(Rethinking Political Violence Series) Barrie Collins (Auth.) - Rwanda 1994 - The Myth of The Akazu Genocide Conspiracy and Its Consequences (2014, Palgrave Macmillan UK)
(Rethinking Political Violence Series) Barrie Collins (Auth.) - Rwanda 1994 - The Myth of The Akazu Genocide Conspiracy and Its Consequences (2014, Palgrave Macmillan UK)
(Rethinking Political Violence Series) Barrie Collins (Auth.) - Rwanda 1994 - The Myth of The Akazu Genocide Conspiracy and Its Consequences (2014, Palgrave Macmillan UK)
Titles include:
Linda Åhäll and Laura J. Shepherd (editors)
GENDER, AGENCY AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE
Barrie Collins
RWANDA 1994
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy and Its Consequences
Stephen Gibson and Simon Mollan (editors)
REPRESENTATIONS OF PEACE AND CONFLICT
Celeste Ward Gventer, David Martin Jones and M.L.R Smith (editors)
THE NEW COUNTER-INSURGENCY ERA IN CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
Caroline Holmqvist
POLICING WARS
On Military Intervention in the Twenty-First Century
Jaremey McMullin
EX-COMBATANTS AND THE POST-CONFLICT STATE
Challenges of Reintegration
Stephan Parmentier, Bert Ingelaere, Jacques Haers and Barbara Segaert (editors)
GENOCIDE, RISK AND RESILIENCE
An Interdisciplinary Approach
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a
standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us
at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the
ISBN quoted above.
Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
Also by Barrie Collins
OBEDIENCE IN RWANDA: A Critical Question (1998)
‘New Wars and Old Wars? The Lessons of Rwanda’. Chapter in Chandler, D. (ed.)
Rethinking Human Rights: Critical Approaches to International Politics (2002)
Rwanda 1994
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide
Conspiracy and Its Consequences
Barrie Collins
Independent Researcher, UK
© Barrie Collins 2014
Foreword © Tiphaine Dickson 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-02231-8
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Notes 219
Bibliography 258
Index 268
vii
Foreword
‘Books must appear at the right time’, the late political theorist Judith
Shklar once told the great historian of the Shoah, Raul Hilberg. His
authoritative Destruction of the European Jews faced remarkable obsta-
cles on its long, troubled road to publication, and when it was finally
in print, it received little notice from the public. According to Shklar,
the book had been published too early.1 For many important works
of history, time is a geopolitical phenomenon, and this is as true for
Barrie Collins as it was for Hilberg. ‘This was a time when those – like
survivors – who were plagued by memories, were told to forget what had
happened’, wrote Hilberg in his seething autobiography, ‘and when the
Nuremberg trials were conducted not so much to understand Germany’s
history as to conclude unfinished business in order that Germany might
be reconstituted with a clean slate in the North Atlantic community of
nations confronted with the threat of communism.’2
Barrie Collins’ contribution to understanding the events that shook
Rwanda in 1994 could not come at a better time. Back in 1997, when
I began representing Georges Rutaganda before the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, little in the way
of reliable histories and analyses had been written; practically nothing
existed in the English language. In early February 1997 I argued the first
disclosure motion to obtain the results of prosecutorial investigations
into the shooting down of the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda
and Burundi, the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces, other
high-level officials and a French crew. Back then, this type of request
was seen as bad form. After all, the President had been assassinated,
according to the conventional wisdom, by Hutu hardliners, or by his
wife and in-laws, or to signal the beginning of a pre-planned genocide.
Later, the dominant narrative shifted; suddenly the identity of the
shooters was irrelevant – yes, the shoot-down triggered the genocide,
but so what?
When English-language work began to appear, it was disconcertingly
promotional of the new Rwandan regime. Philip Gourevitch wrote hagi-
ography after hagiography in honor of Paul Kagame, military genius
and political visionary, hailed for ‘stopping the genocide’, and of course
for reconciling his people. Gourevitch interviews a woman in his book
who says that Rutaganda saved her children’s lives, but that she would
viii
Foreword ix
still like to see him hanged. At the very same time, however, catastrophe
was looming in what was then Zaïre, where Rwandan refugees who had
fled the violence in Rwanda were being attacked, and survivors pursued
by the RPF-led rebel forces of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, driving miserable
civilians of all ages and genders toward the north of the country. The
media, then presenting a radically simplified account of the civil war
and massacres, were reluctant to report these attacks, as these largely
(but not exclusively) Hutu refugees were being portrayed as ‘lumpen-
villains’,3 and therefore certainly unlikely to elicit humanitarian con-
cern. In Rutaganda’s trial, our preoccupation went well beyond empa-
thy: fourteen refugees had signed witness statements in Goma attesting
to his whereabouts in another prefecture at the time when he was
charged with conducting a massacre; Rutaganda’s alibi depended on
these people’s survival. My extremely urgent motion to hear these wit-
nesses by teleconference before an eventual attack on the Tingi-Tingi
camp was only heard by the panel of judges after the camp had already
fallen to rebel forces, and the refugees were dead or dispersed. I shall
never forget the headline in the French daily Libération, signaling a first
acknowledgement of what was happening to those human beings in
eastern Congo that eerily rhymed: ‘Tout le monde le sait, mais tout le
monde se tait.’ Everyone knows, but everyone shuts up.
Today, war and carnage in the Congo receive greater attention –
though not as much as they should – from the media, human rights
organisations, academics, as well as the United Nations. Kagame’s
regime is no longer handled only with praise and kid gloves; the state’s
human rights record has come under greater scrutiny, as reports of
violations of press freedoms, individual rights and brutal tactics to
quell opposition participation in political life continue to accumulate.
Many RPF officers and former politicians have left Rwanda, and spoken
out not only against the regime’s domestic failings, but crucially about
the RPF’s role not as saviour, but as instigator and assassin with a clear
share of responsibility in the massacres of 1994. Finally, the ICTR trials
have been ongoing since 1997. Earlier pressure to convict has given way
to some professionalised panels deciding to admit new evidence and
to reason judicially. Trials are taking a more nuanced approach to the
events of 1994, as the conventional account can no longer be sustained
by the facts and by dispassionate, sane interpretation.
Collins has produced a timely and persuasive argument. Those seek-
ing the vicarious thrill of melodrama and stirring reflections on the
meaning of evil will likely be disappointed. This meticulously anno-
tated work canvasses all the existing relevant literature and sources,
x Foreword
Tiphaine Dickson
Lead trial counsel for George Rutaganda at the ICTR
Instructor, Mark O. Hatfield School of Government
Political Science Division, Portland State University
December 2013
Acknowledgements
xii
Glossary
During the First and Second Republics, Rwanda was divided adminis-
tratively into ten préfectures, each named after its main town. The pré-
fectures were in turn divided into communes, then secteurs and cellules.
Bourgmestre refers to a town mayor and also to the head of a commune.
When the plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was blown out
of the sky as it approached Kigali airport on the evening of 6 April 1994,
a marker in Rwanda’s history was laid down. This was a tipping point for
this small central African state. The four-year-old war that had officially
ended with the signing of the Arusha Accords on 3 August 1993 was reig-
nited. It turned into a showdown of apocalyptic dimensions. Hundreds
of thousands were slaughtered as a power struggle reached its climax
and resulted in regime change. Within days of the President’s assassina-
tion the government had fled the capital, and while the national army
was pinned down by the rebel army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front
(RPF), roving gangs of militia were free to go after (mostly) ethnic Tutsi
civilians for murder, rape and pillage. As it gained territory, the RPF also
engaged in wholesale civilian slaughter. The numbers killed, and the
relative numbers of Tutsi and Hutu dead, remain disputed and differ in
accordance with the political affiliations of analysts. Tutsi civilians were
hunted down by militia forces, along with Hutus whom they regarded
as RPF sympathisers. The RPF killed indiscriminately in a land that was
overwhelmingly Hutu. One can safely say that at least half a million
died in the period between the President’s assassination and the RPF’s
assumption of power just over three months later. The death toll could
possibly have been as much as one million.
The missiles that brought down the President’s plane did not only create
a crisis in Rwanda. As fate would have it, Burundi’s President Cyprien
Ntaryamira had asked for a lift in the Falcon 50 jet from Dar es Salaam,
where they had attended a regional summit. The death of Burundi’s
second democratically elected president did not catalyse mass violence
in Burundi, despite this state having a remarkably similar Hutu/Tutsi
cleavage, but it did weaken that country’s nascent democratic initiative.
1
2 Rwanda 1994
peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania. The Arusha Accords were going to bring
about power-sharing in Rwanda and thereby an end to Hutu domina-
tion. This was anathema to a clique centred on Habyarimana referred to
as the Akazu. The Akazu conspired to assassinate Habyarimana in order
to destroy the peace process and teach the Tutsis once and for all who
their masters were. And the way they planned to do this was through
exterminating the entire local Rwandan Tutsis population.2 The plane
shooting was the signal for the genocide to commence.3 Immediately
upon learning that their aerial assassination of the President had
succeeded, the genocidaires engineered a coup that brought in an
‘interim government’ of Hutu extremists. They used the instruments of
state power to execute the genocide. By the time the genocide was ended
by the RPF seizing power in July 1994, around a million had perished – a
killing rate faster than the Nazi Holocaust.
The journalists were invited to travel around Rwanda behind the RPF’s
lines and tell the world about the genocide being committed before
their own eyes. The RPF’s genocide thesis was a more sophisticated and
credible analysis than the somewhat racist depiction of the slaughter
of civilians being an eruption of primordial tribal hatred that earlier
reports had suggested. The RPF line resonated well with the journalists.
Carefully chaperoned across the country, they were unaware of the tens
of thousands of civilians that were also being slaughtered by their erudite
hosts. They were shown the work of Hutu militias, collectively known
as Interahamwe: scenes of depravity that were overwhelming even to the
most seasoned of war reporters.
The fact that Tutsi men women and children of all ages were targeted
by Hutu militia forces for murder on a horrifying scale made the claim
of an organised genocide seem credible. The protestations of repre-
sentatives of the interim government, who were fluent in French but
somewhat less articulate in English, that the killings were in the main
expressions of a spontaneous eruption of rage against a Tutsi organisa-
tion that had murdered their beloved president, sounded to them more
like guilty evasiveness.
No wonder then that international journalism increasingly depicted
the RPF as the victims’ champion. From this perspective, the RPF’s
seizure of power was a vital step towards ending genocide. And end-
ing genocide also seemed to be nowhere on the priority list of Western
governments. In fact, Washington was at that time engaging in all kinds
4 Rwanda 1994
Consequences
The Rwanda that was shown to the outside world was one that
fostered ethnic harmony and reconciliation as it struggled to bring the
perpetrators of the genocide to justice. The true Rwanda that its inhabit-
ants experienced was a ‘Ugandan’ Tutsi dictatorship that criminalised
the Hutu majority for having been either active or passive genocide
participants. Surviving Hutu men were treated as guilty until proven
innocent.6 They included former members, or those accused of being
former members, of the militia and those who had served in the army
of the former regime, the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR). Rwanda’s pris-
ons, which had been built to accommodate around thirty thousand, were
crammed with over a hundred thousand. Conditions were, and remain to
this day, indescribable. The death rate among Rwandan prisoners became
one of the highest, if not the highest, of any prison population in the
world. The press no longer enjoyed the freedom it had become used to
during the last years of Habyarimana’s leadership. Critical journalists
were killed in mysterious circumstances.7 The political space that had
also been opened under Habyarimana was closed, with opposition fig-
ures murdered, thrown into prison or driven into exile. Internationally,
the consensus on the Rwandan genocide muted all criticism from those
who had hitherto loudly championed the cause of human rights and
civil liberties in Rwanda. Perhaps it was felt that, since there appeared to
have been a high level of participation of ordinary civilians in the geno-
cide, a suspension of the democratic process was not an unreasonable
measure for the new government to take. As the British Economist put it,
‘[n]or do they [Rwanda’s Western backers] insist on elections – which, in
the absence of a Hutu–Tutsi alliance, would put Hutus back in power. For
Tutsis, democracy means death.’8
A false claim
Contradictory evidence
Over the succeeding years, highly credible evidence has emerged that
shows that Kagame is responsible for ordering the missile attack upon
President Habyarimana’s plane9 and for resuming the war immediately
upon receiving confirmation of the President’s death.10 The reason for
assassinating the president was obvious. The RPF needed an excuse to
tear up the Arusha Accords and restart the war. If the peace agreement
had followed its agreed schedule of events, Rwanda would have had
elections within a matter of months. It is no secret that the RPF was so
unpopular across the country that these elections would have exposed
them as no more than a small minority party. They obviously wanted
to avoid this at all costs. Killing the most popular political figure in the
land at the time would be certain to spark off mass killings, and mass
killings would justify a return to the battlefield. With strong support
from the United States, and the sympathy of America’s most influential
human rights organisation, the RPF could count on the aerial assassina-
tion and the return to war being blamed on their opponents.
Non-intervention?
Key themes
There are some key themes to the Akazu genocide narrative. Given that
Tutsi civilians were being killed by mostly Hutu civilians, and that the
killings were conducted in the absence of a directing organisation, this
was an atypical genocide to say the least. Genocides are usually state-
run affairs, or overseen by a leadership that is able to draw upon the
coercive authority of the state. With civilians appearing as the main
actors of genocide, something peculiar must have been going on if what
was being conducted was a conspiracy to exterminate Rwanda’s entire
Tutsi population. And that peculiar phenomenon that some analysts
appeared to find, was in Rwandan culture.
Two claims about the special nature of Rwandan society are made
by many analysts.14 The first is that the genocide conspirators were
drawing on a deeply embedded culture of obedience that meant that
official-sounding broadcasts and communications would get the desired
response. The second is that the conspirators were drawing upon
an equally entrenched culture of impunity that made it possible for
those who followed the instructions – and those who made them –
to think that their actions would not result in adverse consequences for
themselves. Which is why, according to one proponent of the Akazu gen-
ocide theory, the Rwandan genocide was above all a crime of obedience.15
Another important theme was of a powerful, centralised state. Power
was said to have been devolved through loyal subordinates through
each administrative level: the préfecture, the commune, the secteur and
the cellule. In this manner, we can think of a policy directive from the
president, going through the cabinet, and then passing through these
institutions to the individual homesteads throughout the country. If
we then add the culturally embedded traits of obedience and impunity
to this construct we get nothing short of perfected authoritarianism.
We can imagine the Akazu conspirators usurping this unique system
The Tipping Point 9
and watch the order to kill every Tutsi move seamlessly along this
administrative conveyor belt to the recipients in their homes, and have
them reaching for their machetes. This is how claims were made that
[o]rders from the prime minister were handed down to the prefect,
who passed them on to the burgomasters, who called local meet-
ings throughout the communes where they read the instructions to
the population… [b]y appropriating the well-established hierarchies
of the military, administrative and political systems, leaders of the
genocide were able to exterminate Tutsi with astonishing speed and
thoroughness.16
The genocide theory placed the government side, not the RPF, as the
anti-democratic force, and as the most influential conscious element in
operation at the time. The genocide was said to have been prompted
by a demonic Hutu backlash against the principle of power-sharing
embodied in the Arusha Accords.
Another theme of the genocide myth is of Tutsi liberation. Tutsi
refugees were now coming home safe in the knowledge that they would
no longer be treated as second-class citizens. And with Tutsi liberation
would come the restoration of a more civilised form of governance than
‘Hutu majoritarianism’.
And finally, the most politically potent theme of all is that the RPF
single-handedly ended the genocide while the Western world chose to
look the other way. Western non-intervention needed urgent redress. It
was not too late for the West to atone for this grave sin of omission and
at least lend support to the liberators and help them ensure that the
conditions for another genocide would never be recreated.
These themes are critically assessed in the pages that follow. They
signify attempts to theorise the ‘genocide’ as it was understood to have
happened, on the basis of essential facts being submerged within a
morass of disinformation. The basic assumptions of genocide agency
embedded within the echelons of power in the former Rwandan state,
and of the RPF as an essentially defensive organisation that was morally
compelled to act as it did, are the foundations for an elaborate myth.
Demystifying this tragic episode is not an indulgence in academic
semantics. It is crucial to both understanding the real dynamics of the
situation and to challenging the travesties of justice meted out at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and within Rwanda
itself. Writing a myth into international law, as the ICTR strives to do,
is to legitimate impunity at the highest level – precisely the opposite of
the ICTR’s mission statement.
10 Rwanda 1994
There were calls for the United States to take some sort of punitive
action against the Burundian government. Given that the United States
imported almost 75% of Burundi’s coffee – its principal export – sanctions
against Burundi could have been an effective instrument of coercive
diplomacy. Yet the United States not only ruled this option out, it
also refrained from making any public denunciation of the Burundian
government whatsoever. The Africa Bureau of the State Department
stated that ‘for a bureaucracy which conceived its day to day job as
the maintenance of untroubled relations with African governments,
an independent American response to the Burundi killings threatened
that mission’. As a Bureau official noted, ‘if we’d involved ourselves in
this, we’d be creamed by every country in Africa for butting into an
African state’s internal affairs’.17 How times have changed. Fast forward
to the unfolding of a crisis in Burundi in August 1994, when fears were
raised that Burundi was in danger of becoming another ‘Rwanda’. Three
European foreign ministers were joined by an American delegation and
their fifty-eight-strong entourage. When asked what effect this sudden
diplomatic incursion would have on Burundi’s politicians, an American
official replied: ‘It is difficult for these people to accept that they [the
delegates] have come just to save Burundi’s people from each other.’18
Whereas once there was, at least at a formal level, a concern to show
respect for the principle of equality among nations, we now have a
firmly entrenched assertion that, in many parts of the non-Western
world, only external intervention stands between these nations and
their own self-destructive tendencies. In a relatively short period of time,
Western intervention had been transformed from an illegitimate imperial-
ist impulse into a moral imperative. These days demands for intervention
are led by human rights lobbyists and journalists. And, in the case of
Rwanda where moral exhortation alone seemed insufficient to prompt
intervention, the label of genocide added a legal imperative to the cause.
