Rwanda's genocide what happened, why it happened, and how it still matters - Vox 08/04/2015 12:18

Rwanda's genocide
what happened, why it
happened, and how it
still matters
Updated by Zack Beauchamp on April 10, 2014, 4:30 p.m. ET
@zackbeauchamp [email protected]

A man with a machete poses near a refugee Scott Peterson/Liaison/Getty Images

camp in Rukumbell, Rwanda on May 5, 1994.

This week marks 20 years since the start of the genocide in

Rwanda, so the world has spent some time reecting on one of the

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Rwanda's genocide what happened, why it happened, and how it still matters - Vox 08/04/2015 12:18

most horrifying and most dening events in post-Cold War

history.

What may have gotten lost in all of this is what actually happened in
Rwanda, a land-locked, Maryland-sized country in central Africa.
Here's what you need to know about how 1 million people were
systematically slaughtered, why it happened, how it changed the
world, and where Rwanda stands today.

What happened
The Rwandan genocide was a systematic campaign by the Hutu
ethnic majority aimed at wiping out each and every member of the
minority Tutsi group. The Hutu-controlled government and allied
militias slaughtered between 800,000 and one million Tutsis before
a Tutsi rebel group overthrew them. Over 100,000 Hutus were also
killed, including both moderate Hutus killed by Hutu extremists and
those killed by Tutsis in so-called "revenge killings."

The genocide was set into motion by the death of Rwandan

President Juvnal Habyarimana. On April 6th, 1994, Habyarimana's
plane was shot down by a missile of unknown origin. Government-
aligned forces used (Hutu) Habyarimana's death as an excuse to
begin a campaign of slaughter they had been planning for some
time, and the genocide began on April 7th. It went on for about 100
days.

The story behind the Rwandan genocide

begins with colonialism
The split between Hutus and Tutsis arose not as a result of religious
or cultural dierences, but economic ones (
http://books.google.com/books?
id=qPfU4czUQZoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hutus+tutsis&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9vdCU4

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"Hutus" were people who farmed crops, while "Tutsis" were people
who tended livestock. Most Rwandans were Hutus. Gradually, these
class divisions became seen as ethnic designations.

Because cattle were more valuable than crops, the minority Tutsis
became the local elite. By the time Belgium took over the land in
1917 from Germany (who took it in 1884), an ethnic Tutsi elite had
been the ruling monarchy for quite some time.

German and Belgian rule made

the dividing lines between the
groups sharper. This "divide and
THE
conquer" strategy meant RWANDAN
supporting the Tutsi monarchy
GENOCIDE
and requiring that all local chiefs
be Tutsis, turning the Tutsis into WAS A
symbols of colonial rule for the DIRECTED,
Hutu majority.
PRE-
Post-independence, the MEDITATED
resentment created by colonial
divide-and-conquer bred violence. ATTEMPT TO
Seeing as Hutus were a large ELIMINATE AN
majority, they handily won the
country's rst elections in 1961, ENTIRE
and the regime that followed was PEOPLE
staunchly Hutu nationalist (

http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472098985-ch4.pdf).
Intermittent violence between Hutus and Tutsis became a feature of
post-independent Rwandan

The Rwandan genocide was a pre-

planned extermination campaign
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A Hutu militiaman shows o his sheath on May 25, 1994. Scott Peterson/Liason

The Rwandan genocide was a dierent class of violence altogether

from what came before it. It wasn't just wartime violence; it was a
directed, pre-meditated attempt to eliminate an entire people.

The Hutu government had fought a war with Ugandan-based Tutsi

rebels, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), from 1990 to 1993. By
early 1994 at the latest (
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/africa/rwanda0406/rwanda0406.pdf)
many Hutus, including a number of important government ocials,
had come to the conclusion that the real problem was Rwanda's
Tutsi minority. They began organizing armed paramilitary gangs and
training them to prepare to wipe out Tutsi civilians.

President Habyarimana had agreed to a United Nations-enforced

peace agreement with the RPF. The missile that shot down
Habyarimana's plane shattered that agreement. We still don't know
today whether Tutsi rebels or Hutu extremists opposed to the peace
agreement red the missile, but it quickly became irrelevant. The
Hutu ethnic supremacists saw a green light to begin their
extermination campaign.

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On April 7th, the killing began. Hutu militias, most infamously the
government-backed Interahamwe, went city-to-city and village-to-
village, slaughtering Tutsis with guns and machetes. The militias
were horrifyingly ecient, using a radio station to coordinate the
beginnings of the campaign around the country and to tell people
where "the graves were not quite yet full (
http://books.google.com/books?
id=JVP9gdreY6gC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=RTLMC+go+to+work&source=bl&o
They were killing at a pace of about 8000 Tutsis per day.

