...
...They dutifully complied...
...In Rwanda, the system was even more flagrant: It consolidated the higher status of the Tutsi by emphasizing th(2 differences between them and the Hutu...
...But this is a situation where achieving justice at the level of individual cases is less important than putting a stop to the endless cycle of violence...
...They often selected an elite minority group to help administer their far-flung colonies...
...The slaughter had begun...
...They are being treated like animals...
...As the Tutsi were being decimated in Rwanda, Tutsi exiles living in Uganda felt the time for action was at hand...
...In 1972, they set out to massacre every Hutu with an education, a government job, or money...
...He is accused of atrocities in his district, where 2,000 Tutsi lie buried in two mass graves after being hacked to death with machetes...
...And when Rwanda’s Hutu President was lulled in April of 1994, there was widespread fear among the Hutu that another Tutsi rebellion was again underway...
...Hutu mothers with babies strapped to their backs killed Tutsi mothers with babies strapped to their backs...
...we the Hutu were going to work for them again, and the educated Hutu would be killed as in 1959,” says Francois Karera, who insists the Hutu’s subsequent massacre of the Tutsi was driven by fear and self-preservation...
...The story repeated itself in 1973 when more Tutsi were killed on suspicion of their involvement in a coup in which the Hutu General Habyarimana deposed Rwanda’s first President...
...Like Rwanda, Burundi became independent in 1962...
...Hutu rebellion was dealt with swiftly: Villages were burnt and leaders executed - with guns supplied by Europeans...
...and in northern India, the Sikhs...
...Within hours the Rwandan Presidential Guard (dominated by Hutu) went on a rampage, killing Rwanda’s Tutsi Prime Minister and other members of the opposition party sympathetic to the Tutsi...
...the ousted government and . . . civilians suspected of taking part in the genocidal attacks...
...He now practices in Minneapolis...
...Hutu peasants bound themselves to individual Tutsi lords, giving land, produce, and personal services in exchange for the lord’s protection and use of his cattle...
...Rwanda was pronounced a German colony...
...And nobody asked that the Tutsi in Burundi be tried...
...Far from it...
...Now, pushing with the ferocity of the dispossessed, the exiled Tutsi overran the country and by July 18 had taken over the capital and declared victory...
...Rwanda and Burundi are practically replicas of one another...
...But the following morning, soldiers appeared, blew open the locked church door with a hand grenade, and fired into the huddled mass...
...Meanwhile, for lack of funds and assistance, Rwanda’s unsuccessful Tutsi rebels lived quietly in exile until October of 1990...
...If the Tutsi gendarme stopped them,” he continued, “they would turn quietly back...
...Many Hutu were taken from their homes at night,” wrote David Lamb of the Los Angeles Times in his book The Afiicans...
...The rebellions prompted severe retaliation from the Hutu in power...
...And if that happens, the cycle of genocidal violence in Rwanda will only continue...
...In the Hutu mind, the Tutsi were going to bring back their regime...
...One Tutsi group said: “Relations between us and them have forever been based on servitude...
...The following December, the UN created the International War-Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda, with trials to be held in the neutral territory of Tanzania...
...Within two weeks, the Tutsi government announced that they would “proceed with war-crimes trials of...
...Whenever the Hutu needed the use of cattle, they worked for the Tutsi owner as payment...
...Unlike the Hutu, who are a dark people, short and squat, with coarse features, the Tutsi are tall and fair, with finer features that reminded Europeans of themselves...
...So obedient, subservient, and hopeless had the Hutus become that they answered the summons, which even the most unlearned soul knew was really an execution notice...
...What little flexibility had previously existed between the Tutsi lords and the Hutu vanished during the colonial era...
...The Hutu leaders countered with “The Manifesto of the IBahutu” which sought to end the Tutsi’s stranglehold on the government...
...The Hutu candidate Kayibanda was elected President following a Hutu victory at the polls...
...The whole world judged the Hutu crimes as an isolated act...
...In 1962, Rwanda became independent and held national elections...
...Land, cattle, and power were consolidated in the hands of the Tutsi, and the Hutu became serfs...
...Their militants organized into guerrilla bands, and casualties escalated...
...In this manner, the Tutsi minority-between 10 and 20 percent of the population-held dominion over the Hutu for 4080 years...
...To this day, sporadic killing of the Hutu continues in Burundi, and recently there has been an ominous escalation...
...Preparing to land on the palace grounds, the plane was shot down, lulling both men...
...If, with the acquiescence of the international community, the Tutsi government continues to prosecute low-level Hutus without also holding local Tutsis responsible for their past deeds, the Hutu of Rwanda will feel justified in taking their counterrevenge the next time they’re on top...