The irony in all of this is that the focus upon what the Western world did
not do in Rwanda between April and July 1994 obscures what it did do in
Rwanda during that period and the preceding four years. And what certain
Western countries did contributed in significant ways to the creation of the
very conditions that made Rwanda’s subsequent tragedy almost inevitable.
13
14 Rwanda 1994
moment. Three days previously, the troops were put on a state of high
alert. The leadership based in Kigali had been recalled to Mulundi, north
of Kigali and halfway to the Ugandan border. On hearing the news from
Kabarebe, Kagame immediately ordered his troops out of Mulindi. The
peace negotiated by the RPF and the Rwandan government eight months
previously was over. The war was on again, and this time it would be a
fight to the finish.2
For the next six hours, Jean-Luc, his mother Agathe, and his cous-
ins performed the gruesome task of searching among the blackened
debris for body parts. Their work was made all the more hazardous as
they came under automatic weapon fire from the RPF based at Ndera
hill opposite within half an hour of the destruction of the plane.3 The
shooting continued with varying intervals throughout the night, as
members of the Presidential Guard who had been posted to protect the
household in the President’s absence returned fire. Most of the bodies
were charred beyond recognition. Strangely, there was only one face
unscathed and easily identifiable, that of Juvénal Habyarimana. The
Habyarimana family were not to know at the time that the remains of
another head of state were also strewn across and beyond their garden.
Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira had asked his Rwandan coun-
terpart at the last moment for a lift back from Dar es Salaam. Along with
the two presidents were six senior members of the Rwandan govern-
ment, two of the Burundian government and three French crew, who
all perished.
A critical moment
the underlying problems that had tested Hutu–Tutsi relations since the
Tutsi elite had been overthrown upon Rwanda’s independence in 1962.
Slowly but surely, the war reversed these gains. The largest RPF offensive
of February 1993 was arguably a watershed. The RPF had wreaked havoc
across the country, killing thousands, and had almost succeeded in seizing
power. In so doing it had demonstrated its military superiority over the
FAR. Large swathes of the north-east were depopulated, homesteads aban-
doned and looted. The population of war-displaced was increased further
by deserters from the army, many of whom were the ‘fifteen day’ soldiers –
so-called because of the rapid and rudimentary training they had received
in the FAR’s desperate effort to match the rising military capacity of the
RPF. Young men who had previously supported their families by working
the land, minding cattle or by waged labour were now idle and powerless
as they watched the military and political tide turn in favour of the enemy.
Were the RPF to seize power, it was feared that the Hutu majority would be
forced back into the ignominious subordination they had endured prior
to independence. A lethal mix of impoverishment, enforced idleness, fear
and loathing of the RPF increasingly expressed itself as hatred towards all
Tutsis, supporters and non-supporters of the RPF alike. The general sense
of despair and foreboding was compounded in August 1993 with the
signing of the Arusha Accords. The ‘peace-process’ appeared to have done
little more than translate the RPF’s military gains into political gains. The
agreed fifty–fifty share of the leadership of the proposed integrated army
was certain to enable the RPF to dominate the country militarily. Control
of the national army was the route to power in Rwanda.
As the ‘victory’ of the RPF at Arusha began to sink in, the social
polarisation became mirrored politically. Up to this point, there had
been three contenders for power in Rwanda: the former ruling party, the
internal opposition parties and the RPF. Sensing the determination of
the RPF to press ahead with renewed war preparations in violation of the
Accords, and with the FAR making preparations in anticipation of such a
violation, the leaders of the opposition parties realised that the period of
reform that had fostered their emergence as a legal political opposition
was ending. Within these parties was a growing tension with regard to
their relations with the RPF. A minority had regarded the RPF as allies
in the fight for a non-ethnic democratic Rwanda while the rest regarded
it as an exclusively Tutsi organisation that was using the opposition
parties to compensate for its lack of popular support and as mediators
of its propaganda while it covertly prepared for a complete takeover.
As the schedule of events laid out by the Arusha Accords faltered it
became clear that the agreement was not holding. The opposition par-
ties split apart with minorities from each siding with the RPF and the
16 Rwanda 1994
rest with the former ruling party. The social Hutu–Tutsi cleavage thereby
crystallised into an ethnic political divide.
In this charged atmosphere it was feared that any new shock to
the system would generate a violent eruption. The American Central
Intelligence Agency found the level of social tension to be so high
towards the end of January 1993 that it warned that if the war were to
resume there would be massacres on a terrifying scale, with casualty
numbers possibly reaching half a million.4 The American Ambassador
at the time, Robert Flaten, warned both President Habyarimana and
General Kagame that the person who reignited the war would be
responsible for civilian deaths on a massive scale – as had recently
occurred in Burundi upon the assassination of its first elected (Hutu)
president.5 The death of Rwanda’s most popular political figure by
means of a brazen aerial assassination was the kind of provocation that
Rwandans had dreaded. All the tensions that had escalated as a result of
the war – the material deprivation, personal insecurities and fear of the
RPF – were no longer containable as the news of the President’s death
was announced the following morning on Radio Rwanda.
Carnage
Gangs of young men went after Tutsi youth who were known to
have been to the RPF’s headquarters and slaughtered them, along with
their families. Within days the frenzied violence escalated at a horrific
scale. Suddenly, all Tutsi were targets, including anyone who looked like
the Tutsi stereotype – tall and slender with delicate facial features. And
anyone else deemed supportive of the RPF was also in the frame. The
killers moved from house to house with machetes, nail-studded clubs,
knives and whatever other weapons came to hand. The elderly, disa-
bled, women, children, babies were indiscriminately murdered, often
after being mutilated or raped.
The killing spree radiated out from Kigali into the rural areas while
the war escalated. An interim government had been hastily put together
with surviving representatives of the different parties, but was incapaci-
tated from the start. The government ministerial buildings had already
been taken over by the RPF, along with the former ruling party’s head-
quarters, and the new ministers hid in fear of their lives. Five days after
Habyarimana’s assassination, the interim government ministers fled
Kigali and headed south-west for Gitarama. The people of Kigali were
abandoned and the country as a whole was adrift in an anarchic vacuum.
With the FAR soldiers pinned down in one losing encounter with the
Apocalypse 1994 17
RPF after another, and the gendarmerie – who had been judged by
General Dallaire just before Habyarimana’s assassination to have been in
no position to enforce law and order6 – incapable of asserting authority,
there were no security personnel available to protect civilians from the
rampaging militia – an increasingly loose term for armed civilian thugs.
The Rwandan government forces had repeatedly asked the RPF for a
cease-fire to allow civilian protection measures, starting from the night
of 6 April; each time the RPF refused.7 Cables from General Dallaire
stated that the RPF would not agree to cease-fires while it was winning.8
Having done all in its power to provoke the massacres in order to justify
a return to arms in the eyes of the powers that dominate the interna-
tional community, the RPF had no interest in stopping the massacres.
A witness at the ICTR recounted specific examples of General Kagame
ordering his troops not to intervene to save civilians and of offic-
ers being removed from their command for attempting to do so.9 The
greater the massacres, the better their justification for seizing power.
While this does not make the individual killers any less responsible for
their actions, it does reveal the cynicism and callous opportunism of
the RPF.10
The RPF
The RPF’s strategy appears perverse when one considers the fact that
this was, to all intents and purposes, a Tutsi army refusing to take the
necessary measures to halt massacres that focused mainly upon Tutsi
civilians, but that’s how it was. The RPF leadership were the progeny
of the former ruling aristocracy that had grown up in exile in Uganda.
Tutsis who had remained in Rwanda, working either in its small private
sector or in the rural areas, had become well integrated with their fellow
Hutu Rwandans. But the ‘Ugandan’ leadership of the RPF were mostly
kiSwahili and English speakers who tended to display a contemptuous
attitude toward their ethnic kin within Rwanda.11
And the RPF was engaged in civilian massacres of its own. Few
Western observers at the time registered that the tens of thousands of
bodies that began to flow down the Kagera River and empty into Lake
Victoria in Uganda were the work of the RPF as they came to occupy the
east and south-east of the country. Few, that is, except for the CIA, who
must have known because they had satellite coverage of all of Rwanda
during this period, a fact that came to light inadvertently in a trial of a
Rwandan in the US in 2012. These massacres were the work of a highly
disciplined army – and therefore the burden of responsibility for them
18 Rwanda 1994
lay more clearly upon its leadership. In stark contrast to the disciplined
killings of the RPF, the butchery of Tutsis meted out by the ‘militia’
owed more to its uncontrolled and renegade character.
As the war raged and the massacres spread across the country the RPF’s
propaganda seemed to win over the world’s media and Africa experts in
the Western world. Two key pieces of disinformation were disseminated
and became internationally endorsed: the President’s plane had been
shot down by members of the Akazu, a shadowy network of individuals
close to the late President; and the massacres of civilians that erupted
the following day were the unfolding of a genocide that the Akazu had
planned long in advance. The Akazu, so the RPF’s line went, had decided
that President Habyarimana had made one concession too many in the
Arusha negotiations. So they prepared to kill all Rwandan Tutsis in order
to permanently secure Hutu power by means of a Final Solution. The
aerial assassination of Habyarimana was the génocidaire’s opening move,
designed to provoke the RPF back onto the battlefield and to serve as a
signal for the genocide to commence.
Yet, almost two decades later, no evidence has appeared to support
either of these two claims.
International opinion
One reason for the success of the RPF’s war propaganda is that it was
endorsed and embellished by America’s most influential human rights
non-governmental organisation, Human Rights Watch. The book by
Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda,12
was published in 1999 and is the most cited book on Rwanda’s tragedy.
The main writer, Alison Des Forges, was until her death (tragically and
ironically also in a plane crash) the lead expert witness for the prosecu-
tion at the ICTR and appeared in this capacity in several trials. The argu-
ments expressed in the book have been taken up by the United Nations
and successive American administrations. The book does accuse the
RPF of committing massacres and atrocities against civilians, but after
691 pages of description of the horror of genocide committed by the
forces of the former government, the reader is numb to the coverage of
RPF abuses and massacres over the following 43 pages. But in any case,
Human Rights Watch has by this stage already justified the RPF’s return
to war and seizure of power. More importantly, by attributing genocide
to the government side and crediting the RPF with ending the geno-
cide, Human Rights Watch made a crucial moral distinction between
the massacres committed by forces partisan to the former ruling party
Apocalypse 1994 19
and those committed by the RPF. The former were acts of genocide –
evil pure and simple – the latter were atrocities that could be placed in
a more forgiving light if understood within the context of the Hutu
extremist-orchestrated genocide. Non-governmental organisations are
assumed to be non-governmental in the sense of being independent
of the politics of the government of the day. Yet Des Forges was also
employed by the Department of State during much of the period in
question.13 Another connection is that when Rwandan party repre-
sentatives went to the United States in September 1991 at the expense
of the American embassy, they spent a night at Des Forges’ home. Des
Forges worked with the State Department of State to co-ordinate their
itinerary.14
The international success of the RPF’s propaganda on the Rwanda
genocide becomes explicable when the extent to which their war was
backed by the Pentagon and legitimised by Human Rights Watch is
known.
According to the RPF/Human Rights Watch version of events the
intent to annihilate Rwandan Tutsis was that of the Akazu, a clique of
well-connected figures centred upon the wife of President Habyarimana,
Agathe Kanziga. The Akazu, so the narrative goes, conspired to reverse
the process of power-sharing that had been agreed in the Arusha
Accords on 4 August 1993 by planning and implementing genocide
against Rwandan Tutsis. Organising society around a programme of
genocide against Tutsis was to serve as a means of reconstituting Hutu
solidarity and securing Hutu control of the state. Des Forges claims that,
The agents of genocide are said to have been the interim government,
sections of the military, the Presidential Guard, sections of the gendar-
merie and the militia – the Interahamwe and Mpuzamugambi. Colonel
20 Rwanda 1994
A deliberate choice?
while co-pilot J Tuyilingire was killed. The third hit a Fokker F-27 on
10 September 1991, forcing it to crash-land in Goma, former Zaïre. The
fourth brought down another helicopter in February 1993, in Butaro
commune, killing the pilot, Captain Silas Hategekimana.39
Bruguière’s investigation began in 1998. It includes among many
others, testimony from Mugabe, Ruyenzi and Ruzibiza. It contains testi-
mony on the specific actions taken by the RPF to shoot down the plane,
which are given by several different sources. A reconstruction of events
is now drawn from Bruguière’s report.
After the signing of the Arusha Accords in September 1993, the
RPF is alleged to have held three meetings in Mulindi to make plans
to assassinate President Habyarimana. While the first two plans were
subsequently called off, the third was ordered on 31 March 1994. Four
named RPA soldiers had been given training in Uganda in the use of
SAM missiles. In January 1994 missiles were transported in a Mercedes
truck, hidden under firewood, from Mulindi to the RPF’s base in the
CND building. Bernard Cussack, the French military attaché posted to
Kigali, was aware of the presence of the missiles in the CND building
and had warned of the danger they posed to civilian aircraft. An RPF
representative confided in Bernard Debre, France’s former Minister of
Co-operation, at the end of January 1994 that ‘we cannot wait for the
elections, we’re going to lose them, we will take power before, and spill
blood if we must’.40
Also in late January, the RPF began to prepare the ground with
broadcasts on Radio Muhabura about the government being engaged
in genocide:
The RPF demanded a ‘no-fly zone’ over the CND, and this was granted
by UNAMIR Commander Roméo Dallaire. This demand placed a restric-
tion upon the take-off and landing vectors available to Kigali airport,
forcing all planes to take runway 28 and fly over the hilly and wooded
sector of Masaka. Jean-Michel Lacoste, the pilot of a Rwandan Army
Noratlas plane, had received verbal instructions of a ‘no-fly zone’ over
the CND and was advised in a note from UNAMIR that during an over-
flight of Kigali, he had barely missed being hit by a missile fired by
the RPF. RPF Lt-Col. Ruzibiza and his ‘commando-network’ team had
Apocalypse 1994 27
infiltrated the Kigali area in February. They had three briefs: to kill Tutsis
in ways that incriminated the Rwandan government; reconnaissance in
preparation for the RPF’s offensive; and preparations for the attack on
the President’s plane. At the end of March, he was told by Aloys Ruyenzi
that the orders had been given to shoot down the plane. Jean-Baptiste
Mberabahizi was in Mulindi on 2 April and heard Kagame answer a
question that he was getting ready to renew military operations. On
3 April RPA units were placed on high alert. All the RPF leaders in the
CND building had returned to Mulindi a few days before 6 April.
On 6 April three named individuals received radio instructions to
go to a house in Masaka-Kanombe sector that belonged to Jean Marie
Hunyankindi, a relative of Kagame, to assure the security of the assas-
sination team made up of Sub-Lieutenant Frank Nziza, Corporal Eric
Hakizimana and Private Patiano Ntambara. The latter three were driven
there from the CND building by Sergeant Didier Mazimpaka in a Toyota
pick-up carrying two hidden missile launchers. At 5.30 p.m. Lieutenant-
Colonel Kayonga received a call from Paul Kagame alerting him to the
return of the President’s plane. As the plane descended for landing, Eric
Hakizimana fired the first missile, which missed. Franck Nziza fired
the second, which hit the plane. From the top floor of the CND build-
ing, Kayonga saw the plane explode. Lt-Col. James Kaberebe informed
Kagame of the success of the attack. Kagame immediately ordered
remaining RPA units to move out of Mulindi.
The Rwandan army had two radio listening centres, in Kigali and
Gisenyi. On the morning of 6 April, an RPF message concerning its troop
movements the previous night was intercepted. At 20h45 on 7 April,
the Gisenyi centre picked up a message announcing the success of ‘the
mission of the reinforced squadron’ – the name of the unit that attacked
the plane.
Some time later, civilians found two missile launching tubes in
Masaka and handed them over to the army. The serial numbers were
photographed. A later investigation by the Moscow Military Court, in
its compliance with a request for judicial assistance, confirmed that the
missiles used (and also those from another missile launching tube that
had been found in the Akagera Park by the Rwandan army in 1990)
were part of an order of forty missiles sent from the former Soviet Union
to Uganda. Reyntjens has also testified that members of the Ugandan
intelligence services confirmed to him that the surface-to-air missiles
used in the attack were given by Uganda to the RPF.
Supplementing the information given by RPF dissidents to Bruguière is
the testimony of another dissident, Christophe Hakizabera, RPF member
from 1990 to 1995. With regard to Habyarimana’s assassination, he states
28 Rwanda 1994
that there were three meetings before the Mulindi meeting of 31 March
1994, in which the assassination of Habyarimana was discussed. The
first was in Kabale, Uganda, in the Bishop’s premises, under the auspices
of Archbishop Haremimana. The second was held in Mbarara, Uganda,
in the home of Museveni’s half-brother Major-General Salim Saleh.
