Genocide Museum Victims Wall, Kilgali, Rwanda. Photo by Brad McCartney.
April 9, 2010
In 2004, my wife and I traveled to Rwanda, primarily to visit the mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park. While there, we visited the Kigali Memorial Centre (the Genocide Museum). After we returned home, I put together a simplified report on the events leading up to the Genocide, the Genocide, and the aftermath. This account is based on what we saw and read at the Genocide Museum and General Romeo Dallaire’s book, “Shaking Hands With the Devil.”
Rwanda is made up of Hutus, the majority, and Tutsis, the minority. Tutsis tend to be a little taller and fairer skinned, although this distinction is debatable. Hutus and Tutsis speak the same language, lived side-by-side, worked together and intermarried. At the end of World War II, under a United Nations’ mandate, Rwanda became a Belgium trusteeship. Belgium turned the trusteeship into a Belgium colony. The Belgiums favored the Tutsis, giving them the important positions. Predictably, this caused much resentment among the Hutus and the seeds of hate were sown.
After independence, the Hutus came to power and persecution of the Tutsi minority began, resulting in civil war. The Hutu government contracted with the French government to train its troops and to supply arms. After years of fighting, a peace accord was signed in Tanzania between the Hutu government and the Tutsi rebels. The plane carrying Rwanda’s President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down on its way back from Tanzania. Conventional wisdom at the time concluded that the plane’s downing resulted in a Tutsi-hating, hard-line, fragmented Hutu leadership.
But who ordered the downing of the plane carrying President Habyarimana? Many point to Paul Kagame, now President of Rwanda and the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Forces (RPF). There are also other unanswered questions concerning what role, if any, he played in the years leading up to the Genocide. Now it seems clear that the Genocide probably was pre-planned years in advance, not some spontaneous eruption. But by whom? Again, many point to Kagame.
Kagame vigorously opposed the introduction of UN peacekeeping forces to monitor the peace agreement entered into in Tanzania. But the UN appointed Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian general, to head a small peacekeeping force. The force was underfunded and under-equipped. The UN force had strict orders not to use any arms except for self-defense. In January 1994, General Dallaire learned from a reliable informant that a Hutu group was compiling a list of Tutsis to be killed, named the Hutus compiling the list, and provided the location of arms caches. Dallaire pleaded with the UN to supply him with a few more troops, give him authority to seize the arms caches, and to permit him to use force if necessary. The UN and key Security Council members, notably the United States (then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), Belgium and France, refused permission. The Clinton administration took the lead in opposing any international action.
Kagame’s RPF ultimately prevailed, but not until about 1 million Rwandans were murdered over a three-month period. The RPF forces were experienced and better trained than the mobs rampaging the countryside and some argue that Kagame could have, but did not, take control of Kilgali, the capitol, much earlier than he did. If he had, thousands of lives could have been saved. Why did he wait? Kagame’s game seemed to be total control of Rwanda. He ultimately succeeded.
Presently, a number of the perpetrators of the Genocide are on trial before a UN tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, and at least three have been convicted. Lower level perpetrators were sent back to their villages to be dealt with by the village elders, a truth and reconciliation system, modeled after the South African example.
Many armed Hutu rebels are still active in the Congo and Rwanda has invaded the Congo on numerous occasions to engage these rebels.
The UN, France, Belgium and the US have much to answer for. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General at the time, former President Clinton and the Belgium ambasador to Rwanda, have apologized for not doing more to prevent the Genocide. In February 2010, French President President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted Rwanda genocide “mistakes,” but did not apologize. The French had assisted many of the Genocide perpetrators to escape and, reportedly, some are still residing in France.
Unfortunately, Rwanda had the misfortune of having no strategic value to the West and no valuable resources.
The Hunger Site
June 30, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Robin Philpot’s critique of Romeo Dallaire’s book “Shake Hands with the Devil,” Counterpunch, 2004, http://www.counterpunch.org/philpot05152004.html.
April 13, 2010 at 1:23 am
To therisingcontinent:
“I hope they don’t discover oil. Then we will be in real trouble”. [Blood Diamond]
Living next to the D.R.C. is sort of like having oil discovered in your country, isn’t it?
April 12, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Mr. Ralph,
Having read your article, I felt…
I read your article and felt compelled to comment on a number of misinterpretations regarding past and recent facts about Rwandan history.