...Tutsi teenage girls were raped...
...It takes hours to reach the latrines or the cooking fires...
...Calling themselves the “Rwandan Patriotic Front,” the rebels entered the country from the north and advanced swiftly toward the capital...
...Sometimes, when the death quotas at the prisons and police stations had been filled for the day, the queuedup Hutu were told to return the next day...
...Whatever their motivation-fear or simple hatred-the Hutu should, of course, be held accountable for their slaughter of the Tutsi...
...It was a way of creating a client community, a tactic that divided the colonized population while consolidating colonial rule...
...Soldiers and militiamen joined in...
...Nobody called it genocide, then or now...
...Already, in Eastern Congo Tutsi are believed to be exterminating the fleeing Hutu refugees...
...There is no protection against heavy rain and many prisoners’ feet show signs of rotting from gangrene...
...In Lebanon, the Maronites were the anointed ones...
...But unlike Rwanda, Burundi’s Tutsi minority has retained power and, to this day, rules the country...
...In contrast to the international tribunal in Tanzania, which is focused on the leaders of the massacre, the Rwandan government’s probe is centered on lower level civilians...
...The man in the dock was Jean-Paul Akayesu, former mayor of Taba in Rwanda and the first Hutu to be tried by the Tribunal...
...the Tutsi spurned it...
...Both were members of the region’s majority Hutu tribe...
...He recalls that period as one when he, as an educated Hutu, was “hunted” by Tutsi for daring to aspire to a higher standing than a mere peasant farmer...
...The local Hutu mayor had promised police protection...
...Between 1961 and 1966, the Inyenzi, or cockroaches, as the Tutsi militants called themselves, launched 10 major attacks from neighboring countries-Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Zaire...
...But the Rwanda conflict, while tragic, is considerably more complicated...
...In 1885 Europe’s colonial powers convened at a conference in Berlin to carve up the African continent...
...A Centuries-Old Grudge The Hutu’s fear and hatred of the Tutsi has its roots in centuries of abuse...
...They were almost all Tutsi, along with a few Hutu who had refused to go along with the carnage...
...Within three months 250,000 Hutu were dead, their homes destroyed...
...In contrast to the indifference with which the international community greeted the 1972 massacre of Hutu in Burundi, the 1994 massacre of Tutsi in Rwanda provoked global outrage...
...At that time, using Uganda as a base, the Rwandan Patriotic Front launched an invasion...
...This did not sit well with the Tutsi...
...Eventually defeated, they fell back into exile...
...But over time they used their cattle and their warring skills to build their power and prestige...
...But unless it is done, another genocide is waiting to happen: The Tutsi will lull the Hutu, and then, of course, the Hutu will kill the Tutsi...
...The only way to end the bloodletting in Rwanda once and for all is to declare a general amnesty for all but the highest level perpetrators and establish a truth commission similar to the one in South Africa, charged with investigating the fate of victims on both sides even as it forgives most of their attackers...
...Alison Davis, of the relief agency Doctors Without Borders...
...Assigning Blame in Rwanda How to break the cycZe of revenge in ethnic conflict BY LEO J. DESOUZA ON SEPTEMBER 26, 1996, THE Unj ted Nations’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda began genocide trials in Arusha, a small town at the foot of Mt...
...They had had a running battle with the Hutu ever since the country gained independence in 1962 and democratic elections had put the more numerous Hutu in power...
...A cease-fire was called in January 1993, but the Tutsi attacked again...
...In the sporadic violence of that period, more than 20,000 Tutsi were displaced...
...They would walk down the main road toward the border...
...Tutsi refugees totaled 150,000...
...To those following the conflict on the evening news, the Hutu-Tutsi conflict seems entirely straightforward, if somewhat incredible...
...LEO J. DESOUZA was an orthopedic slirgeon consultant in Uganda...
...For 7,000 people there are 21 latrines, 5 of them designated for dysentery sufferers who try to stay nearby...
...It was during this period that the Mwami came closer to absolute rule than at any other time...
...Hutu 10-year-olds lulled Tutsi 10-yearolds...
...Also aboard his plane was Cyprien Ntaryamira, president of neighboring Burundi...
...The Tutsi of Central Africa are not quite the peace-loving victims of Western imagination...
...The prisons in Rwanda are currently packed with 85,000 Hutu...
...From Kigali the killing spread to towns, prefectural capitals, and hillside settlements...
...In a last ditch attempt to hold onto power, the Tutsi began massacring any Hutu they believed might stand in their way...
...Alike in size and population, they have the same tribal mix of Hutu and Tutsi, share much of the same history, and were part of the same colony...