A commitment to carry out the assassination was made in Bobo-Dioulasso,
Burkina Faso, in March 1994, in which Kagame participated.42
In another private and entirely separate investigation, former French
judge and member of the European Parliament, Thierry Jean-Pierre, also
concluded that Kagame was behind the attack.43 The most recent judicial
action taken to date is that of the Spanish High Court judge Fernando
Andreu. On 6 February 2008, Andreu issued a 182-page indictment
detailing crimes committed by President Kagame and members of his
military. They were held responsible for the murder of some 320,000
civilians during the war.44
On 1 October 2011, the most senior ranking RPF official to date
made a confession that he had been told in July 1994 by Kagame
himself that that he – Kagame – was responsible for shooting down
the plane. Théogene Rudasingwa had the rank of major and went on to
be trusted with Kagame’s most important job as Rwanda’s ambassador
to Washington. ‘Like many others in the RPF leadership, I enthusiasti-
cally sold this deceptive story line, especially to foreigners who by and
large came to believe it, even when I knew that Kagame was the culprit
in this crime.’45
It would seem therefore that the charges against Kagame and the
named individual RPF members for the assassination of two heads of
state by means of a rocket attack upon an aircraft are substantial and
credible. They clearly undermine the force of the dominant narrative
whose proponents have become evasive on the issue of the assassina-
tion. Before examining the way in which the ICTR has managed these
charges it is worth critiquing the argument presented by the proponents
of the official version for the culpability of the Akazu for shooting down
the plane.
The motive ascribed to Akazu extremists for shooting down the plane is
a curious one. Knowing full well the level of tension in Rwandan society
at the time, these ‘conspirators’ would of course have known that assas-
sinating the President would spark off killings of Tutsis. It should also
be assumed that it was known that the RPF would immediately use any
Apocalypse 1994 29
such killings as a pretext for resuming the war. But why would anyone
on the government side want renewed war? The piece cited from
Human Rights Watch argues that ‘Hutu Power leaders expected that
killing Tutsi would draw the RPF back into combat and give them a new
chance for victory or at least for negotiations that might allow them
to win back some of the concessions made at Arusha’.46 This is flawed
reasoning. The RPF’s offensive of February 1993 had been a resounding
success. It had demonstrated its military superiority over the FAR and
that, were it not for French intervention, it may well have seized power.
With the departure of the French forces in December 1993, a military
takeover by the RPF was entirely feasible. Furthermore, ever since 1990
the RPF had been making press releases and public statements accus-
ing government forces of committing acts of genocide. They had made
repeated threats that any further acts of this nature would be met with
another offensive. A strategy of drawing the RPF back into combat by
means of killing Tutsis could not by any stretch of the imagination
have resulted in the government side making military or political gains.
It would have looked more like a suicide mission. Paradoxically, oppo-
nents of the RPF of all political persuasions knew that while a military
confrontation with the RPF would lead to their certain defeat, free elec-
tions would almost certainly undermine the RPF’s position.
While the RPF may not have anticipated the scale of the killings that
did take place, the immediate appearance of the killings as genocide
provided the perfect justification not only for resuming hostilities, but
also for taking over the country completely – which had been the their
objective from the outset. The fact of mass slaughter directed primarily
against Tutsis enabled the RPF to justify complete takeover as a neces-
sary means of ending genocide. Although such a strategy would not
absolve the individual murderers of Tutsi civilians in any way, it would
reveal opportunism on the part of the RPF that is breathtaking in its
cynicism and callousness. A former senior member of the RPF, whose
family was living in Kigali at the time, recounted his shock and horror
to the author at hearing Kagame say that the deaths of local Tutsi would
be an acceptable price of victory.47
What is most telling is that the United Nations, whose own investiga-
tions and establishment of the ICTR have provided an official and legal
seal of approval to the Akazu conspiracy theory, is the same organisa-
tion that has gone to great lengths, sustained over a decade, to suppress
30 Rwanda 1994
Three years later, the Canadian daily National Post revealed that inves-
tigations into the attack had been carried out by the prosecution from
1996 – before the Prosecutor had denied it, categorically on his oath
of office – during the trial of Georges Rutaganda. The National Post
was in possession of two documents. The first was written by Michael
Hourigan. Marked ‘confidential’, it was directed to the attention of the
Office of Internal Investigations of the United Nations and expressed
Hourigan’s frustration at being forbidden to continue his investigation
into the plane attack. The second document was an unsigned letter
detailing the testimony of former RPF members of the ‘Network’ that
carried out the plane shooting.
32 Rwanda 1994
[t]hey could have gained a lot more if they had carried on the war to
its end, which was what they finally did in fact, but they certainly
could not have done this without a good pretext. Now, I am not at
all suggesting that the RPF was looking for this pretext, because this
pretext could have been the shooting down of the presidential plane
and we do not know today who carried out this attack.53
… there would also have been a judicial interest. Those who shot
down the plane knew very well what the consequences of this attack
would be, and in this case they would bear a legal responsibility – and
I’m not saying political, now, but legal – for the genocide. Because
they would have – knowing full well what the consequences would
be – they would have ignited the genocide.54
Continued suppression
Hopes that the ICTR would reconsider its position on the plane shoot-
ing were raised when Louise Arbour was replaced as Chief Prosecutor.
Arbour was appointed to the Canadian Supreme Court and replaced
at the ICTR by Carla Del Ponte from Switzerland. In an interview with
the Danish daily Aktuelt in March 2000, Del Ponte revealed that shortly
after her appointment she had appointed a special team to investigate
RPF crimes and the attack upon Habyarimana’s jet. But the documents
covering the previous investigation had apparently disappeared: ‘I have
no information, no documents, nothing.’ She had also co-operated with
Judge Bruguière. On 17 April 2000, Del Ponte was quoted in Aktuelt
again: ‘If we have evidence or concrete suspicion that the assassination
of the President was an act related to the genocide; if this is the case, the
investigation will be re-opened. … [i]f it is the RPF that shot down the
plane, the history of the genocide must be rewritten.’56 But in September
Apocalypse 1994 33
2003, Del Ponte could go no further with the investigations. The United
Nations Security Council decided that the job of Chief Prosecutor would
no longer be split between the ICTR and International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and that one Chief Prosecutor would
be assigned to each tribunal. Despite indicating a preference for the
ICTR, Del Ponte was moved to the ICTY – ‘unfortunately, I was not given
the luxury of choosing’, she told Hirondelle news service. and ‘yes, pres-
sure from Rwanda contributed to the non-renewal of my mandate’.57
An insight into the circumstances that led to Del Ponte’s removal
from the ICTR is provided in a book by Del Ponte’s spokesperson,
Florence Hartmann. On 14 May 2003, a meeting was held in a confer-
ence room of the US State Department in Washington, DC The chair
was Pierre Prosper in his capacity as US Ambassador at Large for War
Crimes. Prosper had previously been an ICTR Prosecutor in the trial
of Jean Paul Akayesu. The Rwandan government delegation took
the position that crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army
should be regarded as a matter for Rwanda’s own justice system, not
the ICTR. In any case, they argued, the ICTR prosecution was far from
achieving its mandate. They produced a diskette that contained a list of
350 names of high-ranking officials involved in the genocide, which
had yet to be investigated by the Tribunal. On many occasions,
Prosper intervened to make Del Ponte yield towards the Rwandan
position. Del Ponte conceded their demand that they run parallel
investigations into the RPA, but wanted to maintain overall control
of the investigations. Prosper sided with the Rwandans. Two months
later, Del Ponte was presented with a draft agreement. She refused to
sign it. Shortly after, Del Ponte was replaced as Chief Prosecutor by
Hussan Bubacar Jallow. The United Nations debated the text that was
to result in Resolution of 26 March 2004 on the ‘completion strategy’
of the ICTR and ICTY. According to Hartmann, ‘Prosper reassured
President Kagame that he need not worry about the wording of the
text, since Jallow had ratified the promise of the United States to the
Rwandan authorities on the abandonment of prosecution against
the Tutsi soldiers by the ICTR.’58 It appears that these reassurances
were kept at an informal level. ICTR spokesperson Kingsley Moghalu
echoes the account given by Hartmann of Del Ponte’s meeting at
the State Department. Moghalu quotes Del Ponte from his interview
with her that while she had insisted upon the ICTR’s jurisdiction over
RPF crimes, she had done so in order to comply with the Tribunal’s
statute. But she had also offered a way out at the meeting by express-
ing her view that the United Nations Security Council had the option
of amending the statute to remove the prosecution from prosecuting
34 Rwanda 1994
crimes committed by the RPF.59 It is clear that impunity for the RPF has
been assured. As one defence counsel member stated, ‘[w]hat is certain
is that since her [Del Ponte’s] departure, the subject of RPF prosecu-
tions is stone cold’.60
Del Ponte’s successor at the ICTR, Gambian Hassan Bubacar Jallow,
subsequently confirmed that the shooting down of the aircraft is ‘not
a case that falls within our jurisdiction’.61 It is ironic that the ICTR’s
first Chief Prosecutor, Richard Goldstone, has expressed his view that
the plane attack does fall within the remit of the Court and ought to
be investigated: ‘It is clearly related to the genocide, by all accounts
that was the trigger that started the genocide and it would have been
very, very important from a justice point of view, from victims’ point
of view, to find out.’62 However, the ICTR’s Deputy Prosecutor Bernard
Muna felt cavalier enough about the issue to say to the ICTR’s legal
adviser Kingsley Moghalu that ‘after all, there was a state of war, and
Habyarimana could be considered a legitimate target’.63 This is an
extraordinary statement from such a senior figure. The missile attack
was, among other things, a deliberate violation of Article 1 of the
Arusha Accords of 4 August the previous year, which states: ‘The war
between the Government of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front
is over.’
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary-General of the United Nations at
the time, is also emphatic about the cover-up of the investigation into
the plane shooting:
Further suppression
Another major cover-up was key to the consolidation of the genocide con-
spiracy myth. Robert Gersony, a senior United Nations High Commission
for Refugees official, had been appointed by the High Commissioner as
part of an Emergency Repatriation Team to conduct a field assessment
of the prospects of refugee repatriation and to devise mechanisms that
could accelerate the safe return to Rwanda of the refugee population.
His team visited forty-one of Rwanda’s 145 communes, and collected
Apocalypse 1994 35
detailed information from ten others. He also visited nine refugee camps
in Burundi, Tanzania and Zaïre.
Gersony found that following the expulsion of the FAR and mili-
tia from Kigali, Butare and Kibungo prefectures, the RPF committed
‘systematic and sustained killings and persecution of their civilian
Hutu population’. The killings were conducted in different ways. One
method was to call the residents to meetings to discuss ‘peace’, ‘security’
or ‘food distribution’. As soon as sizeable numbers had gathered they
would be massacred. They would be shot, locked into buildings into
which grenades would be thrown, or systematically killed with manual
instruments like machetes and nail-studded clubs. There were also
house-to-house killings. There were operations against hidden popula-
tions: sudden, well-coordinated attacks with gunfire; silent attacks with
manual weapons; suspensions of operations followed by invitations to
hidden families to return home in peace, followed by killings. Asylum
seekers who were moving south towards Burundi were apprehended
and killed. Refugees who responded to calls on government radio calls
to return had been killed. One example was given of a group of 150
refugees returning from Zaïre to northern Ruhengeri prefecture being
intercepted and killed on 3 August 1994.65
Shaharyar Khan, The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to
Rwanda, who arrived in Rwanda in June 1994, reveals much about the
UN’s treatment of Gersony in his book The Shallow Graves of Rwanda.66
On 14 September 1994, Khan learned that the High Commissioner,
Sadako Ogata, had indicated to the Secretary-General that Gersony’s
report was about to be made public ‘with highly damaging repercussions,
not only for the Rwandan government, but also for UNAMIR’. Ogato
had conveyed the conclusions of the report informally to the Secretary-
General, ‘sending shivers of concern all the way across the 38th floor
of headquarters and down to Kigali’. The report was not to be made
public until after Annan’s investigations and the Rwandan government’s
comments. Khan was instructed to intercept Kofi Annan, the head of
DPKO, in Nairobi. Annan and Gersony then travelled to Rwanda, where
Gersony gave a two-hour briefing to Khan and other UNAMIR officials.
He further concluded that the killings could only have been part of
a policy emanating from the highest echelons of the RPF. The main
difference between the Hutu massacre of Tutsis and the revenge kill-
ings described by Gersony was that the RPA acted with subtlety and
finesse, covering their tracks with greater dexterity than the RGF
militia and Interahamwe.
36 Rwanda 1994
Gersony was heard out ‘in horror and with some disbelief’ before
arranging a meeting with Seth Sendashonga, the Minister of the
Interior, and Faustin Twagiramungu, the Prime Minister, and Jean Marie
Vianney, the Foreign Minister, who then received another briefing from
Gersony. The ministers made predictable objections to the credibility
of his findings. Khan then held an internal UNAMIR meeting where it
was decided that Gersony had been mislead by ‘planted and dramatized
evidence’. A team comprising four Rwandan ministers and four UN
representatives spent a single day visiting villages where Gersony had
gathered information, and found ‘no evidence except a mass grave dat-
ing back to April or May’ – before the RPF’s arrival. Annan’s conclusion
was that the report ‘should stay in the drawer as a public airing would
result in sensationalizing conclusions that had not been verified’.67
Twagiramungu and Sendashonga left the government and went into
exile in August 1995. They subsequently endorsed the claims made
by Gersony. Twagiramungu attributed 300,000 deaths to the RPF.68 The
author interviewed both men in London on separate occasions. They
stated that a significant percentage of the number of bodies floating
down the Kagera River was the work of the RPF, and that there would
have been no possibility of living freely or safely in Rwanda if they had
endorsed Gersony. Sendashonga was later assassinated in Nairobi.69
In response to the revelation of Gersony, and also to an RPF massacre
of civilians in Mukingi commune reported by Human Rights Watch, a
‘US policymaker’ rationalised the double standard used towards civilian
killings in Rwanda:
Kagame and his henchmen have enjoyed impunity from three American
administrations. It is this protection that has kept the Akazu genocide
myth going. Discrediting this major component of the myth – that the
Akazu brought down the President’s plane in order to signal the com-
mencement of genocide – is a start. Tackling the other aspects of it, the
planning and subsequent implementation of genocide, will come later.
Getting to grips with the real dynamics at work requires detail of what
has been established to have occurred at this time. An exploration into
Rwanda’s historical formation and development is needed to contextu-
alise the social and political forces that took shape in the 1990s.
3
The Kingdom, the Colony
and the Republics: Ethnicity
in Perspective
link ethnic identity with physical appearance. The Tutsi are thought of as
tall, with slender features, thin noses and lips. The Hutu are considered to
have stockier builds and wider noses and thicker lips, while the Twa are a
short pygmoid people. Yet these stereotypes cannot signify much by way
of group identity since the three groups have inhabited the same area
for centuries, and there has been a significant degree of intermarriage.
It would seem reasonable to suggest that if the three groups were physi-
cally distinct from each other as far back as the seventeenth century,
they would have had geographically separate origins. According to one
study, the pygmoid Twa arrived first, followed by the Hutu, who cleared
large tracts of forest for agriculture. Then came the Tutsi pastoralists,
relatives of the Hima people of what is today Uganda.5 A team of Belgian
nutritionists studying diets in Rwanda in 1975 also described the Tutsis
as a milk-drinking Nilotic people who dominated the lactose-intolerant
Hutu, who were Bantu from the central African highlands, and the Twa,
who were ‘pigmy’ Bantu from the tropical forests of Zaïre.6 However,
Vansina argues that there never were successive migrations of Twa forag-
ers, Hutu farmers and Tutsi herders, since these social categories were
only slowly developed as a means of labelling persons who were living
in the country. The settlement history of Rwanda, according to Vansina,
is actually very ancient and quite complex.7 If the Tutsi and Hutu had
separate origins, one would expect to find evidence of a mixing of lan-
guages, yet there is none. As a way round this, it has been suggested that
the Tutsi adopted the language of the Hutu. But a language cannot be
‘adopted’. As the linguist Didier Goyvaerts argues,
[i]f this story has any truth at all, then Kinyarwanda must have been
solidified through a lengthy and intricate process involving pidgi-
nisation and creolization as a result of intermarriage and complete
socio-cultural assimilation. Furthermore, since there is not a single
Nilotic trace to be discerned in present-day Kinyarwanda we cannot
even have recourse to lexicostatistic dating.8
since the sixth century AD, the Babylonian Talmud has it that the
African carried the curse of their ancestor Ham and that they are black,
degenerate and condemned to slavery’. Nineteenth-century Egyptology
dramatically revised the Hamitic myth to make Hamites indigenous to
north-east Africa with their proper civilisation. Nineteenth-century
European explorers could not countenance the idea of civilised people
being indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, and used the Hamitic myth
to postulate origins external to the region. Speke was impressed with
the kingdoms he encountered in the Great Lakes region. He surmised
that these rulers must have originated from Ethiopia, that the Galla of
southern Ethiopia were the ancestors of the Tutsi/Bahima of the Great
Lakes.9 This pseudo-scientific theory was to inform British rule in the
Uganda Protectorate, and German and Belgian rule in Ruanda-Urundi.
It is also claimed that the Hamitic hypothesis has been internalised to a
significant extent by the population of the region, resulting in a superi-
ority complex among Tutsis and an inferiority complex among Hutus.