There are untold facts surrounding the Kigali Memorial Centre. When, for example, Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, leader of United Democratic Forces UDF-Inkingi, visited the centre on January 16th, 2010, she spoke of truths others were lacking the courage to confront. She indicated that there were victims of crimes against humanity committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front during the genocide, or even before or after the official dates, who were not remembered anywhere in Rwanda.
The identity of the victims who are displayed is debated among Rwandans and other circles. Where did the Rwandan Patriotic Front government find the 250,000 corpses held at the memorial who are supposedly Tutsi, knowing that at the time Kigali counted less than 300,000 inhabitants; unless some of the victims were in their majority Hutu? Hutu represent approximately 85% of the general population. However, since RPF policy has since then been geared towards drawing compassion to what it has marketed as a “Tutsi genocide”, the question is Did Paul Kagame’s government exaggerate the number of victims and borrow the rest from victims of the main ethnic group. On Wednesday April 7, 2010 the day of commemorating the genocide, he indicated numbers of victims didn’t matter.
The Belgian trusteeship over Rwanda started with the end of World War I when the Germans were defeated and lost all their African colonies. These went to the victors: Britain, France and Belgium.
Hutu’s resentment against Tutsi didn’t start with Belgians. Hutu had been enslaved for almost four centuries by Tutsi before Europeans arrived in the country, this towards the end of the 19th century. What the Belgians only did was to formalize a prevailing situation of inhuman exploitation of Hutu by Tutsi. With the arrival of Europeans, Hutu slaves became accountable to two masters: Tutsi and Belgians.
After the 60s, Hutu governments didn’t sign contracts with the French government. At the end of the 70s, there was a normal agreement between two sovereign nations, France accepting to train and equip Rwandan military. Terms and conditions of those arrangements were reviewed periodically. As of today, because of the United States’ military support of Paul Kagame’s regime, it is like saying that if the latter was responsible of crimes against its population, the US would be blamed for that.
Conventional wisdom does not apply in the shooting of the plane which carried Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, unless it is the RPF’s one. On the contrary of such wisdom, fragmentation of Hutu leadership which had prevailed for many months prior to the shooting came to a halt. Everyone understood from such an act of terrorism that their planners wanted to create total chaos in the country for political and selfish reasons.
Rome Dallaire did manage to get hold of some ammunition from the Rwandan army. But knowing that Rwanda was still at war against RPF, which was at the time considered as an external invader, how could’ve been possible for the Rwandan army to hand in their weaponry to the UN peacekeepers, unless government’s soldiers didn’t anymore believe in defending their country. The whole situation was like the UN and those backing RPF (mainly US and Britain), were putting pressure on the Hutu government to hand over their institutions to RPF.
Until recently, I didn’t believe RPF’s sponsors realized their protégé was so criminal up to the point that since starting his rebellion, millions of people have been killed. Unless they didn’t and still don’t care about African lives despite the rhetoric. It is true Paul Kagame strategically refused to intervene to stop the genocide. Some of his men even wore Interahamwe’s uniforms and contributed to the killings.
During the 100 days of genocide Paul Kagame’s RPF threatened any foreign forces which would intervene. From that perspective, any one would understand his animosity against the French who came against his will. They arrived in Rwanda under a UN mandate towards the end of June 1994. Despite several calls for negotiations made by the Rwanda interim government of April 8th to July 3rd 1994, RPF remained inflexible. It was applying a geared plan.
Concluding your article by saying that Rwanda had no strategic value to the West and no valuable resources for them to intervene directly is a misinterpretation of events and a misunderstanding of geopolitics of the region. They didn’t need to act themselves on the ground. UN and RPF acted as proxies. By deciding not to intervene, this was their decision to get involved. With the victory of RPF, and by having a foot in Rwanda, US and Britain and other resources hungry countries, could easily walk into the immensely resources rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Their walk into that country has now directly and indirectly killed 6millions so far. We Rwandans believe that if our country had been located far away from DRC, we won’t have endured what we have been experiencing for now twenty years.
April 12, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Ralph, you went to Rwanda and were told the story of Rwanda by the victor.
Every thing in Rwanda is tailored in such way that not only RPF account of event is the only one but also the law makes it difficult to challenge such account. It has become against the law to research and tell a different version of events that took place before, during and after the genocide. Most people who tried have been charged with genocide denial crime.
Don’t get me wrong, the genocide DID TAKE place in Rwanda. the issue is how did the country get there? Who was the mistermind? who wanted it and who was to profit from it? who is responsible for the whole conflict?
In your simplified account, you forgot to mention that Hutu people had been living in slavely for 8 century. Slavely ended with colonisation where loyal families who couldn’t accept democracy had to live the country.
