Rwanda Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the systematic murder of the Rwanda's Tutsi minority and the moderates of its Hutu majority, in 1994. This was both the bloodiest period of the Rwandan Civil War and one of the worst genocides of the 1990s. With the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords, the Tutsi rebels and Hutu regime were able to agree to a cease-fire, and further negotiations were underway. The diplomatic efforts to end the conflict were at first thought to be successful, yet even with the MRND and RPF (political wing of the RPA) in talks, certain Hutu factions, like the CDR, were against any agreement for cooperation between the regime, and the rebels, to end Rwanda's ethnic and economic troubles and progress towards a stable nationhood. The genocide was primarily the action of two extremist Hutu militias, the Interahamwe (military wing of the MRND) and the Impuzamugambi (military wing of the CDR), against dissenters to their Hutu extremism. Over the course of about 100 days, from April 6 to mid-July, at least 800,000 Tutsis and thousands of Hutus were killed during the genocide.[1] Some estimates put the death toll around the 800,000 and 1,000,000 marks.[2]

With the genocide, and the resurgence in the civil war, Rwanda's conflict was thought by the United Nations to be too difficult and volatile for it to handle. Eventually, the Tutsi rebels successfully brought the country under their control and overthrew the Hutu regime. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees fled across the borders, mainly west to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The presence of the extreme Hutu factions on the border with Rwanda was the cause for the First and Second Congo Wars, with clashes between these groups and the RPF's RPA, now part of a coalition force, even until today.[1] Rivalry between the Hutus and Tutsis is also central to the Burundian Civil War.

The UN's neglect of the Rwandan Genocide, under comprehensive media coverage, drew severe criticism. France, Belgium, and the United States in particular, received negative attention for their complacency towards the extreme Hutu regime's oppressions. Canada, Ghana, and the Netherlands, did continue to provide a force on the ground, under the command of RomÐ"©o Dallaire of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), but this mission had little actual power without support from the UN Security Council. Despite specific demands from UNAMIR's commanders in Rwanda, before and throughout the genocide, its requests for authorization to intervene were refused, and its capacity was even reduced.

In the fifteenth century the Tutsis were the rulers of most of today's Rwanda, with some Hutus among the nobility. Tutsis were a minority of the population, mostly herders, and the majority Hutus were mostly croppers.

When the kings, known as Mwamis, began to centralize their administrations, they distributed land among individuals rather than allowing it to be held by the hereditary chieftains, who were mainly Hutu. Unsurprisingly, most of the chiefs appointed by the Mwamis were Tutsi. The redistribution of land, between 1860 and 1895, under Mwami Rwabugiri, resulted in Tutsi chiefs demanding manual labor in return for the right of Hutus to occupy their property. This system of patronage left Hutus in a serf-like status with Tutsi chiefs as their feudal masters.[citations needed]

With Mwami Rwabugiri on the throne, Rwanda came on expansionist state. Its rulers did not bother to assess the ethnic identities of conquered peoples brought under their sway, simply labeling all of them “Hutu”. The “Hutu” identity, consequently, was to be a trans-ethnic one. Eventually, “Tutsi” and “Hutu” were seen to be economic distinctions, rather than particularly ethnic. In fact, there was social mobility between the Tutsis and Hutus, on the basis of hierachial status. One could kwihutura, or lose “Hutuness”, with the accumulation of wealth.[3] Conversely, a Tutsi bereft of property could gucupira, or lose “Tutsiness”.[4]

Further information: Origins of Tutsi and Hutu

Further information: Kingdom of Rwanda

In the Berlin Conference of 1886, Rwanda and Burundi were annexed by the Germans, with this state of affairs in effect until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, when they were ceded to Belgium.[5] The Belgians sought an explanation for the complex monarchy they found in the colony, and the simple distinction of Hutu and Tutsi, on the basis of race, rather than class, was theirs. The Belgians brought in identification cards to every Rwandan, with preferential treatment to Tutsis for positions in education, politics and business.[6]

The 1959 "social revolution" led by the Hutu nationalist party Parmehutu (Parti du Mouvement de l'Ð"‰mancipation Hutu) was the foundation of a Hutu-led republic. It was essentially the first stage of the Rwandan Civil War, with the deaths of some 20,000 Tutsi. 200,000 had been made to flee across the borders, and the formation of the RPF found its roots in these refugees. Rwanda's independence from Belgium was to follow, in 1961.[7]

From the social revolution until the time of the genocide, sporadic organized killings of Tutsi citizens transpired. Between December, 1963 and January, 1964, roughly 14,000 Tutsis were killed in an organized governmental effort after the Kaybanda regime squelched an incursion into southern Rwanda by Tutsi guerillas. In 1973, following the political turmoil in neighboring Burundi, which resulted in an influx of Hutus into Rwanda, then-president GrÐ"©goire Kayibanda and his army chief Juvenal Habyarimana organized Committees of Public Safety, which led to several hundred deaths and an exodus of over a hundred thousand Tutsis from the country. Author Philip Gourevitch described the trend, saying "Killing Tutsis was a political tradition in postcolonial Rwanda; it brought people together."

The Tutsi refugee diaspora was by the late 1980s a coherent political and military organization. Large numbers of Tutsi refugees in Uganda had joined the victorious rebel National Resistance Movement during the Ugandan Bush War and made themselves a separate movement. This was similar to the NRM, with two parts, the political RPF and the military RPA. On the international stage this movement is known as the RPF.

In October, 1990, the RPF began their invasion of Rwanda to restore themselves within the nation. The journal Kangura, a Hutu counteraction towards the Tutsi journal Kanguka, active from