To a certain extent, the internalisation of the Hamitic hypothesis
informs the ‘aristocratic’ version of ethnicity in Rwanda. This version
depicts the social relations as a benign form of feudalism of Tutsi rulers
and Hutu subjects. Society was hierarchical, but the stratification was
blurred by a certain degree of fluidity.10 Proponents of this version all
assert that the clientage system, while unequal, was based on reciprocity
and offered strong benefits to the clients. These works were informed
to a significant extent by J. J. Maquet’s Le système des relations sociales
dans le Rwanda ancien published in 1954.11 Maquet characterised the
relations between the three principal groups in terms of caste: a rigidly
defined and unchanging hierarchy of the powerful Tutsi pastoralists
who exploited their Hutu agriculturalist subjects. Representing less than
1% of the population, the Twa were considered insignificant.12 Maquet
was a protégé of Alexis Kagame, whose great-uncle commanded an
army under King Rwabugiri, and had set out to validate the aristocratic
representation of pre-colonial Rwanda. He states that he did not inter-
view any Hutu when doing his research because ‘the more competent
people on political organisation were the Tutsi’. His aim ‘was not to
assess the opinions and knowledge of the whole of the Rwanda popula-
tion on their past political organisation, but to discover as accurately as
possible what that organisation was’.13 The aristocratic representation
emphasises the reciprocal nature of clientship and omits any mention
of features of this relationship that were less than benign. Fluidity
between strata was also emphasised: a Hutu could become Tutsi by way
of enrichment with cattle, and conversely a Tutsi could become Hutu
40 Rwanda 1994
on the other. But not all peasants were party to clientship relations, and
those who were not enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy from the
royal court, though they also experienced greater insecurity as a conse-
quence. In the northern periphery, especially around Ruhengeri, land
tenure arrangements were different and greater levels of autonomy from
the centre were maintained. Where they were practised, patron–client
relations were between individuals or lineages of unequal standing.
Some were based upon a degree of mutually beneficial reciprocity, while
others were more exploitative. These relations varied from one region
to another and were far from static, at certain times facilitating social
cohesion, at other times causing cleavages. They tended to become less
reciprocal and more exploitative as the power of the kingdom expanded
to embrace the periphery and became more integrated in the last
decades before colonialism.
It was during this latter period that ethnic identities became politi-
cally salient categories. While there had been many criteria for ethnic
identification – birth, wealth, culture, place of origin, physical attrib-
utes and social and marriage ties – the categories of Hutu and Tutsi
assumed new hierarchical tones that were associated with proximity to
the central court. According to Newbury, Hutu identity ‘became identi-
fied with, and later defined by, inferior status’.23 Vansina states that
the boundaries of modern Rwanda were established in 1867,24 and the
Hutu–Tutsi distinction was established across Rwanda from the 1870s.25
Around 1870, under the Rwabugiri administration, the most exploita-
tive form of clientship, uburetwa, emerged. This was a type of corvée
labour service that was performed for the chiefs. What is significant
about uburetwa is that it was applied solely to Hutus. Tutsis, including
those who were impoverished peasants, were exempt. A small percent-
age of Hutu could evade uburetwa by entering into the status-elevating
ubuhake clientship, but the rest of the population could not. It was
mainly due to the institutionalisation of uburetwa that social relations
in Rwanda during the immediate pre-colonial period acquired an ethnic
colouration.26 Vansina states that
The social anthropologist Johan Pottier also argues that it was uburetwa,
and not ubuhake, that was ‘the core of Hutu subjugation’.28 Newbury
42 Rwanda 1994
Davidson goes on to argue that the Hutu and Tutsi identities were the
creation of German colonialism: the Germans assumed that since the
Tutsis carried spears, they would be suited for the role of agents of
indirect rule. The Germans ‘fashioned a ruling class and a class of serfs.
Forty years later, the Tutsi hated the Hutu and vice versa.’32 A common
feature of other more recent aristocratic representations is the emphasis
upon the reciprocity said to characterise ubuhake. Reciprocity is used to
downplay ethnicity and assert that social relations were integrative, and
that Hutu subjects benefited from checks and balances. The aristocratic
position claims that it was the conscious disruption of these integrative
features by German and Belgian colonialism that generated ethnic con-
sciousness and enmity.33
Not surprisingly, the official position of the present RPF-dominated
Rwandan government is a reassertion of the romantic aristocratic ver-
sion. The official website of the Rwandan government states that
[w]hile the relationship between the king and the rest of the popu-
lation was unequal, the relationship between the ordinary Bahutu,
Batutsi and Batwa was one of mutual benefit mainly through the
exchange of their labour. The relationship was symbiotic. A clientele
system called ‘Ubuhake’ permeated the whole society.34
Unlike other parts of the Great Lakes region, Rwanda was not assigned
as a colonial possession by the Berlin Conference of 1884, but in the
Heligoland–Zanzibar treaty of 1890. In terms of this treaty, Germany
acquired the North Sea island of Heligoland (or Helgoland), the Caprivi
strip, which linked German South-West Africa to the Zambezi River, and
a sphere of influence in East Africa that extended as far north as Lake
Victoria and as far west as the Belgian Congo. This gave Rwanda and
Burundi (as Ruanda-Urundi) to the German Empire as colonial spheres
of interest in exchange for German renunciation of claims on Uganda
and Zanzibar. The final borders of the colony were formally recognised
by agreement with Britain and Belgium in 1910.36 As a part of the deal
for British recognition, the Rwandan province of Bufumbira was ceded
to Uganda.37
The German presence was first established with a military post
set up by Captain von Bethe at Shangi in 1895.38 The previous year,
Rutarindwa had inherited the kingdom from his father Rwabugiri IV,
but this had generated a rebellion from within the King’s council.
Rutarindwa and his family were killed in 1896. The throne passed to
Yuhi Musinga, whose claim was based upon links through his mother
and uncles, but dissent continued.39 The increased German presence in
1897 occurred while the royal court was beset by debilitating division.
A faction around Yuhi Musinga viewed the Germans as a preferable
alternative to the Belgians, and also as a defence against threats from
the Buganda kingdom to the north. Through backing this faction,
Germany was able to establish a pliant administration in Ruanda
with much less resistance than it had encountered in Urundi. With
Usumbura (Bujumbura) in Urundi as the centre of German East Africa’s
military administration of Ruanda-Urundi, civil administration was
established in 1907. In the same year the town of Kigali was established
by the first German governor, Richard Kandt.40
44 Rwanda 1994
Belgian-led troops invaded from the Belgian Congo Free State in April
1916. They were assisted by a British offensive from Uganda. After put-
ting up a brief resistance, the German forces retreated and left Ruanda-
Urundi to the Belgians.43 At the end of the First World War, Germany
renounced its overseas territories in terms of Article 119 of the Treaty of
Versailles on 28 June 1919. Ruanda-Urundi was mandated to Belgium by
the League of Nations. In accordance with the Milner–Orts Agreement
of the same year, the region known as Kisaka or Kissaga (present-day
Gisaka), some 2000 square miles west of the Kagera River in Ruanda was
ceded to Britain. However, this region was returned to Belgian Ruanda
by means of an amendment on 1 January 1924.44
Mamdani states that for the Hutu peasantry, Belgian colonialism was
harsher than previous forms of rule. This was because the reorganisa-
tion of state administration into a single hierarchy of chiefs accentu-
ated its despotic aspect, which lay principally in exactions of economic
compulsions under an administratively defined ‘customary law’. Forced
labour, forced surrender of crops under the hierarchy of Tutsi chiefs, and
The Kingdom, the Colony and the Republics 45
Independence
firmly with the rural masses. When the 1956 elections failed to affect any
reforms, demands for an end to discriminatory practices became more
militant. The refusal of the High Council – the Conseil Supérieur – to
meet any of these demands in its ‘Statement of Views’, which dis-
cussed discrimination solely in terms of Europeans and Africans, and
the impending visit of the United Nations Visiting Mission prompted
the launch of the ‘Manifesto of the Bahutu’ by nine prominent Hutu
leaders. The Manifesto insisted upon the centrality of the Hutu–Tutsi
problem and demanded that Belgium recognise it.60
The Hutu elite appealed for Belgian support, possibly having by this
time registered the start of a reorientation of Belgian colonial policy.
This is probably why the Manifesto concentrated its fire upon ‘the polit-
ical monopoly of one race, the mututsi …’ and did not attack Belgian
colonialism directly. It demanded among other things the abolition of
corvées and their replacement with wages and legislative protection for
people in public works; a rural credit fund to help agriculturalists and
artisans, and a lowering of ethnic barriers to school admissions and of
scholarship funds; and the establishment of social centres for women
and girls in the rural areas.61
The Bahutu Manifesto made essentially democratic demands. However,
its reference to the Tutsi as a race also demonstrates the appropriation
of the racialised identities of Hutu and Tutsi that derived from the
Hamitic hypothesis. It generated a swift reaction from the chiefs. The
Tutsi hierarchy went on the counter-offensive in 1954. A conserva-
tive Tutsi organisation, the Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR), was
established in November 1957. UNAR was strongly monarchist and
demanded immediate independence, seeking to consolidate the Tutsi
hierarchy before the Hutu elite had time to become organisationally
powerful. In a twist of Cold War politics, UNAR also began to receive
money from Communist member countries of the United Nations
Trusteeship Council, including China. UNAR’s ties with the Congolese
leftist-nationalist Lumumba and its East-Bloc funding resulted in deep-
ening antagonism between itself and Belgian authorities.62
In order to promote a more liberal Tutsi leadership, the Belgian
authorities released Chief Bwanakweri. Bwanakweri formed the
Rassemblement Démocratique Rwandais (RADER) in September 1959.
RADER was treated with hostility by UNAR, and was also mistrusted by
Hutus who were suspicious of its close relations with Belgian authori-
ties. Consequently, it floundered.63
In October 1959, the prominent Hutu leader Grégoire Kayibanda
transformed the Mouvement Sociale Muhutu, a cultural movement that
The Kingdom, the Colony and the Republics 49
had been set up in June 1957, into a political party, the Mouvement
Démocratique Rwandais/Parti du Mouvement et de l’Emancipation Hutu
(MDR-PARMEHUTU). Its key demand was for ‘a genuine democratisation
of all existing institutions before the granting of independence’.64 Belgian
colonial administrators were not unsympathetic to these demands, but
events by this time had already indicated that the colony was slipping
from their control. The death of King Rudahigwa in July brought the
tenuous grip of the administrators into sharp relief. Without deferring
to Belgian authority, conservative Tutsis chose Kigeri Ndahindurwa as
his successor. This appointment galvanised the Hutu elite into more
decisive action. The following months were marked by frenetic political
party-building activity in preparation for the elections scheduled for the
end of the year.65
Militant activism by PARMEHUTU and others was met with increasingly
violent measures from UNAR, who attempted to frustrate their mem-
bership drive. On 1 November 1959, Tutsi youths attacked Dominique
Mbonyumutwa, a Hutu sub-chief. This sparked off retaliatory attacks on
four Tutsi notables the following day. Violence then spread to other dis-
tricts in Gitarama territory and accelerated into a national uprising. The
violence spread first through territories where PARMEHUTU support had
been built: Gitarama, Ruhengeri, Gisenyi and Byumba. Hutu militants
concentrated their actions more on burning houses than on attacking
individuals.66 Only three territories were spared – Astrida (which later
became Butare), Cyangugu and Kibungo.67
The uprising provoked a Tutsi counter-attack, which was, accord-
ing to Newbury, better organised and more brutal. On 6 November,
Ndahindurwa requested permission to use his own army to restore order.
This permission was denied but Ndahindurwa proceeded undeterred.
The court issued orders for the arrest of Hutu leaders. Tutsi army units
were dispatched the following day, and a number of leaders were killed.
Other leaders, notably Gitera and Kayibanda, went into hiding.68
At this point Belgian authorities intervened decisively to assist in
the overthrow of the Tutsi hierarchy. Governor Harroy had already
committed Colonel Logiest, an officer in the Force Publique in the
Congo, to send a detachment on 24 October. On 4 November, Logiest
came to Ruanda with additional soldiers and Belgian paratroopers.
On 11 November a state of emergency was declared, and Logiest was
appointed Special Military Resident. The Belgians concentrated their
efforts on protecting the Hutu elite.69 In many instances, they stood
aside when Tutsi dwellings were destroyed.70 After the uprising, oppo-
sition to Tutsis was developed to the point where the population was
50 Rwanda 1994
Just as the limited social revolution of 1959 has been negatively reap-
praised in the light of 1994, so has the role of President Habyarimana
in the Second Republic. The difference between pre- and post-April
1994 writing on Rwanda is stark. The earlier writing tends to credit
Habyarimana for dissipating ethnic tensions and fostering Tutsi participa-
tion – initially in civil society and later in political life. At the same time,
what would now be termed an affirmative action programme addressed
the legacy of Hutu disadvantage. However, post-1994 writings tend to
demonise Habyarimana’s reforms as Machiavellian schemes designed
to dupe Western donors with the appearance of good governance while
clandestinely facilitating a secretive privileged faction, the so-called
Akazu, who are said to have wielded power and influence through nepo-
tism, corruption and terror. Here too, a more balanced account is needed,
in which political and economic progress was real, while co-existing
with a skewing of public resources and appointments that favoured the
The Kingdom, the Colony and the Republics 53
north-western elite and their region. Murderous repression, too, was real.
Nevertheless, Lemarchand is right to argue against projecting events of
1994 onto the past, ‘and infer therefrom an undiluted commitment to
racism on the part of the Habyarimana regime’.83
That no major ethnic violence occurred during the Second Republic
from 1973 until 1990 is a noteworthy achievement in itself. While
Habyarimana’s regime was identified as one that was top-heavy with
figures from his Gisenyi-Ruhengeri base, it was also popular among
Tutsis to the extent that it was regarded as favouring Tutsis.84 An
attempt was made to include Tutsis in public life. The cabinet of June
1974 included a Tutsi, André Katabarwa. Tutsis were also included in
the senior civil service and in the army.85 A few Tutsis in the private
sector became very wealthy. With Tutsi exile politics in abeyance
and Kayibanda’s base discredited and divided, Habyarimana’s party,
the Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement
(MRND), became the de facto single party. It also became the de jure
single party in 1978, when Article 7 of the constitution was amended
to enshrine single-party rule.86 The MRND enjoyed a monopoly of
power for the next decade. During this period, a programme of affirma-
tive action for Hutus was loosely enforced. This generally meant that a
‘glass ceiling’ blocked upward mobility for Tutsis in the public sector,
and may well be the main reason for the preponderance of Tutsis in the
small private sector. Despite this, the Habyarimana regime is generally
credited, over this period at least, with achieving a degree of ethnic
harmony.
The status quo was disrupted by new influences that were felt in the
late 1980s and intensified with the effects of the termination of the
Cold War. Pressure for democratic reform mounted primarily because of
economic deterioration during the latter half of the 1980s. In late 1988,
Habyarimana responded with an open forum in the national stadium.
The stadium filled with workers, industrialists, bankers, farmers’ organi-
sations and businessmen. In January 1989, Habyarimana declared before
the new legislature that there was a need for the reform of the political
system. The Secretariat of the MRND was requested to undertake a new
study to reform the party in order to make the party better equipped to
meet the new challenges.87
It is necessary to show that Habyarimana had been responsive to
the changing political environment and had made initiatives of his
own towards democratic reform, because there is much literature that
attributes the initial impetus towards democratic reform in Rwanda
to French pressure applied at the Francophone Africa Summit of June
54 Rwanda 1994
Leadership crisis
The invasion went badly. On the second day, the RPF’s leader Fred
Rwigyema was killed. With Zairian armoured units cutting off the RPF’s
rear, the rebels were pushed south and west through open savannah
where they were more vulnerable to the FAR. Despite the fact that the
majority of the RPF were guerrillas who had been hardened by their
five-year war against the Ugandan army when it was loyal to President
Obote, while the FAR soldiers had not seen any combat since 1969, the
FAR and Zairians succeeded in pushing the RPF back over the Ugandan
border,11 depleting their numbers by 1,800.12 The government of
Rwanda and the RPF met in Gbadolite, Zaïre, and signed a cease-fire on
26 November 1990.13
Three days earlier, Major Peter Bayingana and Major Chris Bunyenyezi,
who had assumed joint command of the RPF following the death of
Rwigyema, were also killed.14 There are conflicting accounts of the
deaths of Rwigyema, Bayingana and Bunyenyezi. Some claim that
Rwigyema was killed by Bayingana and Bunyenyezi as a result of a
dispute over strategy. According to this account, Rwigyema’s protracted
guerrilla war approach was opposed by Bayingana and Bunyenyezi, who
wanted a ‘blitzkrieg’ strike on Kigali.15 There was known to have been
intense rivalry between these three leaders.16 The latter were then alleged
to have been executed on the orders of Museveni, who was outraged by
Rwigyema’s killing. Rwigyema had been a close friend of Museveni and
was a popular and charismatic figure. Others claim that this in-fighting
account is disinformation produced by the Rwandan government.17 The
prominent RPF dissident Abdul Ruzibiza claimed that, after Bayingana
and Bunyenyezi had rejected Major Paul Kagame as their replacement as
leader, Kagame left for Kampala and returned with Major-General Salim
Saleh and many Presidential Guard officers in ten army trucks, and
that Bayingana and Bunyenyezi were ‘gunned down’ on the day they
returned.18 Whatever the facts of the matter, the RPF leadership crisis
was resolved by Major Paul Kagame breaking off his military training in
the United States and returning to assume military command.19 Alexis
Kanyarengwe became RPF president. Under Kagame, the RPF regrouped
in the Virunga Mountains and retrained. In January 1991, the RPF was
sufficiently re-equipped and reorganised to able to launch another
offensive. It would soon become a superior force to the FAR.