Decendant of those members of the loyal family made several attempt to come back to power against the young Republic, creating tension between internal ethnic groups that were otherwise living in peace with each other. the last attempt was in 1990.
in 1993 and 1994, three elected hutu presidents were assassinated within 8 months. which triggered panic to Hutu people who believed they were facing a strong chance of being taken back into similar situation they were before the birth of the republic.
I admire that you stand corrected and I would like you to read the following links and let me know what you think about your simplified account:
http://www.mail-archive.com/ugandanet@kym.net/msg18923.html
http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/what-really-happened-in-rwanda-3432/
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_archives/2009/5/27/4202188.html
Kidume
April 12, 2010 at 8:55 am
I know I can speak for Professor Peter Erlinder, Lead Defense Counsel for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, all three of Rwanda’s embattled opposition presidential candidates, and many other exile and dissident Rwandans in thanking you heartily for this, Ralph, though I hope they’ll respond as well.
You and anyone who’s taken the time to follow this to this point, here in FCJ, is now way ahead of 99.99% of Americans in understanding it. Thanks for making the effort.
I should add that I had no idea what was really going on in Rwanda in 1994 at the time, but that many Rwandans have been writing to tell me their individual stories of 1994, including this one, a response to my story “Rwanda’s prisons and genocide ideology law,” http://goo.gl/OYQV:
“I am from Kiyombe in Byumba. RPF came in 1991 and called upon all the people from our village for a security meeting. After people had gathered at the soccer pitch of Kiyombe, Mr. Hitler Kagame ordered his military to bomb the gathering. I escaped and went through the tea plantation and found my way to Uganda. Ever since I have never returned to Rwanda but I am still considered a genocide denier or genocidaire? Why? Simply because I am a Hutu and I don’t even have rights to go back to Rwanda and bury my family and relatives in dignity? Do you know how old I was by then? Just 16. I survived but it is me and me alone.”
April 11, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Correction:
After reading Ann Garrison’s well reasoned and well supported criticism of my piece and reading Keith Harmon Snow’s persuasive article, “Whitewashing Rwanda Genocide, (21.04.09)” I agree with Ms. Garrison that “Rwanda Genocide: A Simplified Account,” is not an accurate portrayal of events that led to the Rwanda Genocide, or its aftermath.
It seems that I relied too heavily on what I read and saw at the Rwanda Genocide Museum, and General Dallaire’s book and documentary about his return to Rwanda. I also relied on Samantha Powers’ “Bystanders to Genocide” in the Sept. 2001 issue of the Atlantic Magazine
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/bystanders-to-genocide/4571/1/?
I now realize that the museum was established under Paul Kagame’s presidency and, therefore, would portray the events leading up to the Genocide and the Genocide from the RPF point of view.
April 11, 2010 at 8:51 am
Re Romeo Dallaire, see human rigthts investigator/war reporter Keith Harmon Snow, http://goo.gl/yM5S, http://goo.gl/ICgn
April 11, 2010 at 8:02 am
Quoting Ralph’s comment: “Now, if the turmoil was occurring in the mineral-rich D.R. of Congo, the U.S. would have an economic interest in intervening.”
Ralph, what can you possibly be talking about? There are six million people dead in the mineral rich eastern D.R.C., probably far more, but the IRC, after much field research, estimated 5.4 million war dead, in January 2008, over two years ago, with Congolese dying of disease and starvation at a rate of 45,000/mo. in refugee camps. And the U.S. HAS intervened. That is what the Congo War—an ongoing intervention, invasion and occupation, by the Rwandan Defense Force, a U.S. proxy.
Please take a few minutes to consider this KPFA News report and video republished on Global Research:
VIDEO: Eight Million Africans Died in Wars Financed by US, UK, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18351
Grenades went off again in Kigali, Rwanda, last night, after Kagame reshuffled the military, amidst rumors of a coup, http://goo.gl/Fly9 One person dead, four more injured. That’s four grenade attack in Kigali this year, but the least lethal at least. Journalists I know in Kigali say, again, that the government did the bombings, again, to terrorize the population, and indeed, the government does stand to benefit by terrorizing the population right now.
Three viable parties have been trying to contest the election and one has been living with an assassination threat for months; the other two are close to being incarcerated for “genocide ideology,” meaning they’ve dared to say that not only Tutsi but Hutu were victims of crimes against humanity. They don’t say genocide; crimes against humanity. Important distinction, but you would have to study all this a lot more than you have to understand why.