ADVERTISEMENT

There's a strong case the world could

have stopped it

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UN soldiers in Rwanda in 1994. Scott Peterson/Liason/Getty Images

Unlike earlier mass killings, such as the Holocaust, the international

community had advance evidence of the coming genocide. Once it
launched, they had evidence of where it was going, and still did
nothing.

Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the small UN

observer force tasked with implementing the peace agreement,
heard the Hutus were planning genocide in January 1994 (
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/13/sbm.dallaire.prole/)
He informed the higher-ups at the UN, but wasn't permitted to act.

Even after the genocide began, and the evidence of slaughter

became undeniable, the international community did nothing. The
United States actively discouraged (
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/) the UN
Security Council from authorizing a more robust deployment.

In hindsight, there's a good chance the UN could have done

something. General Dallaire believes that, with an extra 5,000
troops and a stronger UN mandate, he could have saved "hundreds

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of thousands (
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/13/sbm.dallaire.prole/)
The failure to intervene, which Bill Clinton calls one of the greatest
regrets of his presidency, catalyzed the modern movement in favor
of humanitarian military intervention to prevent genocide. Two
major Obama administration ocials Susan Rice and Samantha
Power became converted to the cause of humanitarian
intervention in part due to America's inaction in Rwanda.

It ended only after Tutsi rebels defeated

the government
The day after the genocide began, the Tutsi rebel group RPF, led by
Paul Kagame, launched an oensive aimed at toppling the Rwandan
government. In about one hundred days, the RPF defeated (
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/etc/cron.html)
the government forces. Kagame, a Tutsi, became the country's
leader in all but name: a Hutu was technically made president while
Kagame was vice president, but Kagame controlled the army (
http://books.google.com/books?id=O3aNPwAACAAJ).

SADLY, THERE'S NO REASON TO

STOP WORRYING ABOUT
RWANDA EVEN 20 YEARS AFTER
THE GENOCIDE

Though the RPF stopped the genocide from reaching its

completion, their victory was hardly clean. A Human Rights Watch
assessment of the campaign concluded that "systematic" RPF
killings claimed tens of thousands of Hutu lives (
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno15-8-03.htm).

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These "revenge killings" by oppressed are sadly common after

episodes of mass killing, and one reason why the lack of
international peacekeeping forces can be so devastating.

Moreover, the aftershocks of the Rwandan genocide contributed (

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-11108589) to the conict
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). That war, the
deadliest since World War 2 (
http://www.unfpa.org/public/home/news/pid/1399), was sparked
in part ( http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-11108589) by 2
million Hutus eeing Rwanda attacking Tutsis. Some of the 2 million
were militiamen, who attacked Tutsis in the DRC. The Kagame
government supported local Tutsi forces, and the conict escalated.

Rwanda today is a much better place,

but still suffers from authoritarianism
and violence

Rwandan President Paul Kagame in 2014. Thierry Roge-Pool/Photonews/Getty Images

Today, Kagame still runs Rwanda he's ocially been president

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since 2000. His record has been extraordinarily mixed; he's done an
incredible job helping rebuild life in Rwanda since the genocide, but
he's also sponsored violence around the region, killed political
dissidents, and consolidated authoritarian power.

Start with the good. Rwanda's life expectancy has doubled (

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/this-is-
resilience/360181/?_ga=1.43125990.2103199885.1395350734)
in the past decade, and child mortality and HIV rates have
plummeted. The Rwandan economy has grown at a staggeringly
high ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/world/africa/rwanda-
reaches-for-new-economic-model.html) 8 percent rate since 2008,
making it, by one assessment, the most desirable African country to
invest in.

However, Kagame's government is described by his critics as an

ethnic autocracy ( http://kenopalo.com/2012/06/21/on-rwandas-
brand-of-developmental-authoritarianism/). Tutsis (who make up
10 percent of the government) sta most ocial positions,
especially in the military ( http://www.newsweek.com/case-against-
rwandas-president-paul-kagame-63167). Kagame has supported (
http://www.newsweek.com/case-against-rwandas-president-paul-
kagame-63167) murderous foreign militias, like the M23 (
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/19/obama-rwanda-
support-congo-rebels) in the DRC, and may have been complicit in
revenge killings.

Perhaps most ominously, a statistical assessment of the risk of

state-led mass killing puts Rwanda in the top 15 percent of
countries (
http://dartthrowingchimp.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/a-new-
statistical-approach-to-assessing-risks-of-state-led-mass-killing/)
most likely to see mass killing. Sadly, there's no reason to stop
worrying about Rwanda even 20 years after the genocide.

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