58 Rwanda 1994
But what of Museveni’s official position, that the RPF were deserters
from the Ugandan army and had invaded Rwanda without his knowl-
edge? And how was it that the defeated ‘deserters’ could return to
Uganda with impunity and regroup and rearm for renewed war against
Uganda’s neighbour? How did Kagame, and several other would-be
RPF officials, receive military training in various locations in the US
as Ugandan citizens, and then be allowed to return to Uganda and
renew a war immediately upon the defeat of an invasion force of illegal
‘deserters’?
RPF origins
While the conditions for the formation of the RPF and its preparation
for war were largely of Ugandan origin, the circumstances that influ-
enced the timing of the invasion arose in Rwanda. The immediate post-
Cold War environment revitalised politics in Rwanda. The decision of
the Habyarimana regime to end one-party rule and to engage seriously
with the issue of the return of Rwandan refugees had the paradoxical
effect of prompting invasion and war.
Habyarimana’s dictatorship and his refusal to allow the return of
refugees were given by the RPF and their supporters as the main reasons
for their invasion, yet the opposite is the case. Definite progress towards
political liberalisation and concrete steps towards facilitating the return
of the refugees had prompted the RPF invasion. Both developments
undermined the RPF’s argument that armed rebellion was their only
possible course of action. If Rwandan refugees were to be invited to
return and become enfranchised citizens of a democratic state, there
would be no case for a ‘war of liberation’. They had to take up arms
against Kigali immediately or risk becoming rebels without a cause.
While the RPF’s recruits were overwhelmingly from the Tutsi com-
munity within Rwanda and the wider region,39 the organisation was
keen to present itself to the international community as one that was
above ethnicity, fighting for the rights of all Rwandans. To this end,
and also for the purpose of acquiring intelligence on the Rwandan
state, they recruited senior MRND members and other prominent fig-
ures who had fallen out with Habyarimana. Valens Kajeguhakwa and
Pasteur Bizimungu, both businessmen who were closely associated
with Habyarimana, fled to Kampala and joined their ranks in October
1990. Two military officers who figured prominently in the coup that
brought Habyarimana to power in 1973 also ended up as senior figures
in the RPF. Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe and Major Lizinde broke with
Habyarimana and attempted to overthrow him in 1990. The attempt
failed, Kanyarengwe escaped to Uganda while Lizinde was imprisoned.
When they attacked the prison at Ruhengeri in January 1991, the RPF
freed Lizinde and brought him into their organisation.40 It is ironic that
Lizinde was a Hutu supremacist whose book had called for a continua-
tion of the Hutu revolution.41
On the face of it, the odds appeared to be stacked against the RPF.
How could the armed wing of an organisation representing the elite
of a minority ethnic group hope to overthrow the Rwandan state and
62 Rwanda 1994
retain power? The answer is that when the United States is behind you
and weakening your adversary at the same time, the odds aren’t so bad.
US backing
It is clear that the RPF started the war with the assurance of discreet
backing from the United States. While this support was disavowed
by American officials at the time, and the extent of it at this stage
is difficult to discern, the evidence of it is persuasive. Years later,
Robert Gribbin, who was America’s ambassador to Rwanda and chargé
d’affaires to the embassy in Uganda at the time, wrote of his view of
the invasion at the time as being a ‘win–win situation’ for both Uganda
and Rwanda. ‘Still, President Museveni would slip in references to “my
boys,” with a sly grin, when referring to the RPA leadership.’42 American
support for the RPF’s war, given at the same time as its extensive inter-
vention into Rwanda’s political reform process, played a significant part
in shaping the conditions that led to the bloodbath that was to come.
The support was a development from the closeness of its relations with
the Museveni regime in Uganda. According to Bruce Jones, an academic
in conflict studies, President Habyarimana had asked the US State
Department to verify Rwandan intelligence reports of RPF mobilisation
on the Ugandan border. Herman Cohen, then Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs, consulted with the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA reported that it had no intelligence of troop activity in south-
ern Uganda, but failed to say that this was because they had ‘turned off’
their monitoring presence there at that time. Habyarimana accepted
Cohen’s assurance. Later CIA sources confirmed that ‘the NRA was pro-
viding direct support to the RPF inside Uganda, including transporting
arms from depots in Kigali to the border for RPF use, making Ugandan
military hospitals accessible to RPF casualties, and keeping civilians
clear from strategic crossings into Rwanda, which had previously been
unguarded’.43
The Rwandan intelligence reports had been sent to Kigali from
the Rwandan Embassy in Kampala. A week before the invasion, on
24 September 1990, Rwanda’s ambassador to Uganda, Pierre-Claver
Kanyarushoki, met Museveni in Entebbe with Rwandan Minister of
Foreign Affairs Casimir Bizimungu. They confronted Museveni with evi-
dence that the RPF was preparing to invade. According to Kanyarushoki,
Museveni told Bizimungu that ‘he should tell Habyarimana that he
should not lose a minute’s sleep over an invasion so long as I am presi-
dent of Uganda’.44
The RPF’s War 63
Cohen failed to add that neither he nor his government were disinter-
ested bystanders either. While Museveni continued denying his sup-
port for the invasion, claiming that the RPF members in the NRA had
deserted, the United States went along with his deception. In a speech
in 1991, Museveni said of the invasion:
Diplomatic cover
More than a decade later, Cohen admitted that America had ‘silently
acquiesced in the invasion’.49 But at the time, the United States and
Britain took the initiative to provide Museveni’s secret war with inter-
national diplomatic cover. Reports from the British High Commission
in Kampala show willingness on the part of the UK to support President
Museveni’s denials that he knew of, or supported in any way, the
invasion of October 1990. In these reports the invasion is not termed an
invasion, but an ‘incursion’. On 2 October, British High Commissioner
to Uganda Charles Cullimore reported a senior Ugandan officer talking
of a ‘mutiny’ by Rwandan elements in the NRA.50 Later that day he
reported National Resistance Council Vice-Chairman Kigongo state that
‘soldiers recruited into the NRA and civilians had escaped from their
camps and places of work and taken up arms…’ He also quoted Mrs
Bigombe, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s office, saying that
‘any who return to Uganda will be arrested. Road blocks have been set
up both to apprehend any Rwandan exiles who attempt to return to
Uganda and to prevent any more Rwandese in the Ugandan army from
joining the group already in Rwanda.’51
By 17 October, the Ugandan denials must have been wearing thin in
other Western quarters. The RPF had been pushed back into Uganda, yet
there were no arrests of any of the ‘mutineers’. A heavily censored UK
Foreign Office report from Cullimore states that,
Early US ties
American ties with the RPF leadership preceded October 1990. Under
its International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme,
the United States was training twelve Rwandan Tutsis who were in
the NRA at the time of the invasion.58 The most prominent was Paul
Kagame. With the death of Rwigyema, Kagame broke off his training
The RPF’s War 67
at the Command and General Staff College (he was in his third of a
nine-month course) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Kagame made no
secret of his reason for leaving, and asked that Gribbin be informed of
his decision and that when ‘circumstances permitted’ he would renew
contact with him.59 On the eve of his departure from Fort Leavenworth,
he was given a ‘warm send-off’.60 As a military leader with extensive
combat experience in Uganda, Kagame would not have missed the
remaining military training. The benefit of his time there was through
the official contacts he made and in mastering the use of communica-
tion and information as aids in warfare. Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony
Marley, who was to play a key role in negotiating cease-fires between
the RPF and the FAR and also a graduate of Fort Leavenworth, thought
that ‘probably the best thing he acquired there was a better understand-
ing of Americans, which he probably put to good political effect over
the following years’.61 Kagame is quoted saying that ‘the US experience
added something. Central to my studies in Leavenworth were organisa-
tion, tactics, strategy, building human resources, Psy-Ops [psychologi-
cal operations], information, psychology and information among the
troops’.62 The other Rwandans received similar training, including
instruction in the use of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at the Barry
Goldwater Air Force Range at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona.63
In August 1988 a conference of the Association of Banyarwandans in
Diaspora was organised in Washington, DC, which brought together
Rwandan Tutsis in exile to sponsor the efforts of the RPF to seize power
in Rwanda. The conference ended with a resolution to bring the Tutsi
refugees back to Rwanda by force. It was attended by two members of
the US State Department and a Ugandan diplomat. Also at the confer-
ence was Roger Winter, the executive director of the US Committee for
Refugees, who was funding Impuruza, the newspaper for exiled Tutsis.64
Other Rwanda observers confirm that the RPF’s standing in the United
States was boosted as a result of this conference.65
We return to the events immediately following the RPF invasion.
Responding to President Habyarimana’s calls for help, French President
François Mitterand’s son Jean-Christophe dispatched 150 paratroopers
from the Central African Republic in Operation Noroît.66 France was the
sole Western power to have condemned the invasion as an act of foreign
aggression. The deployment of French troops bolstered the resolve of
the FAR, and assisted in operations such as targeting artillery.67 President
Mitterand appeared to be making good on his promise to African leaders
at La Baule that France would come to the defence of Francophone
countries faced with external aggression while they implemented
democratic reforms.
68 Rwanda 1994
With the help of Zairian and French forces, the FAR succeeded in driv-
ing the RPF back over the border into Rwanda. Museveni responded
to the failure of the RPF’s invasion by deploying NRA troops along the
entire length of Uganda’s border with Rwanda and reabsorbing the
RPF into its ranks. From November 1990 onwards, the rearmed RPF
launched strikes from Uganda and returned into the ranks of the NRA.
The RPF therefore had no visible presence in Uganda, which enabled
Museveni to deny that the RPF was receiving support from his forces.
Yet his commanding officer of the NRA division deployed along the bor-
der, Anthony Kyakabale, was supplying arms to the RPF. Pierre-Claver
Kanyarushoki, Rwanda’s ambassador to Uganda, supplied evidence of
this to Museveni on more than one occasion, only to receive the same
response: Museveni would say that he would check and get back to
him, and then state plainly that there was no evidence for NRA support
for the RPF.70 The special security adviser to Zairian President Mobutu,
Honoré Ngbanda, reported that Museveni had confided to him that
the RPF’s war was ‘my war’ and he had supplied the RPF with logistical
and military support.71 With this support the RPF restored its fighting
capacity within weeks and began launching further strikes into Rwanda.
The United States gave clandestine support by telling the Rwandan gov-
ernment that they had no knowledge of any support for the RPF from
the Ugandan army. The US ambassador to Uganda at the time, Robert
Gribbin, wrote many years later with obvious approval of the privately
expressed Ugandan view that the RPA’s war was a ‘win–win situation’
for all concerned. ‘Uganda was free of the Rwandans, Museveni was free
The RPF’s War 69
of his obligations to them, and the Rwandans themselves now had the
opportunity to forge their own destiny.’ Gribbin presented the war as
something that was somehow removed from Uganda and Washington:
The United States had few contacts and no influence with the invad-
ers. In short, we said the cat was out of the bag, and neither the
United States nor Uganda was going to rebag it. Turning to US inter-
ests in Uganda, we underlined that our interests had not changed …
we were achieving some small success in professionalizing the army.
Although, admittedly, the goal of regional peace was being chipped
away, many US equities remained at stake. We ought not throw out
the baby with the bathwater.72
Had the United States been true to its stated commitment to democratic
reform in Rwanda, it could have condemned the RPF’s invasion and
used its considerable leverage upon Uganda to bring about the disar-
mament of the rebels. The RPF would have been free to enter Rwanda
and participate in the democratic process with the same rights that
were being extended to the internal opposition parties that would soon
be registered. But instead the US provided discreet support through
Uganda for the RPF’s military ambitions. Financial aid to Uganda was
greatly increased. Between 1989 and 1992 US economic aid amounted
to almost $183 million, as much as the total it had given the country
over the previous twenty-seven years.73 This aid enabled Museveni to
finance ‘his war’.
As vital to the RPF’s military ambitions as US financial aid to Uganda
was, crucial support also came from Washington’s diplomacy. Having
insulated Museveni from the charge of invading Rwanda through
peddling the fiction of the ‘embarrassing army desertion’, and pretend-
ing not to know that the RPF was back in Uganda and rearming to
continue its war, the US engaged in coercive diplomacy with President
Habyarimana to make him recognise the RPF – not only as a legitimate
Rwandan organisation but one with which it ought to negotiate a
power-sharing arrangement.
The immediate reaction to the ‘War of October’, as it became known, was
a flurry of Western diplomatic and military activity. Along with its para-
troopers, Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens visited Rwanda with his
defence and foreign ministers. They did not condemn the RPF’s invasion,
but instead sought to play a role as regional mediators. To this end they
facilitated a summit meeting on 17 October in Mwanza, Tanzania between
Habyarimana, Museveni and President Mkapa of Tanzania.74 Three days
70 Rwanda 1994
Belgium
Belgian policy towards Rwanda shifted towards the RPF. During this
period, the Christian Democrat Martens led a coalition government
with the Socialist and Liberal Parties, both sympathetic towards the
RPF.77 Defence Minister Guy Coëme and Foreign Minister Willy Claes,
who accompanied Martens, were Socialists. The delegates returned to
Belgium and was met with strong opposition from the Liberal Party.78
Support for the RPF within the Belgian government had already ena-
bled the RPF to set up its operational headquarters in Brussels before
the October invasion. Martens and his Socialist partners returned to
Belgium to find a backlash against Habyarimana. The result was an
arms embargo placed upon Rwanda that month. All arms shipments,
including those already paid for, were cancelled.79 The day after the
RPF and Rwandan government signed a cease-fire in Gbadolite, Zaïre,
on 26 October 1990, Belgium withdrew its forces.80 From this point on,
Belgium increased diplomatic support for the RPF.81
France
After the retreat of the RPF behind the Ugandan border, a French delega-
tion met with various European and African leaders, including leaders
from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, to discuss the situation in Rwanda.
France was alone in condemning the RPF invasion and in committing
itself to the defence of the Rwandan state. Yet France was also increas-
ingly uncomfortable with its isolated position and was also looking for
ways to disengage militarily upon the departure of the Belgian forces.
As a Ministry of Co-operation put it, ‘we did not want to remain alone
… there were great powers behind the RPF. Uganda could send 30,000
The RPF’s War 71
was also attributable to the pro-RPF bias of Human Rights Watch, the
most influential of all human rights organisations where Rwanda was
concerned. By demonising Habyarimana’s government and accusing it
of genocide as early as February 1993, it made a significant contribution
to the RPF’s ability to legitimise its war.
Belgium was the first to attack the Habyarimana regime on human
rights grounds, while saying nothing about the conduct of the RPF
during the ‘War of October’. In response to the invasion,
Yet the RPF had established cells of accomplices across the country, and
this was well known among Rwandans at the time. While internment
of individuals who are associated with the enemy is common practice
in wartime (consider, for example, the internment of Japanese civilians
in California and Eastern European Jews in Britain during the Second
World War), it was likely that the regime wanted to bring home the
reality of the RPF’s war to the population in general, and of Kigali in
particular, in order to detain known accomplices as well as to repress
the internal opposition. The detainees were badly treated, congregated
in sports fields for periods without sanitation or food. Their families
were also badly treated.89 Yet contrary to many accounts in the Western
media, the repression was not solely directed against Tutsi since 61% of
detainees were Hutu, exclusively from the south.90
Habyarimana made a second initiative to resolve the refugee issue. He
first needed assurances from Museveni that there was no more support
coming from him for the RPF and that the military threat they posed
had passed. On 20 November, Museveni and Habyarimana had met at
Cyanika on the Rwandan–Ugandan border and made a commitment to
ensure peace and good neighbourliness. Habyarimana confirmed after
the meeting that Museveni had dismissed ‘from his army those who
were fighting us and he has disarmed them’. According to Habyarimana,
Museveni had reiterated that he had nothing to do with the invasion
and had not even known about it.91 Apparently believing Museveni’s
The RPF’s War 73
denials,92 Habyarimana felt able to state that he now considered the RPF
rebellion to be Rwanda’s rather than Uganda’s problem.93
Only a few days later came reports of further RPF atrocities, including
the bayoneting of forty civilians in public view in Rukomo in Mavumba
commune on 22 November. This exacerbated hostilities between the
inhabitants of Byumba prefecture and the RPF.94
A plan for refugee return was eventually negotiated with the Ugandan
authorities and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in
January 1991. Under this plan, the refugees were given three options:
voluntary repatriation to Rwanda, naturalisation in the host country
and settlement in accordance with bilateral and regional agreements.95
From 17 to 19 January, regional foreign ministers met in Kinshasa, as
well as the OAU and the UNHCR, in preparation for the refugee summit.
Habyarimana then pre-empted the summit by calling on all refugees to
return. Yet again, action taken to prepare for the return of refugees
was eclipsed by RPF military action. The RPF launched an offensive on
23 January 1991 on the northern town of Ruhengeri. The Rwandan
ambassador to Uganda claimed that the offensive involved six NRA bat-
talions.96 Once more, the Rwandan government had been deceived by
Museveni. Ruhengeri was held for a few hours, enough time to enable
the RPF to break into its prison and release prisoners, including political
prisoners Lizinde, Biseruka and Muvunanyambo, who joined the RPF.97
The loss of Lizinde to the RPF was significant. Along with Kanyarengwe,
the RPF now had two former senior establishment figures in its ranks
that had retained important contacts for intelligence that would now be
at the RPF’s disposal. The attack on Ruhengeri also resulted in around
five hundred civilian casualties.98
And again, there was no condemnation of the RPF from the United
States. Instead, the US maintained contact with the RPF leadership.