The point is that the situation in Rwanda right now is very volatile, very frightening, even to someone watching from here. I spent a lot of yesterday on the phone with people trying to arrange a private audience for Peter Erlinder with Senator Russ Feingold, D-WI, Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Africa, whom we see as the best hope of averting another disaster in Rwanda.
And here you are talking about all this as thought it were a picture post card travelogue, just casually spewing misinformation all over the Web. That is irresponsible!!! I spend all kinds of time working on Search Engine Optimization techniques to get the truth out there in Google Search—not just my own work but that of other academics, human rights researchers, and investigative reporters, including Keith Harmon Snow, Michel Chussodovsky, Peter Erlinder, and Paul Rusesabagina who’ve made serious effort, in many cases, spent years, understanding this.
But I don’t see any sign that you read the piece I first posted here before responding with your travelogue/Wikipedia version, or that you’ve taken the time even to read Michel Chussodovsky’s “The US was behind the Rwanda Genocide; Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa; Part II of Chapter 7 entitled “Economic Genocide in Rwanda”, of the Second Edition of The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order. http://goo.gl/UXHa
And I would not get so upset about this or spend this much time responding if your casual, simplified Rwanda Genocide travelogue were not now appearing in Google Search every time I search for the subject. Do you have any idea how many more lives are at stake in the struggle over the truth about this? You’ve spammed the Web with another regurgitation of the Great Rwanda Genocide Coverup that Professor Erlinder took great care to explain here, http://goo.gl/qBvS
On April 6th, the anniversary of the political assassinations that I wrote my Fog City report about, Belgian Police, at the request of the Rwandan government—meaning, the US/UK—prevented Rwandan exiles from commemorating the Rwanda Genocide on that day:
Belgian police halt vigil by alleged “Genocide deniers”
http://goo.gl/xHcB
Why? Because, as I said in my piece, the US, UK, UN, and Kagame’s Rwanda do not want to admit that the assassination of the Rwandan and Burundian Presidents, while Kagame’s army was advancing on Kigali from Uganda, triggered the panic and violence that grew into the genocide. Or that Kagame should be prosecuted for the assassination, as he would have been if the UN had not fired Carla Del Ponte, as Lead Prosecutor at the ICTR, for announcing that she intended to prosecute Kagame—as she recounted in her book Madame Prosecutor.
Please consider how much is at stake the next time you consider slapping something like this up on the Web.
April 11, 2010 at 12:51 am
Thanks Ralph for this detailed report.
I agree with the ideas expressed by Annie Garrison on the strategic position of Congo’s minerals to the US, the UK and the world economy.
However, I want to react to your statement ‘Many armed Hutu rebels are still active in the Congo and Rwanda has invaded the Congo on numerous occasions to engage these rebels’.
I will partially agree that the Rwandan Government has attempted to oust the former Rwandan army FDLR from the Congolese forest, but this is half of the story.
Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi have been fighting in Congo to loot minerals and sell them to the commodity markets. It is big business. If they were chasing the FDLR, there was no need to fight from Goma and Bukavu to Kinshasa and take power. Remember, James Kabarebe, the Chief Army of Staff in Rwanda was the Chief Army of Staff of President Laurent Desire Kabila. An irony when he was supposed to be fighting the FDLR who have never been in or near Kinshasa.
The war against genociders is just a cover up. Genocide has been used by the West and their allies Rwanda and Uganda to exploit the minerals of Congo. You can read Executive Intelligence Review – EIR reports dating back to 1994 when EIR first exposed this policy of genocide against the Tutsi and Hutu as a strategy of conquest on Aug.
19. 1994, in a cover story titled “The British Hand
Behind the Horror in Rwanda.”
Various other journalists including Keith Snow, who reported from the fields of Congo and academics have exposed the lies behind the genocide ideology.
The FDLR are not as powerful as stated. How many are they to resist / defeat the combined military might of Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the UN Forces?
Where do they get arms and ammunitions? Which country is supporting them? Where do they get financial backup to fight a war that has lasted more than 17 years against the whole world? If they are as powerful as stated, then the UN should not hunt them, but force the Rwandan government to negotiate with them. Because they know that it is a political game, they cannot negotiate with them. Which is also a geopolitical mistake. More than 8 millions people died because of these wars. This is unacceptable to the World. Why is the US or the UK not intervening? That is the question.
Do more research and you will unravel the truth behind the war in Congo.
