Loading AI tools
1994 genocide in Rwanda From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War.[4] During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the demographic evidence suggests that the real number killed was likely lower.[5] The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths.[6]
| Rwandan genocide | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Rwandan Civil War | |
Human skulls at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial Centre | |
| Location | Rwanda |
| Date | 7 April – 19 July 1994 |
| Target | Tutsi, moderate Hutu, Twa |
Attack type | Genocide, mass murder, genocidal rape, ethnic cleansing |
| Deaths | Estimated:
500,000 to 662,000 Tutsis[1] & 10,000 Twa[2] |
| Victims | 250,000 to 500,000 Tutsi women raped during the genocide.[3] |
| Perpetrators |
|
| Motive | Anti-Tutsi sentiment, Hutu Power |
| External videos | |
|---|---|
via  | |
 Coming To Terms With The Rwandan Genocide (2003), Journeyman Pictures |
In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from their base in Uganda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War. Over the course of the next three years, neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage. In an effort to bring the war to a peaceful end, the Rwandan government led by Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana[7] signed the Arusha Accords with the RPF on 4 August 1993. The catalyst became Habyarimana's assassination on 6 April 1994, creating a power vacuum and ending peace accords. Genocidal killings began the following day when majority Hutu soldiers, police, and militia murdered key Tutsi and moderate Hutu military and political leaders.
The scale and brutality of the genocide caused shock worldwide, but no country intervened to forcefully stop the killings.[8] Most of the victims were killed in their own villages or towns, many by their neighbors and fellow villagers. Hutu gangs searched out victims hiding in churches and school buildings. The militia murdered victims with machetes and rifles.[9] Sexual violence was rife, with an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women raped during the genocide.[3] The RPF quickly resumed the civil war once the genocide started and captured all government territory, ending the genocide and forcing the government and génocidaires into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
The genocide had lasting and profound effects. In 1996, the RPF-led Rwandan government launched an offensive into Zaire, home to exiled leaders of the former Rwandan government and many Hutu refugees, starting the First Congo War and killing an estimated 200,000 people. Today, Rwanda has two public holidays to mourn the genocide, and "genocide ideology" and "divisionism" are criminal offences.[10][11]
The earliest inhabitants of what is now Rwanda were the Twa, a group of aboriginal pygmy hunter-gatherers who settled in the area between 8000 BC and 3000 BC and remain in Rwanda today.[12][13] Between 700 BC and 1500 AD, a number of Bantu groups migrated into Rwanda, and began to clear forest land for agriculture.[13][14] Historians have several theories regarding the nature of the Bantu migrations: one theory is that the first settlers were Hutu, while the Tutsi migrated later and formed a distinct racial group, possibly of Cushitic origin.[15] An alternative theory is that the migration was slow and steady from neighbouring regions, with incoming groups bearing high genetic similarity to the established ones,[16] and integrating into rather than conquering the existing society.[13][17] Under this theory, the Hutu and Tutsi distinction arose later and was not a racial one, but principally a class or caste distinction in which the Tutsi herded cattle while the Hutu farmed the land.[18][19] The Hutu, Tutsi and Twa of Rwanda share a common language and are collectively known as the Banyarwanda.[20]
The population coalesced, first into clans (ubwoko),[21] and then, by 1700, into around eight kingdoms.[22] The Kingdom of Rwanda, ruled by the Tutsi Nyiginya clan, became the dominant kingdom from the mid-eighteenth century,[23] expanding through a process of conquest and assimilation,[24] and achieving its greatest extent under the reign of King Kigeli Rwabugiri in 1853–1895. Rwabugiri expanded the kingdom west and north,[25][23] and initiated administrative reforms which caused a rift to grow between the Hutu and Tutsi populations.[25] These included uburetwa, a system of forced labour which Hutu had to perform to regain access to land seized from them,[26] and ubuhake, under which Tutsi patrons ceded cattle to Hutu or Tutsi clients in exchange for economic and personal service.[27] Although Hutu and Tutsi were often treated differently, they shared the same language and culture, the same clan names, and the same customs; the symbols of kinship served as a unifying bond between them.[28]: 421
Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi were assigned to Germany by the Berlin Conference of 1884,[29] and Germany established a presence in the country in 1897 with the formation of an alliance with the king.[30] German policy was to rule the country through the Rwandan monarchy; this system had the added benefit of enabling colonization with small European troop numbers.[31] The colonists favoured the Tutsi over the Hutu when assigning administrative roles, believing them to be migrants from Ethiopia and racially superior.[32] The Rwandan king welcomed the Germans, using their military strength to widen his rule.[33] Belgian forces took control of Rwanda and Burundi in 1917 during World War I,[34] and from 1926 began a policy of more direct colonial rule.[35][36] The Belgians modernised the Rwandan economy, but Tutsi supremacy remained, leaving the Hutu disenfranchised.[37]
In the early 1930s, Belgium introduced a permanent division of the population by classifying Rwandans into three ethnic (ethno-racial) groups, with the Hutu representing about 84% of the population, the Tutsi about 15%, and the Twa about 1%. Compulsory identity cards were issued labeling (under the heading for "ethnicity and race") each individual as either Tutsi, Hutu, Twa, or Naturalised. While it had previously been possible for particularly wealthy Hutus to become honorary Tutsis, the identity cards prevented any further movement between the groups[38] and made socio-economic groups into rigid ethnic groups.[39]