At one point, the non-resident attaché to their Kampala embassy agreed
to travel blindfolded to meet Kagame in his Ugandan safe house in
Mbarara. The embassy tracked the flow of arms to the RPA. They knew
also that Uganda provided hospital services for RPA wounded at Kabale,
Bukinda and Mbarara.99
The Rwandan government was outraged that Western diplomats
would neither condemn the RPF’s ongoing war nor repudiate Museveni’s
continual denials of his support for them. Ambassador Kanyarushoki had
meetings with the American Ambassador Johnny Carson, and British
High Commissioner Charles Cullimore, but got nowhere. It appears that
Carson and Cullimore were to continue to provide cover for Museveni
and the RPF. They made a gesture by agreeing to the establishment of
74 Rwanda 1994
social status’ (Article 16). The head of state was the President (Article 39),
who was elected ‘by direct universal suffrage by an absolute majority of
votes’ for a five-year term and for no more than two successive mandates
(Article 39).103
With a democratic constitution in place, opposition parties freely
registering, a burgeoning opposition press and all possible preparations
made for refugee return, the RPF had no justifiable reason to continue
fighting. After the agreement on a coalition government was signed
in March, Habyarimana offered the RPF the opportunity to return to
Rwanda under amnesty and register as a political party.104
However, it is clear that the US wanted the RPF to be in power and knew
that this could not be achieved through the democratic process, since they
had already observed the effect of the RPF on local population. As Herman
Cohen had commented, ‘the fact that tens of thousands of Rwandans
immediately became internally displaced as the RPF advanced should
have served as a warning. Rwandans, including Tutsis, clearly did not view
the RPF as liberators.’105 But, whether the Rwandan people liked it or not,
Washington would continue to engage in diplomacy on the RPF’s behalf.
The diplomacy would become increasingly coercive.
In late February or early March 1991, the US brought the Rwandan
government and the RPF into direct talks. American Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Africa Irvin Hicks convened a meeting between representa-
tives of the Rwanda government and the RPF in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Secret meetings between the two sides followed. The first was held in
Kampala, the second in Goma, Zaïre. The Goma talks prepared the
way for a third round in Kinshasa, which achieved no more than a
confirmed commitment to negotiate a cease-fire.106 The formal cease-
fire negotiations were then held at N’Sele, Zaïre. The Rwandan govern-
ment was represented by Ambassador Kanyarushoki and Jean Bosco
Baragwiza, Director-General of Political Affairs. The RPF team comprised
Colonel Alexis Kanyarengwe, Pasteur Bizimungu, Jacques Bihozagara
and its secretary-general, Théogène Rudasingwa. The main stumbling
block was the issue of the Rwandan government’s recognition of the
RPF. The RPF position was that there could be no meaningful negotia-
tions unless this recognition was given. The government’s position was
that the RPF clearly existed as an organisation but had no presence in
Rwanda and no independent existence from the Ugandan NRA. Yet
with the signing of the N’Sele cease-fire agreement recognition of a sort
had been made. The government’s bid to sign separate documents failed
and the signatories of both parties were on a single document for the
first time on 29 March.
76 Rwanda 1994
Kabageni were impressed with the level of support given by the Belgian
government. The meetings were held at the Palais de Justice and in the
Senate, and were hosted by Senator Willy Kuijpers, along with lawyers
Johan Scheels and Bernard Mangain, all firm RPF supporters.127
An agreement was reached that the war led by the RPF against the
‘dictatorial’ MRND must give way to a common political battle; that
an effective cease-fire between the FAR and RPF was needed; and that
the parties were to maintain close dialogue and take co-ordinated
action to explain to the population the bad deeds of the Rwandan
dictatorial regime. While some of the representatives may have sim-
ply wanted to contribute towards creating a climate conducive to
peace negotiations, many observers believe that a faction led by MDR
president Faustin Twagiramungu had decided upon a tactical alliance
with the RPF.128 Instead of agreeing to the wishes of the ‘dictator’
Habyarimana for early elections, these party representatives wanted
to see Habyarimana and the MRND weakened as a result of the RPF’s
war, thinking that they would benefit from a faltering incumbent
political party. The FDC therefore collaborated with the RPF’s strat-
egy of demonising Habyarimana. At a press conference on 1 June,
Twagiramungu stated,
Labelling Habyarimana as the main obstacle to peace was also the sub-
stance of a joint FDC–RPF communiqué issued on 3 June.130
This statement brought about divisions within the FDC parties.
The Foreign Minister and prominent MDR figure Ngulinzira refuted
Twagiramungu’s statement by telling the same journalists that
Habyarimana was in total agreement with the process of negotiations.131
Yet the RPF had gained Twagiramungu’s public allegiance at precisely
the same time that it was preparing for another offensive. On the nights
of 4 and 5 June, the RPF attacked Byumba town and occupied it. They
then moved towards Kigali as far as Rukomo. According to Ruzibiza,
these attacks caused the local inhabitants to flee, and those who had
no time to flee to be massacred. The RPF then invited Ugandan citizens
to enter the region and help themselves to the crops that were ready
for harvesting, and to loot houses and take building materials from
them. Word spread among the displaced population that the Tutsis were
The RPF’s War 81
the region, and used to combat the threat it perceived from the Islamic
government of Sudan. In addition to supplying the RPF, Uganda gave
military support for the war waged upon the Sudanese government by
the SPLA. After the fall of President Mengistu of Ethiopia in May 1991,
Uganda became a vital backer of the SPLA.
High levels of aid from the US, along with support from the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund for ‘reducing’ the size of the army by
means of the RPF ‘desertion’, enabled Uganda to sustain the RPF’s war.157
On the other hand, the Rwandan army had to increase almost threefold
in order to resist the RPF, and this led to the withholding of funds. During
the course of the war the donor community used funding as a means of
applying pressure on the Rwandan government to make concessions to
the RPF. The World Bank stopped negotiating with the Rwandan govern-
ment at the end of 1992. Funds were blocked for some months between
1992 and 1993, and resumed after the signing of the Arusha Accords.158
By the end of 1993 the donor community made little attempt to hide
its bias. The crucially important donors’ round table on Rwanda took
place, not in Kigali, but in Mulindi – the base of RPF operations against
the government. Gasana asserts that
French input into Arusha was principally the work of the Chargé
d’Affaires, Jean-Christophe Belliard. Belliard developed good work-
ing relations with the Tanzanian facilitator Ami Mpungwe and the
American Lt-Col. Tony Marley. This trio were, according to Jones,
‘credited by other participants with creativity and skill in managing the
facilitative aspects of the Arusha process’.180
The RPF had a well-defined and coherent strategy towards Arusha:
attaining the moral high ground on the issue of human rights through
demonising Habyarimana, and using the internal opposition parties to
assist in isolating Habyarimana politically. Paul Kagame was putting
to good use the knowledge he gained in information warfare at Fort
Leavenworth.
Rwandan government officials at the time had heard from French
officials of suspected collusion between the RPF and Belgian intelligence
services. With such connections, the RPF would be well placed to wage
its ‘human rights war’ – no mean feat considering its own record. This
approach was vital to its success, since relations between itself and the
local Rwandan population it encountered with each offensive were
increasingly hostile. From the outset there was no possibility – and
therefore no strategy – of winning hearts and minds. Legitimacy for its
war required support from the internal opposition and the international
community. It was largely through its human rights lobbying that the
RPF succeeded in winning international sympathy.
As far as the Tanzanian mediating team is concerned, most accounts
of its performance are very positive. The principal facilitator, Ami
Mpungwe, received from the OAU a ‘certificate of recognition’ for ‘his
important contribution in facilitating the inter-Rwandese negotiations
culminating in the Arusha peace agreement’.181 The significance of
Tanzanian mediation was that it brought to the negotiations a clear
strategy based upon an analysis of Rwandan politics that was shared
to a large extent by the participating American and French officials.
Mpungwe had returned from Namibia in February 1992, where he had
played an important role in negotiations. The American team, compris-
ing Herman Cohen, Charles Snyder and John Byerly among others,
had all been involved in conflict-resolution processes in Namibia and
Angola. Snyder was assigned to the government delegation ‘to help
members prepare their negotiating books’, while Byerly worked with
the RPF on negotiation tactics. Apparently the joke was that Byerly had
done too good a job, given the RPF’s superior negotiating skills.182 The
American team also worked to keep the other observer teams in line, for
example, by withdrawing co-operation with the French officials when
The RPF’s War 91
The RPF
The threat posed by the RPF arose from the narrowness of its social base.
It recruited almost exclusively among Tutsis, yet they did not fight for
the interests of even this small minority of Rwandan society. They were
primarily an organisation of the ‘Ugandan’ Tutsi elite who accepted
Paul Kagame’s leadership. Their military strategy was to use Tutsi youth
as foot-soldiers to terrorise the civilian population off the land, crip-
ple the national economy and foment social tensions along ethnic
and regional lines. Their political strategy was to build on Western
sympathy by enlisting the support of the internal opposition, and the
internal and international human rights community in demonising
Habyarimana and his party. The propaganda war was an essential com-
ponent of this project. By winning international support as champions
of an oppressed and persecuted minority, the RPF could legitimise its
war and mask its abuses.
According to Ruzibiza, their strategy was to spread their forces thinly
across the border region in order to prevent the FAR from concentrating
its forces and, at the same time, to empty the territory of its inhabit-
ants by means of indiscriminate killings. By Ruzibiza’s account, RPF
attacks in the localities of Muvumba, Kiyombe, Nkana, Rushaki and
Kaniga-Gatuna were particularly brutal, with civilians being congre-
gated before being fired on with automatic weaponry.185 The emptied
92 Rwanda 1994
land was earmarked for settling Tutsi refugees. According to another RPF
dissident, Jean-Baptiste Mberabahizi, Kagame made this strategy clear at
an RPF Central Committee meeting in April or May 1992: since there
was no possibility of winning local support, the population was to be
viewed as a security risk and so areas needed to be cleared. To under-
line this message, Mberabahizi claims that human heads were secured
on poles in fields.186 The strategy of driving people off the land is also
confirmed by Captain Frank Tega, a former political commissar in the
RPF. He claims that it was RPF policy between mid-1991 and early 1993.
Houses were either destroyed or occupied, cattle were butchered.187
The problem of large numbers of people driven off their land by the
RPF was growing. The ‘October War’ had displaced 150,000 people.188
By February 1992 the problem had become acute. One account esti-
mated that in Muvumba alone 21,000, or a third of the population,
were displaced. At Rwebare camp there were 6000 people huddled
together without tents, using banana and papyrus leaves for cover.189
According to the Canadian author Robin Philpot, two and a half years
of the RPF’s war had depleted the population of northern Rwanda from
800,000 to 1800.190
Byumba prefecture was Rwanda’s breadbasket, but fields were aban-
doned after RPF attacks and the remaining inhabited areas faced grave
insecurity. As the representative of a peasants’ collective explained, the
failure of the harvest there was due in part to the exhaustion of peasants
having to stay up all night guarding against RPF attacks.191 At this point
Gasana asserts that the suffering at the hands of the RPF on the front
line in Byumba did not generate an anti-Tutsi cleavage immediately.
Rather, there was strengthened support for the MRND in most parts that
was attributable more to a desire for national unity against the RPF than
to an appeal to ethnic solidarity. An influential Tutsi, A. Katabarwa, was
elected to the prefectoral committee of the MRND because of the esteem
in which the prefecture held him at that time.192
From August 1992 onwards, the RPF was able to organise net-
works across the country involved in inciting ethnic violence. Alan
Kuperman’s research among RPF dissidents in the US has revealed a
strategy of provoking attacks upon Tutsis in order that the RPF could
present itself as the champion of the oppressed and justify its war.193
Its ability to implement this strategy was facilitated by the deployment
of the Neutral Monitoring Observer Group (NMOG) in that month.
The NMOG included teams from the RPF and Rwandan government,
based inside the country. The RPF leader of their group, Karake Karenzi,
was based in Kigali. Karenzi and his team were able to travel the
The RPF’s War 93
Some of the recruits were infiltrated into the (mainly Hutu) militia of
the Interahamwe and Mpuzamugambe. RPF land mines in the demilita-
rised zone killed and maimed hundreds.199
The second major security threat arose out of the fragmentation of the
former Rwandan ruling elite as a result of the combined effects of war
and political reform. This elite had dominated the higher echelons of
the MRND, the FAR, local government and the police. The political
reforms had reduced the number of government departments con-
trolled by the MRND. Opposition members had replaced many figures
in local government – including bourgmestres and préfets. The MRND
also underwent a process of internal reform, which generated a schism
between reformers and conservatives. Within the army, the main
MRND stronghold, the appointment of Gasana as Minister of Defence
was also in line with a reform strategy to make it less the preserve of the
old north-western elite and more broadly representative of the country.
The reforms brought about a confrontation between Gasana and senior
figures close to Habyarimana, like Col. Laurent Serabuga, Col. Pierre-
Celestin Rwagafilita, Lt-Col. Dismas Nsengiyumva and Col. Théoneste
Bagosora, among others. With Habyarimana’s resignation as head of
the armed forces on 22 April 1992, and the threat to their positions
posed by Gasana’s reforms, which were designed on the one hand to
depoliticise the FAR and on the other to streamline its command struc-
ture to make it better equipped to take on the RPF, these individuals
felt exposed. They initiated rearguard intrigues against Gasana. Gasana
withstood their challenges throughout 1992 and into 1993 but found
it increasingly difficult. At the end of 1993 he resigned and moved to
Switzerland.200
While a good number of conservative opponents of the reforms
remained within FAR and the MRND, a faction broke away to form
a new party, the Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR),
in March 1992. The main spur for the emergence of this party was
the social polarisation in the wake of the RPF’s Byumba offensive,
and the demands expressed within this region for a more robust civil
defence. The party had the backing of Habyarimana, who needed an
allied party at Arusha. While their primary motivation may well have
been the defence of the Republic and a determination to neutralise
the influence and power of the RPF, the CDR made no effort (or had
no inclination) to draw a distinction, as far as their perception of the
The RPF’s War 95
enemy was concerned, between the RPF and its genuine accomplices
within the country, and Tutsis in general.
In response to each RPF offensive from the October 1990 invasion
onwards, Tutsi civilians were massacred. Precise details from independ-
ent sources are not available.
In the wake of the ‘War of October’ some 360 Tutsis were killed in
Kibilira, but this was far removed from the RPF’s operations. There was
some degree of complicity from local military and government authori-
ties, but a strong reaction from central government when Habyarimana
sent his Minister of the Interior, J.M.V. Mugemana to put an end to the
killings.
In response to the RPF’s attack upon Ruhengeri the most infamous
massacres occurred in this period. In January 1991, hundreds of the
Bagogwe people – ethnically associated with Tutsis – were slaugh-
tered.201 Tutsi civilians were also massacred in Bugesera in March 1991,
but the cause of these killings was more complex. It began with a
conflict between the bourgmestre of Kanzenze commune, Rwambuka,
and the local Liberal Party representative, M. Gahima. As a result of a
communiqué on Radio Rwanda by Ferdinand Nahimana, Director of
the Rwandan Office of Information, in which lists were read of people
they said the RPF wished to kill, the conflict degenerated into an ethnic
fight that resulted in eighty-five Tutsi dead. There are credible charges
that the local FAR and police did nothing to stop the killings.202 The
killings were halted by the intervention of Silvestre Nsanzimana, who
sent in the Ministers of the Interior and of Justice, along with the head
of the gendarmerie. As a result, 466 arrests were made, a judicial inquiry
instigated, and Rwambuka and Nahimana lost their jobs.203 Yet by this
time the picture was muddied further by provocations of both the CDR
and RPF. The result was accelerated ethnic polarisation, with Tutsis
leaving the MRND for the RPF.
therefore was the drive on the part of the RPF and internal opposition at
Arusha to isolate Habyarimana and strip his presidency of power.
Isolating Habyarimana
ceremonial. The internal parties had a secret meeting with the RPF in
September and had agreed a distribution of seats in the BBTG, namely
RPF 5, MRND 5, MDR 4, PSD 3, PL 3 and PDC 1.211
The fourth round of talks at Arusha achieved agreement on the
nature of the President’s powers under the BBTG. The BBTG was to last
no more than twenty-two months and would then be followed by free
elections that would determine the government of the country. The sys-
tem of government would be parliamentary rather than presidential.
The President’s powers would be no more than ceremonial. He would
not have the power even to name his own government. The power of
the Prime Minister would be the greatest. A protocol to this effect was
signed on 30 October 1992.212 In terms of this protocol, the Conseil
National du Développement (CND) was replaced by a Transitional
National Assembly (TNA). The TNA would elect the President and
Vice-President of the Supreme Court. The matter of seat allocation of
the TNA and cabinet posts to the various parties was deferred. Four
rounds of negotiations had achieved agreement on government struc-
ture. The hard issue of the division of power between the contending
parties now rose to the top of the agenda.
Negotiations on this issue commenced as ‘Arusha V’ on 25 November.
The major sticking point was over the CDR. The position of the
Government of Rwanda was that the CDR was entitled to a stake in the
BBTG. The RPF argued that it was not a legitimate party but an extrem-
ist tendency of the MRND. The United States and France argued that
its inclusion could have a moderating effect upon it while its exclusion
would radicalize it further. The RPF’s position prevailed, and the com-
position of the BBTG was announced in the protocol of 22 December.
The distribution of cabinet seats was exactly according to the secret
prior agreement between the RPF and the opposition parties. Seats in
the Assembly were allocated as follows: eleven seats each to MRND, RPF,
MDR, PSD and PL; four seats to the PCD; and one seat to each of twelve
small parties.213
The RPF had been adept in playing the moral high ground as far as
human rights were concerned, and continually lobbied the wider dip-
lomatic milieu on human rights issues in order to isolate Habyarimana.