...A few die every day...
...The Tutsi arrived much later, around the 15th century, from the northeast...
...The story of the majority Hutu population’s massacre of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority is one of unimaginable viciousness and violence...
...The Hutu were in Rwanda long before anyone, other than the Bantu tribes...
...The Belgians even introduced identity cards, requiring everyone to be recognized by their tribe...
...The only hope of ending that cycle lies in understanding the full history of Hutu-Tutsi relations and adopting an approach which takes that history into account...
...Tall and aristocratic in bearing, the Tutsi claimed they were divinely ordained to rule...
...Schools were open to them and admission to college was fmed in their favor, by requiring applicants to pass a minimum height test...
...Now that they are back in power, the Tutsi of Rwanda have embarked on their own broad investigation and prosecution of Hutu genocidaires...
...Reaction was instantaneous...
...They fanned out across the city looking for Tutsi...
...Early reports are troubling...
...The Germans ruled Rwanda through the Tutsi king, or Mwami, who, in turn, used German forces to strengthen his own position...
...The few Hutu who tried to escape the executioners seemed to make only token attempts...
...Their stated aim: to take over the government in order to protect the Tutsi...
...A facility built to hold 500 inmates now holds 7,000...
...Others received summonses to report to the police station...
...Certainly, the public outrage is understandable...
...What Next...
...This could initially be conducted under the aegis of the Organization of African Unity, or the UN, or both...
...Habyarimana subsequently died in the fateful 1994 plane crash that triggered the latest round of violence...
...It is horrific,” said Dr...
...The Belgians ignored the manifesto...
...Akayesu pleaded not guilty and asked for postponement, but when the trial resumed in January of this year, the international community renewed its cry for justice, i.e., for the blood of the Hutu...
...Over the years, they have committed a long list of atrocities of their own...
...Kilimanjaro in Tanzania...
...They were assured of the best jobs...
...The victorious Tutsi quickly ascertained that the violence that had seized the country since the president’s plane crash was not the result of random acts...
...Before it was over, half a million Rwandans were dead...
...The events immediately preceding the massacre and the subsequent months prior to the overthrow of the government by Tutsi rebels are familiar to-and abhorred by-most readers: On April 6,1994, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was returning from a peace conference in Tanzania...
...The Germans and Belgians romanticized the tall Tutsi as Africa‘s elite...
...This modus operandi was not unusual among colonial rulers...
...In the late ’60s and early O OS, when the Tutsi in Burundi began to fear that the country’s more numerous Hutu would come to power as they had in Rwanda, the Tutsi came up with a simple solution: eliminate the Hutu in Burundi...
...The international community’s ignorance of this history has caused them to treat the Tutsi who now rule Rwanda as noble victims-and to ignore the danger that the Tutsi will use their newfound power to exact bloody revenge on the Hutu...
...By then, they had regrouped, retrained, and rearmed with new and heavier weapons...
...This simple arrangement eventually crystallized into a feudal-type class system...
...It was no different when the Belgians took over during World War I. From 1916 until Rwandan independence in 1962, the Belgians ruled th rough the Tutsi aristocracy...
...In the years leading up to Rwanda’s independence, the country’s High Council, a Tutsi body, called for urgent training of the Tutsi elite in preparation for self-government- a plain attempt to perpetuate Tutsi dominance...
...But the Hutu prevailed...
...Tutsi patients disappeared from hospitals...
...On August 4,1993, a peace agreement was signed in Tanzania...
...Since our Kings have conquered all of the Hum’s lands by killing their monarchs and enslaving their people, how can they now pretend to be our brothers...
...In the first week of the new year, a Rwandan court at Kibungo sentenced two Hutu men to death after a four-hour trial...
...It is true that some or many may have been involved in the killing, but the way they are treated is not justice...
...They returned the next morning to finish off those who had survived, leaving only bodies, blood and silence...
...So they stand, four to a square yard, in the muddy central courtyard...
...Tensions mounted in 1959...
...Events in neighboring Burundi served to further inflame the Hutu-Tutsi hatreds in Rwanda...
...In a Roman Catholic church, an orange brick building in the town square of one village, 1,200 Tutsi sought refuge...
...More trials have now begun in Kigali and Byumba...
...Since the Europeans governed their colonies ostensibly to enlighten poor backward souls and to introduce them to the concept of fairness, one would have thought that the Europeans would have attempted to relieve the Hutu from serfdom...
...A quarter of a million Hutu were slain in three months, but the world did not take notice...
...True, many crimes would go unpunished...
Vol. 29 • September 1997 • No. 9