April 10, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Comment on the Comment: At the time of the Rwanda Genocide, according to previously classified documents, the Clinton administration did not intervene because, “it did not want to repeat the fiasco of U.S. intervention in Somalia, where US troops became sucked into fighting. It also felt the U.S. had no interests in Rwanda, a small central African country with no minerals or strategic value.” As far as I know, the U.S. imports little or no cobalt or other minerals from Rwanda. Cassiterite (tin ore) seems to be the main mineral import.
True, the area surrounding Rwanda is rich in minerals, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Now, if the turmoil was occurring in the mineral-rich D.R. of Congo, the U.S. would have an economic interest in intervening. Remember, the CIA’s direct involvement in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961. Lumumba was considered unfriendly to U.S. interests. The key figure in the Congolese forces that arranged Lumumba’s murder was a young man named Joseph Desiree Mobutu, then chief of staff of the army and a former NCO in the old colonial Force Publique. With U.S. encouragement, Mobutu staged a coup in 1965 that made him the country’s dictator. See “King Leopold’s Ghost” by Adam Hochschild’s.” When U.S. interests are at stake, we act.
April 10, 2010 at 12:19 pm
This morning I got a message from Ralph graciously acknowledging his error in this, and I thanked him for that. That message was then followed by another asking, essentially, hadn’t a London Guardian editorialist said the same thing in 2004, http://goo.gl/1iWS, to which I said, “the Guardian’s one of the more credible papers out there, but that doesn’t mean it’s the God’s truth. So much of the world bought what Professor Peter Erlinder called the Great Rwanda Genocide Coverup that it’s hard to find people who didn’t. http://goo.gl/qBvS
See also Michel Chussodovsky, Installing a U.S. Protectorate in Central Africa, http://goo.gl/Fly9
And Professor Alan Stamm, “Coming to a New Understanding of the Rwanda Genocide,” http://goo.gl/GZIw
There seems to be plenty of understanding in the academic world, almost none in the press.
April 9, 2010 at 8:14 pm
“Unfortunately, Rwanda had the misfortune of having no strategic value to the West and no valuable resources.” ????!!!!!!!!????
Ralph, this is such a large misstatement that I hardly know where to begin, but let me start with the Congressional Budget Office document “Cobalt: Policy Options for a Strategic Mineral, September 1982,” http://goo.gl/5Hg0 The world’s richest cobalt reserves are in the Katanga Copper Belt running from D.R. Congo’s southeastern Katanga Province into northern Zambia. Cobalt is essential to the U.S. military industries’ ability to manufacture for war, but the cobalt in the U.S. is such low grade ore that there is no profit in mining it. Given its strategic–indeed, military industrial–significance, the U.S. has even considered subsidizing cobalt mining in this country, but I don’t believe that’s ever actually happened.
Cobalt is also essential to the manufacture of nuclear and natural gas power plants, hybrid cars, and more.
But I don’t want to dwell solely on this one resource as though securing it were the sole strategic motive of the U.S. in Central Africa; copper, uranium, tin, coltan, cassiterite, gold and diamonds, timber, and oil and gas, are also among Congo’s vast riches. There is an estimated $30 billion worth of oil in Lake Albert on the Uganda/Congo border and an estimated $20 billion worth of natural gas in Lake Kivu on the Rwanda/Congo border, and more oil exploration underway.
Aside from the natural gas, and quite likely oil, in Lake Kivu, the mineral wealth is on the Congo side of the Rwanda/Congo border, but it’s exported from Rwanda not Congo. (And Rwanda, like eastern Congo, is some of the richest agricultural land in the world, much of which is now planted in coffee, tea, and even biofuel crops.)
Patrice Lumumba, the first president of the Independent Republic of Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, was assassinated in Katanga Province, on January 17, 1961, on the order of Dwight Eisenhower, in collaboration with Belgian operatives, after attempting to stop the Belgian-inspired secession of Katanga Province, which began almost as soon as Lumumba took office.
Rwanda’s war and occupation of D.R. Congo, led by Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a U.S./UK proxy, is most of all a war for Congo’s vast, geostrategic mineral wealth.
This year, after years of feuding between France and Rwanda, ever since the genocide, France finally accepted its position as a secondary foreign power in the region, renewed ties with Rwanda, and accepted the received history of the Rwanda Genocide, so as to secure its imperial share of Congo’s mineral riches.
Particularly significant to very nuclear France are Congo’s uranium reserves, but Congo’s cobalt is essential to French industrial and military production as well. E.g., it’s essential to both nuclear power plant and nuclear missile manufacture.