The internal opposition were also part of this effort. It is remarkable that
despite the fact that the RPF was the aggressor in a war with a record
of civilian massacres and mass expulsions, charges of human rights
violations against them did not stick. Analysts like Mamdani noted that
journalists and others visiting RPF territory spoke of an emptiness that
was ‘eerie’.214 The people being driven off the land were overwhelm-
ingly Hutus, those entering vacated land were mostly Tutsis, yet the
term ‘ethnic cleansing’ (which had by this time gained widespread
currency particularly with reference to Bosnia) was nowhere applied.
As far as ethnic identity was concerned, only the Hutu identity was
problematised. Hutus were either ‘extremist’ or ‘moderate’. ‘Moderate’
tended to mean willing to accommodate the RPF. As a result of its
sophisticated public relations and also as a result of a growing affinity
with the Western diplomatic, human rights and journalist milieu, the
RPF succeeded in placing itself above ethnicity. The terms ‘moderate’
and ‘extremist’ are nowhere applied to Tutsis. From the conclusion of
‘Arusha V’ and the next vital round of negotiations on the share-out of
military positions, the ‘human rights war’ escalated in order to prepare
the ground for a resumption of a shooting war.
Three significant gains were made by the RPF from November 1992 to
the end of January 1993 in its ‘human rights war’: the pronouncement
at a conference in Belgium of the existence of death squads organised by
Habyarimana or his close associates; the publication of a human rights
report on Rwanda; and an account of a speech by MRND minister Léon
Mugesera.
A biased report
The ICI report also appeared to confirm the existence of death squads
that Filip Reyntjens had previously publicised. It attributed massa-
cres, assassinations and various disturbances of opposition parties to
individuals close to Habyarimana, including Sagatwa, Zigiranyirazo,
Mugesera, Ngurumpatse, Ntirivamunda, Habiyambere, Bizimungu
and Simbikangwa. Yet after intensive lobbying of this report, the
Commission issued a press release in April 1993 in which, in the words
of an ICTR verdict, ‘it clarified that it had used the conditional tense
when identifying certain names in its analysis of the death squads. It
was not in a position to confirm the existence of death squads or its
members.’224
The ‘Zero Network’ story had provided the impetus for the
International Commission of Inquiry. The ICI report was written on the
The RPF’s War 103
the Commission could have published its report with a formal dis-
claimer about its numerous and serious shortcomings. Yet it chose to
launch the report with a massive media and public relations campaign
vaunting the scope, credibility and prestige of the Commission and
its authors. A lobbying campaign followed. All the foreign embas-
sies and ministries were called on, as were the major European and
North American funding organisations. The international reaction
was swift and effective. Belgium recalled its ambassador from Kigali.
Within months, citing the report, Canada suspended twenty million
dollars of aid to Rwanda’s national university in Butare. The report
became the pretext for an arms embargo on Rwanda, whereas the
invading RPF army had no problem obtaining all the weapons it
needed. From March 1993 onward, the Commission’s report was a
backdrop to all international meetings about or directly involving
the Habyarimana government.230
104 Rwanda 1994
Ndiaye’s report
Genocide in 1993?
officials in areas where killings had taken place, and a demand for the
withdrawal of all foreign troops. The British observer present reported
sympathetically that ‘the attitude of the RPF delegation was of horror at
the situation in Rwanda mixed with a determination not to throw away
what had so far been achieved in Arusha. They seemed genuinely to
wish to find some common ground.’ When the government delegation
refused to respond to these demands, ‘[t]he Facilitator and the observers
sought to move them by cajolery and threats’. On 5 February, when this
approach appeared not to be working, ‘it was the view of the Facilitator
and all the observers that no progress could be made and that a recess
was inevitable until there was a substantial improvement in the situa-
tion in Kigali’. This threat to make the government’s inability to stop
human rights abuses that amounted to ‘genocide’ caused the suspen-
sion of the negotiations and produced a concession from the govern-
ment delegation. They agreed to suspend one préfet, one sous-préfet and
four mayors. Both the threat and the government’s concession to it
signified a moral victory for the RPF. It is likely that they expected the
forthcoming ICI report to reach a verdict of genocide upon the govern-
ment within weeks. Their offensive was launched three days later.
The success of the February offensive in both military and political terms
impressed itself more firmly upon the internal opposition. While the
resulting deaths and abuses may not have figured prominently in human
rights reports at the time, they had a significant impact upon members of
the internal opposition, many of whom had lost members of their families.
The strains within the internal opposition parties over their relations with
the RPF could no longer be contained. The three major parties all suffered
splits. The divisions became explicit at two meetings that took place. Those
who wanted to retain their links with the RPF attended meetings with
them in Bujumbura from 25 February to 5 March. Justin Mugenzi, the PL
chairman, who had by this time warned members of his party not to act as
though they were the internal wing of the RPF, was struck by two things at
Bujumbura: the irrelevance of the internal opposition, and the confidence
of the RPF – especially with regard to their relations with members of the
international community.247 The Bujumbura meeting ended with a com-
muniqué that endorsed the RPF’s position: a durable cease-fire, withdrawal
of foreign [i.e. French] troops, renewed negotiations in Arusha, the return
of the internally displaced to their homes, and legal action against those
responsible for recent massacres.
108 Rwanda 1994
Final negotiations
Refugee return
The crucial matter of integrating the army and gendarmerie into two
unified national forces brought to the surface all the tensions and prob-
lems with the Arusha negotiations process. At the beginning of this
round, the government offered the RPF 20% of the troops in the army,
and a 15% share of command positions, proportional to the percentage
of the Rwandan Tutsi population. The RPF rejected this outright and
110 Rwanda 1994
Administration in crisis
During the following month the political crisis that had been devel-
oping since the February offensive reached its climax. The coalition
government collapsed as a result of the splits in the MDR and PL
becoming formalised. In any event, its mandate had already expired.
The government had been established in April 1992 with a view to
covering the transition period of one year, by which time elections were
to have taken place. As a result of the RPF’s continuation of the war,
elections had been continually postponed. A new government mandate
was now required. Power struggles intensified in all parties.
At the MRND’s national conference on 3–4 July 1993, Habyarimana
stood down as party leader. The struggle between reformers and
conservatives resulted in a victory for the reformers, with Mathieu
The RPF’s War 111
The Chief Facilitator and leader of the Tanzanian mediation team, Ami
Mpungwe, was no less modest:
For the first time ever, the people of Rwanda, across all ethnic and polit-
ical divides, had resolved their armed conflict peacefully, on their own,
but with the strong support of their regional neighbours and the active
participation of the OAU which provided a Military Observer team.277
that followed was emphatically denied. If the diplomats saw any fault
in the Arusha peace process, it lay in the lack of preparedness in dealing
militarily with these conspirators. Leader states that she foresaw a prob-
lem in the delayed time-frame for the scheduled arrival of the United
Nations monitoring force:
Yet one does not need this conspiracy theory to see the connection
between Arusha and its tragic outcome. Throughout the negotiations
process, one party – the RPF – was consistently gaining ground while
another – the government – was making one concession after the next.
This one-sided process accelerated at the point of the most crucial deter-
minant of how power would be distributed, the composition and com-
mand of the proposed integrated army. The former ruling party was to
be isolated by being outnumbered by other factions in the Broad-Based
Transitional Government. The leadership of FAR, by now in disarray as
a result of its internal reforms and counter-reforms, would be unable
to hold its own within the command-sharing framework agreed for
the new army. The position of the Presidency (which would remain
Habyarimana’s position) would be stripped to its ceremonial shell. The
former ruling elite had been isolated and neutralised at the same time as
its popularity across Rwandan society had recovered and strengthened
to the point where it had every chance of winning an election. With
this state of political affairs emerging against a backdrop of misery
resulting from thirty-four months of war, peace was unlikely to be the
result.
For the RPF, the Arusha negotiations had proved to be a highly
effective vehicle for translating its military successes into political ones.
The Arusha ‘peace process’ had rewarded the RPF’s violence with a level
of political representation it could not have achieved by democratic
means. Of course, the BBTG was only a transitional government.
The final outcome of the negotiations was to be the government that
would emerge as a result of the scheduled elections. The RPF could not
conceivably win more than a small percentage of the vote. Only the
most naïve would expect the RPF to agree to be cut down to a size deter-
mined by the Rwandan electorate. Any hope of mitigating this with an
election pact with internal opposition parties had been dashed. In order
116 Rwanda 1994
to secure its new elevated position, the RPF would have no alternative
than to return to the one means it knew best: war.
Some observers concede privately that the Arusha Accords was a bad
agreement. Yet they all found it easier to blame its failure on a Hutu
extremist conspiracy than admit that their promotion of the RPF and
coercive diplomacy against Habyarimana and the MRND had put paid
to the democratic process and had created the conditions that made a
violent showdown inevitable.
In the few months that followed the signing of the Arusha Accords,
underlying trends became starkly manifest. The middle ground between
the former Hutu elite and the RPF was swept away. As political develop-
ments brought the prospect of war closer, insecurity and fear contrib-
uted greatly towards a political polarisation degenerating into an ethnic
polarisation. In such a highly charged atmosphere, further shocks to
society could not be absorbed. Instead, they accelerated the slide into
war and anarchy. By the time of President Habyarimana’s aerial assassi-
nation on 6 April 1994 there was no longer any capacity for containing
these disintegrative forces.
With the departure of French forces, a ruined economy increasingly
under the control of Western creditors, a national army that was clearly
no match for its enemy, and a fractured and impotent government,
Habyarimana and the MRND were completely isolated. Despite popu-
lar support for Habyarimana and opposition to the RPF rising in equal
measure, the rump of the ancien régime was stricken, lurching from one
desperate rearguard action to the next. Feverish attempts were under
way to stiffen up the FAR with fresh armaments. The rapid expansion of
the FAR to around 30,000 belied the fact that it was unable to commit to
full-scale warfare for more than a few days, the bulk of the new recruits
being the ‘fifteen day’ soldiers. Dallaire testified that only 5000 of the
30,000 were well-trained and supplied, while the rest were ‘rabble and
completely unreliable’.281
Despite various intrigues being carried out by party stalwarts against
reformers and members of the opposition, the MRND supported
Habyarimana’s compliance with the schedule determined by the Arusha
Accords. Habyarimana’s rising electoral profile was seen as the best way
of reversing the gains made by the RPF and opposition parties.
For their part, the RPF had no intention of observing either the letter
or the spirit of the Arusha Accords because that would have resulted in
The RPF’s War 117
grave defeat for them at the polls. They were therefore neither going
to proceed with the agreed agenda for an orderly establishment of the
BBTG, nor participate in the elections. Instead their strategy was to seize
power militarily. Evidence of this has been corroborated years later by
RPF dissidents. According to Christopher Hakizabera, Kagame had told
confidants that he had ‘never wanted nor needed these [Arusha] nego-
tiations’, but that they ‘had decided to play along’ and … ‘would remain
ready because the fighting would be hard’. At a different meeting in
Uganda, Hakizabera quotes Kagame as saying that the negotiations
would ‘serve as a way of gaining time for the military plan as well as for
the purposes of neutralising the little parties and fooling the people as
to his real intentions’.282 Former RPF executive committee member Jean
Barahinyura confirmed this strategy.283
In order to do this, the RPF had to find a way of winning Western
support for a final military offensive that would lead to its seizure of
power. Their strategy was to provoke killings of Tutsi civilians by Hutus
on a scale sufficient to enable them to convince the international
community that military action on their part was needed to put an end
to them. In order to achieve this, they had to do three things: first, capi-
talise on the increased levels of support they enjoyed within powerful
quarters of the international community with a renewed propaganda
offensive demonising Habyarimana and the organs of state remaining
under MRND control as murderous criminals; second, provoke killings
of Tutsi civilians through discreet and targeted assassinations of popular
figures and through a continuation of their strategy of terrorising the
local population from their homes, especially in the demilitarised zone;
third, to make rapid preparations for a military offensive and takeover.
Former French Minister of Co-operation Bernard Debré testified that an
RPF representative told him in Kigali in late January 1994 that the RPF
would not wait for elections that it would lose, but was going to seize
power before the elections.284
The RPF’s diplomatic success in the wake of their offensive of
February 1993 indicated that this strategy was feasible. The report of
the International Commission of Inquiry into human rights abuses
in Rwanda had come close to accusing the Rwandan government of
committing genocide. The press release announcing its publication
was actually entitled ‘Genocide and War Crimes in Rwanda’,285 but the
term was not endorsed in the report. A report of the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of 11 August 1993 came closer
to suggesting that the government forces had committed genocide.286
Having successfully demonised the government in this manner, it was
118 Rwanda 1994
possible for the RPF to provoke revenge attacks upon Tutsi civilians
and use these attacks to their political advantage. Any further massa-
cres of Tutsi civilians in which some level of official complicity could
be demonstrated – or at least unconvincingly denied – would almost
certainly suffice to establish a charge of genocide against the Rwandan
government. In such a scenario, a military seizure of power by the RPF
would have every chance of being accepted internationally as a neces-
sary measure to end genocide. With increasing support coming from a
wide range of international actors, from the United States and Belgian
governments, to major human rights NGOs and an increasing number
of well-placed Western journalists, this strategy had good prospects.
The campaign of demonisation against Habyarimana and his shadowy
network of Hutu extremists dubbed the Akazu had already gathered
momentum. With the arrival of UNAMIR, and the RPF’s determination
of its malleability under Dallaire, war preparations began in earnest.
To this end the RPF infiltrated soldiers into Kigali far in excess of the
agreed 600,287 recruited Tutsi youth into their cells across the country,
and allegedly assassinated prominent Hutu leaders, notably Emmanuel
Gapyisi and Félicien Gatabazi. They stalled the process of appointments
to the BBTG in order to draw out this period of rising insecurity.
Having thus greatly intensified political fear and insecurity, as well as
hatred between Hutu and Tutsi, they moved on to assassinate President
Habyarimana. Killing the most popular political figure in Rwanda
would guarantee what they wanted: revenge killings of Tutsis on a large
scale. Their strategy was to prove to be all too tragically successful.
Having focused exclusively on forging a consensus between newly
constituted sections of Rwanda’s elite, the Western actors had failed to
appreciate the extent to which society at large had become alienated
from the political process. Fear of the RPF was all-pervasive, and nowhere
was this more evident than in the vast settlements of people displaced
by the war that sprawled on the perimeter of Kigali. These tensions
found their political expression in ways that destroyed the possibility
of the Arusha Accords succeeding. The first casualty was the internal
opposition. Members of the MDR, PSD and PL realised that their expec-
tation of being able to manage the terms of their tactical alliance with
the RPF had been illusory – there would be only one winner emerg-
ing from that arrangement. A very few individuals who had tied their
political fortunes more closely with the RPF, like Twagiramungu and
Ndasingwa, while expecting to gain from their loyalty to them, found
themselves isolated from the majority of their parties’ membership. An
irreconcilable schism developed. On the one side was the RPF and these
The RPF’s War 119
few individuals, on the other was a resurgent MRND, its sister party the
CDR and the majority of the members of the opposition parties.
Local elections
Burundi
The militia
anthills bracketing the city on both flanks. It looked like Kagame was
realigning his forces, pushing for a good secure start line from which
he could launch an offensive.313
Dallaire also provides an account of how the RPF used the CND as a
military staging post.
Once secure, they had dismissed the UNAMIR troops and assumed
total control of the interior of the complex. Once the RFP began dig-
ging, they never stopped for the next four months. From shellscrapes
or foxholes, they dug full fire-trenches, then roofed the trenches for
protection from artillery or mortar fire. They then dug full communi-
cations-trenches between the individual trenches and built bunkers
that developed into caverns. By the time the war resumed in April, they
had built an underground complex under the CND. It was clear that
while the peace process was progressing, they were also prepared for
the alternative.314
After Gapyisi, the opposition figure with the highest profile who had
not moved into the RPF’s orbit was the PSD Secretary-General, Félicien
Gatabazi. Unlike the MDR and PL, the PSD had not split in response over
the issue of relations with the RPF although there was significant sym-
pathy for the RPF within the party. Known as the ‘party of intellectuals’,
the PSD was the sole remaining opposition party of significance that
retained a degree of organisational coherence. Gatabazi was murdered
on 21 February 1994. The allegations of RPF responsibility for the murder
are made by Gasana and several RPF dissidents. They believe that the
decision to murder Gatabazi followed a failed attempt on the part of
the RPF to win him over. Gatabazi had accepted an invitation to attend
a party thrown by the RPF at their headquarters in Mulindi, where he
had been shocked by the obvious war preparations under way. He saw
hundreds of military officers awarded promotion alongside a fundrais-
ing event. On his return, Gatabazi met Habyarimana, and warned the
President of the imminent threat posed by the RPF. According to RPF
dissidents, the RPF murdered Gatabazi in a manner that incriminated
the CDR.321 The result was that a mob of PSD supporters killed CDR
leader Martin Bucyana immediately afterwards.322 In a Le Monde
interview, the author André Guichaoua named the RPF killers of Gapyisi
and Gatabazi as Lieutenant Godfrey Kiyago Ntukayajemo and Sergeant
Eric Makwandi Habumugisha.323
UNAMIR
they had dismissed the UNAMIR troops and assumed total control of
the interior of the complex’.324 There was evidently no question of the
FAR being able to ‘dismiss’ UNAMIR from anywhere. RPF killings were
protected with a UNAMIR ‘black-out’ while the focus was upon the
government side.325
When Dallaire met Habyarimana upon his arrival in Kigali, he was
asked by the President to investigate killings in five different locations
on the northern border of the Demilitarised Zone. The twenty-one dead
were all associated with the MRND, and included successful candidates
in the local elections. On 24 November, UNAMIR was also informed of
killings of Hutu civilians in a village in north-western Rwanda and of
children who had disappeared up Mount Karisimbi. Their investigation
revealed that a boy and five girls had been killed. While local people and
relatives of the dead in these killings had all accused the RPF of these
crimes, Dallaire had distrusted their views. The investigations ended up
suspended, unresolved. This failure was widely perceived to be evidence
of UNAMIR’s bias towards the RPF.326 In his book, RPF dissident Abdul
Ruzibiza claims categorically that the RPF was responsible for these
killings, and names the alleged killers.327 He reaffirmed the claim under
oath at the ICTR.328 While Dallaire admitted not knowing anything
about Rwanda before he took up his position, he seemed to have
been convinced from the outset that the threat to his mission was a
conspiracy of Hutu extremists. A briefing document for newcomers to
UNAMIR is unambiguously behind the RPF’s war and reads as if it had
been written by the RPF:
war has always [sic] the last option in the consideration of RPF.