The ethnic identities of the Hutu and Tutsi were reshaped and mythologized by the colonizers.[28] Christian missionaries in Rwanda promoted the theory about the "Hamitic" origins of the kingdom, and referred to the distinctively Ethiopian features and hence, foreign origins, of the Tutsi "caste".[28][40] These mythologies provide the basis for anti-Tutsi propaganda in 1994.[28]: 421 Starkly contrasted, the Tutsi origin myth holds that Kanyarwanda had several sons, including Gatutsi and Gahutu, ancestors of the Tutsi and Hutu who are therefore brothers. The Hutu origin myth holds that Kigwa (patrilineal ancestor of Ruhanga and the first Tutsi) fell from the sky on an earth inhabited by Hutu.[41]: 65
After World War II, a Hutu emancipation movement began to grow in Rwanda,[42] fuelled by increasing resentment of the inter-war social reforms, and also an increasing sympathy for the Hutu within the Catholic Church.[43] Catholic missionaries increasingly viewed themselves as responsible for empowering the underprivileged Hutu rather than the Tutsi elite, leading rapidly to the formation of a sizeable Hutu clergy and educated elite that provided a new counterbalance to the established political order.[43] The monarchy and prominent Tutsis sensed the growing influence of the Hutu and began to agitate for immediate independence on their own terms.[42] In 1957, a group of Hutu scholars wrote the "Bahutu Manifesto". This was the first document to label the Tutsi and Hutu as separate races, and called for the transfer of power from Tutsi to Hutu based on what it termed "statistical law".[44]
_-_Rwandan_revolution_2.png)
On 1 November 1959 Dominique Mbonyumutwa, a Hutu sub-chief, was attacked close to his home in Byimana, Gitarama prefecture,[45] by supporters of the pro-Tutsi party. Mbonyumutwa survived, but rumours began spreading that he had been killed.[46] Hutu activists responded by killing Tutsis, both the elite and ordinary civilians, marking the beginning of the Rwandan Revolution.[47] The Tutsi responded with attacks of their own, but by this stage the Hutu had full backing from the Belgian administration who wanted to overturn the Tutsi domination.[48][49] In early 1960, the Belgians replaced most Tutsi chiefs with Hutu and organised mid-year commune elections which returned an overwhelming Hutu majority.[48] The king was deposed, a Hutu-dominated republic created, and the country became independent in 1962.[50] As the revolution progressed, Tutsis began leaving the country to escape the Hutu purges, settling in the four neighbouring countries: Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire.[51] These exiles, unlike the Banyarwanda who migrated during the pre-colonial and colonial era, were regarded as refugees in their host countries,[52] and began almost immediately to agitate for a return to Rwanda.[53] They formed armed groups who launched attacks into Rwanda; these were largely unsuccessful, and led to further reprisal killings of 10,000 Tutsis and further Tutsi exiles.[53] By 1964, more than 300,000 Tutsis had fled, and were forced to remain in exile for the next three decades.[54]
Grégoire Kayibanda presided over a Hutu republic for the next decade, imposing an autocratic rule similar to the pre-revolution feudal monarchy.[55] He was overthrown following a coup in 1973, which brought President Juvénal Habyarimana to power. Pro-Hutu and Anti-Tutsi discrimination continued in Rwanda itself, although the indiscriminate violence against the Tutsi did decrease somewhat.[56] Habyarimana founded the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) party in 1975,[57] and promulgated a new constitution following a 1978 referendum, making the country a one-party state in which every citizen had to belong to the MRND.[58]
At 408 inhabitants per square kilometre (1,060/sq mi), Rwanda's population density is among the highest in Africa. Rwanda's population had increased from 1.6 million people in 1934 to 7.1 million in 1989, leading to competition for land. Historians such as Gérard Prunier believe that the 1994 genocide can be partly attributed to population density.[59]
In the 1980s, a group of 500 Rwandan refugees in Uganda, led by Fred Rwigyema, fought with the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA) in the Ugandan Bush War, which saw Yoweri Museveni overthrow Milton Obote.[60] These soldiers remained in the Ugandan army following Museveni's inauguration as Ugandan president, but simultaneously began planning an invasion of Rwanda through a covert network within the army's ranks.[61] In October 1990, Rwigyema led a force of over 4,000[62] rebels from Uganda, advancing 60 km (37 mi) into Rwanda under the banner of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).[63] Rwigyema was killed on the third day of the attack,[64] and France and Zaire deployed forces in support of the Rwandan army, allowing them to repel the invasion.[65] Rwigyema's deputy, Paul Kagame, took command of the RPF forces,[66] organising a tactical retreat through Uganda to the Virunga Mountains, a rugged area of northern Rwanda.[67] From there, he rearmed and reorganised the army, and carried out fundraising and recruitment from the Tutsi diaspora.[68]
Kagame restarted the war in January 1991, with a surprise attack on the northern town of Ruhengeri. The RPF captured the town, benefiting from the element of surprise, and held it for one day before retreating to the forests.[69] For the next year, the RPF waged a hit-and-run style guerrilla war, capturing some border areas but not making significant gains against the Rwandan army.[70] In June 1992, following the formation of a multiparty coalition government in Kigali, the RPF announced a ceasefire and began negotiations with the Rwandan government in Arusha, Tanzania.[71] In early 1993, several extremist Hutu groups formed and began campaigns of large scale violence against the Tutsi.[72] The RPF responded by suspending peace talks and launching a major attack, gaining a large swathe of land across the north of the country.[73] Peace negotiations eventually resumed in Arusha; the resulting set of agreements, known as the Arusha Accords, were signed in August 1993 and gave the RPF positions in a Broad-Based Transitional Government (BBTG) and in the national army.[74][75] The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), a peacekeeping force, arrived in the country and the RPF were given a base in the national parliament building in Kigali, for