However, all efforts for peaceful democratic change in our country
had so far proved futile … the taking up of arms against the regime
was therefore considered not just a right but a patriotic and national
obligation. … When the war began, Rwandese peasants and workers,
students and intellectuals, men and women from every region
and ‘ethnic’ or social group responded to the call of the Rwandese
Patriotic Front to rid our country of dictatorship. … The responsibil-
ity for this failure to install the transitional institutions of govern-
ment and to implement other provisions of the Peace Agreement lies
solely with President Habyarimana and his party MRND.329
to put an end to the RPF’s fighting.335 By this time the two factions of
the PL had announced that they had arrived at a compromise on their
seat allocation and were ready to participate in the BBTG. The hold-up
at this point was the RPF’s refusal to accept the PL’s nominees. This
hold-up was condemned by the Tanzanian Foreign Minister, who was
acting on behalf of the Facilitator.336 The second issue that held up the
establishment of the BBTG was the RPF’s refusal to have the CDR take
up seats. This refusal persisted in spite of a joint statement in support of
the inclusion of the CDR on the grounds that it was a legally constituted
party at the time of the Arusha Accords, signed by the ambassadors
of the US, France, Germany, Belgium, Zaïre, Uganda, Burundi, the
Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, a representative
of the Vatican and a representative of the Arusha Facilitator.337 By
1 April 1994, not only had the representatives of all concerned govern-
ments agreed that the issues preventing implementation of the Arusha
Accords, including the seating of the CDR, had been resolved, but US
Ambassador David Rawson confirmed that it was the intransigence of
the RPF in objecting to the seating of the CDR party that was preventing
the implementation of the Arusha Accords.338
Western governments nevertheless persisted with their coercive
approach towards Habyarimana. On 3 April, French, Belgian and
German diplomats met with Habyarimana and regional heads of state
in Dar es Salaam. Habyarimana was threatened with a UNAMIR with-
drawal and another RPF offensive. The German ambassador expressed
his satisfaction with the result: ‘[w]e can no longer talk of stumbling
blocks. I think everything is on the right path. I personally expect the
establishment of institutions in the course of this week.’339 How suc-
cessful this renewed effort on the part of Western diplomats would
have been in overseeing the implementation of the Arusha Accords is a
matter for speculation. The situation was overturned by events. As the
Falcon Mystère jet carrying Habyarimana, among others, descended
to land at Kanombe airport outside Kigali on 6 April 1994, a missile
attack blew it out of the sky. It was the RPF that dealt the final blow to
Habyarimana, and to any chance the democratic process might have
had of succeeding.
5
The Myth of the Akazu
Genocide Conspiracy
rate of the killings are offered as further evidence of their organised and
systematic character.
This account has been so widely endorsed it may be termed the domi-
nant narrative. Since it underpins the establishment of the ICTR, it may
also be termed the official narrative.
Other publications that endorse the official narrative include
those by African Rights, Prunier, Millwood, the United Nations ‘Blue
Book’ on Rwanda, Gourevitch, Adelman and Suhrke, Melvern, Khan,
Mamdani and Dallaire.2 Commissions of Inquiry were conducted by
the Belgian Senate (1997), the French National Assembly (1998) and the
Organisation of African Unity (2000), which was subsequently renamed
the African Union. There is a consensus among all the above that Hutu
extremists planned and implemented genocide against Rwandan Tutsis.
Who were the Akazu, the conspirators of genocide? According to
Jones, the Akazu was constructed over almost two decades:
The Akazu
military figures reacting against his reforms in the military to the point
where he resigned as Minister of Defence and left the country. Yet while
he talks of this Akazu activity, he too rejects the idea that the Akazu
or anyone else planned and organised the extermination of Tutsis.
Other figures, like former Minister of Transport and Communication
André Ntagerura, former Minister of Trade Justin Mugenzi, and for-
mer Rwandan Ambassador to Uganda Pierre-Claver Kanyarushoki, are
emphatic that they never once came across the existence of the Akazu as
an organised network with its own independent agenda, and argue that
it is difficult to conceive of such an organisation conducting its affairs
without them having acquired some knowledge of it.4
According to one of the founding members of the MDR and former
Foreign Minister, Jérôme Bicamumpaka, the term Akazu was coined by
Boniface Ngulinzira for the MDR’s ‘studies and programmes’ commis-
sion in February 1992. This term was introduced because ‘for political
marketing purposes, we needed a target’. It was designed ‘to indicate
those who surrounded the President without being officially designated
or elected. This proposal was adopted by the political office of the MDR
and used in various official statements before being adopted by all of
the political opposition’.5
To claim that those individuals who were well connected with the
office of the Presidency constituted an informal and clandestine net-
work, and branding that network Akazu is one thing. To claim that such
a network met, planned and implemented the genocide of Rwanda’s
Tutsi population requires evidence that remains absent. Aside from
the Akazu, another group, referred to as the ‘Zero Network’, was also
brought to international attention in October 1992, but the claim for
the existence of this group rests upon the reliability of a single inform-
ant and has not been reliably substantiated. This was also the view
expressed in an ICTR judgement.6
According to the ICTR prosecution, the members of the Akazu were:
Agathe Kanziga – President Habyarimana’s wife; Protais Zigiranyirazo –
Agathe’s brother; Elie Sagatwa – Agathe’s half brother; Jean-Bosco
Barayagwiza; and Bernard Munyagishari – leader of the Interahamwe
militia in Gisenyi province.
The Canadian philosopher Howard Adelman states without referencing
that ‘those organizing the genocide were only a relatively small group, at
most 400 people in the extended extremist high command’.7 Despite the
fact that a growing number of individuals have been convicted for the
crime of genocide, evidence for an organised ‘extremist high command’
remains absent. There is no group within the leadership that has been iden-
tified to have acted in concert with either the planning or implementation
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 133
The ‘very very important person’ was MDR leader Faustin Twagiramungu,
who, as Philpot shows, was the one approached by ‘Jean-Pierre’ (whose real
name was Abubakar Turatsinze) and had referred him to UNAMIR because
he too was unsure of him. The reply came from New York the following day,
instructing Dallaire to warn President Habyarimana that the armed militias
posed a threat to the implementation of the Arusha Accords, and to com-
municate the same information to the main foreign embassies in Kigali.
When Gourevitch’s ‘genocide fax’ story broke four years later,
Twagiramungu was surprised to learn that Dallaire’s fax had contained ref-
erence to killing thousands of Tutsis and the Belgian UNAMIR contingent.
As far as he was concerned, Turatsinze’s information was only about weap-
ons caches in Kigali. Twagiramungu was to learn another seven years later
that he had good reason to be surprised. During the ‘Military I’ trial in
October 2005, defence lawyer Chris Black demonstrated a serious problem
with the ‘genocide fax’. The original fax appeared to have been doctored
to include the references to killing Tutsis and Belgian peace-keepers.18
When the UN published its report on all communications between
UNAMIR and the UN headquarters on 20 November 1995, it revealed no
communication that detailed any preparation for genocide. According
to Black’s research, an unexpected fax was received at the DPKO eight
days later. It was a copy of a code cable dated 11 January 1994 sent by
Dallaire to General Baril. The strange thing was that it was sent by a British
Colonel, R. M. Connaughton, from Camberley, Surrey in the UK. His name
and fax number appeared at the top of the document. The fax had no
covering letter explaining who had sent it or for what purpose it had been
sent. The document has typed on its face, ‘[t]his cable was not found in
DPKO files. The present copy was placed in the files on November 28th,
1995.’ It is signed by Lamin J. Sise, a UN official. The document contains
other handwritten notes made on it after its receipt that day.
During the ‘Military II’ trial at the ICTR in October 2005, the defence
made a comparison of the copy of the fax used by the prosecution and
their own copy of the fax that had been placed in the DPKO files. It was
shown that the copy used by the prosecution had the name and fax
number of the sender, with Sise’s note and other notes removed. General
Dallaire and Lt-Col. Claeys both testified that the contents of the fax
presented by the prosecution are identical to the contents of the fax or
cable sent the night of 10–11 January 1994. However, the statements
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 137
Claeys had made about the fax to Belgian investigators in 1995 and to
the Belgian Senate in 1997 deal only with weapons caches and seeking
protection for the informant. They contained nothing about killing Tutsis
or Belgian soldiers. When Dallaire was presented with these statements
under cross-examination during the ‘Military I’ trial, he stated that Claeys
was not involved in drafting the fax, yet Claeys insisted he was. Black
claims that from the notes of meetings between Turatsinze, the informant,
and Claeys, the principal subject is the weapons caches, and there is no
mention of plans to kill Tutsis or Belgian soldiers. Black states:
It is clear that Dallaire sent a fax that night and that it concerned
only weapons caches and seeking advice from New York regarding
the protection of the informant. In fact, the subject heading of the
‘genocide’ fax is not ‘genocide’ or ‘killing’ but an innocuous ‘Request
For Protection of Informant’. The present fax was fabricated using
the original fax which dealt with weapons caches only by cutting out
some of the paragraphs of that fax and pasting in new paragraphs
about killing Tutsis and Belgians. This is supported by the fact that
the paragraphs are numbered 1 through 13 but there is no paragraph
12. Further the only reply to a fax sent that night from Kigali refers to
a paragraph 7 as the action paragraph. But in the fax as presented by
the prosecution the action paragraph is paragraph 9, the paragraph
seeking advice on protection of the informant. Also Paragraph 11
states that Dallaire will meet with Faustin Twagiramungu to brief
him on events but as we know that man states that he was never
told of such information coming from the informant. Lastly, para-
graph 2 states that the killing of Belgians would ‘guarantee Belgian
withdrawal from Rwanda’ something that could only be known after
the fact.19
happened.’ Black suggests that Dallaire never sent a fax that referred to
killing Tutsis every twenty minutes, or killing Belgian soldiers in the
first place. Black states:
His version is a way of getting around the fact that Booh-Booh never
saw what is now called the ‘genocide’ fax, … Booh-Booh testified …
that he never saw the fax Dallaire says he sent and that further that
General Dallaire never mentioned to him in their meeting of January
12, 1994 that the informant mentioned the killing of Belgians or
Tutsis. Booh-Booh also testified that when he and Dallaire met with
several western ambassadors, including the Belgian ambassador,
Dallaire never mentioned the killing of Belgians or Tutsis to them
either nor in their meeting with President Habyarimana. In those
meetings Dallaire spoke only about allegations of weapons caches.20
It is interesting to note that in Leave None to Tell the Story a full account
is given of a coded cable sent by Dallaire on 11 January 1994 that is
the same as that presented by the prosecution in the ‘Military II’ trial,21
while the United Nations book on Rwanda states that in a ‘communica-
tion’ sent to the UN headquarters, ‘UNAMIR raised concerns about a
report of a plot being formulated by Hutu militia … to kill large num-
bers of Tutsi in Kigali.’ The sensational reference to killing 2000 Tutsis
in twenty minutes is absent.22
It would appear that the fabrication of the ‘genocide fax’ is related to the
frustration on the part of the ICTR prosecution and its sponsors at the con-
tinued absence of any evidence of a conspiracy by Hutu leaders to commit
genocide against Tutsis. Dallaire contradicted his own book on this point
in his testimony at the ICTR. In the witness stand, Dallaire was certain
that there was no plan to exterminate Tutsis, saying that ‘it is impossible
that such a “plan” could have existed’. He blamed the widespread killings
on ‘overspills that came to add up to what had been planned on the politi-
cal side … to exterminate the opposition’.23 This is consistent with what
he also said on a French-language television programme in Montréal soon
after his return from Rwanda, on 14 September 1994:
The plan was more political. The aim was to eliminate the coalition
of moderates. … I think that the excesses that we saw were beyond
people’s ability to plan and organize. There was a process to destroy
the political elements in the moderate camp. There was a break-
down and hysteria absolutely. … But nobody could have foreseen or
planned the magnitude of the destruction we saw.24
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 139
Tell the Story states that ‘[n]owhere did it caution against confusing the
RPF as a political group with Tutsi as an ethnic group’ In several places,
it used ‘Tutsi’ as equivalent to enemy. As one of the advantages of the
enemy, it listed ‘A single political will and a single political ideology,
which is Tutsi hegemony.’32
When Defence Minister Gasana learned of this report, he ordered that
all copies be destroyed. Yet the original could not be located in order
to check the authenticity of the signature, since Nsabimana claimed he
had neither seen nor signed the report (yet Des Forges states, without
reference, that Nsabimana ordered it to be widely distributed, ‘insisting
especially on the section relating to the definition of the enemy’33).
Gasana points out that, contrary to Human Rights Watch Africa’s claim,
the report is careful not to state that the enemy is the Tutsi per se, but an
individual who is identified by the actions they take rather than their
ethnic identity. The report specifies the following actions:
It also states that, ‘[p]olitical opponents who want power or the peaceful
and democratic change of the current political regime of Rwanda are not
to be confused with the ENI or with partisans of the ENI’.34 This last point
is also cited in Leave None to Tell the Story, but downplayed as a ‘necessary
nod towards democratic openness’.35 Gasana also contradicts Human
Rights Watch by stating that Habyarimana had strongly forbidden the
authors of the report from making it known by members outside the
commission, to avoid embarrassing Colonels Serubuga and Rwagafilita.36
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 141
Machete import
The ‘Military I’ trial was the most prominent of all at the ICTR. Here the
leadership of the Rwandan military were the key figures on trial for geno-
cide. Colonel Théoneste Bagosora was by then well established by the
official narrative as the ringleader. According to the opening statement
of the Chief Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, Bagosora and other commanders
on trial were part of a group of senior Hutu officers who had, ‘for several
years, planned the systematic extermination of the Tutsis and moderate
Hutus in order to secure the Hutu Extremists’ political dominance of the
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 143
country…’44 The trial began in 2002, by which time Bagosora had already
spent six years as an awaiting trial prisoner, and lasted almost seven
years. On the charge of conspiracy, the three judges were unanimous:
Peter Erlinder, former lead ICTR defence lawyer, whose work resulted
in the acquittals for conspiracy in the ‘Military I’ case, included in that
trial documentary evidence from UN and US files that caused the Court
to conclude that the ‘long-planned conspiracy to commit genocide’ was
a ‘victor’s myth’ unsupported by the evidence.46
Genocide implementation?
Road blocks
[l]ess than half an hour after the plane crash occurred, roadblocks
manned by Hutu militiamen, often assisted by gendarmerie or mili-
tary personnel, were set up at which the identity cards of passers-by
were checked and Tutsis were taken aside and killed.49
An extremist coup?
did not want the Arusha process jeopardized. He emphasised that the
military only wanted to control the situation for the shortest time
possible, then hand the situation over to the politicians. He wanted
to keep peace with the RPF. … He acknowledged that elements of
the RGF, especially the Presidential Guard, were out of control, but
he assured me that every effort was being made to return them to
their barracks.56
146 Rwanda 1994
The fact that he was in charge didn’t bode well. … Was this a well-
planned coup d’état or were these officers simply maintaining order
until the political leadership was sorted out? Bagosora’s presence
undermined my frail hope that perhaps this coup, if it was a coup,
had been launched by the moderate members of the military and the
Gendarmerie.57
After the meeting, the Commander of the École Supérieure Militaire was
mandated to brief the Military Crisis Committee on the outcome of the
meeting, which ended about 5.00 p.m.60
What emerges from this account is the compliance of Bagosora
with demands from Booh-Booh and government ministers. His role in
arranging for military escorts and in physically locating the members
of the different parties was essential for establishing the conditions
for a legal procedure for the appointment of the interim government.
Despite the fact that most individuals present suspected the RPF in the
assassination of the President and were afraid that they too would be
killed by the RPF, they nevertheless made a priority of making contact
with the RPF in order that the transitional institutions could be set up
in terms of the Arusha Accords. This is clearly not the behaviour that
would be expected of a government established by means of a coup of
Hutu extremists bent on implementing genocide. ‘They seized control
of the state …’ is simply not borne out by the facts. The UN Office of
Legal Affairs issued a Legal Opinion on 25 May 1994 that the post-
Habyarimana government, established on 8 April 1994, was the lawful
successor government, properly constituted under the 1992 Rwandan
constitution, and was not the product of a ‘coup’.61
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 149
What about the rest of that sentence, ‘… and used its machinery and its
authority to carry out the slaughter?’
The members of the interim government were sworn in on 9 April
1994, but the security situation rendered them powerless from the
outset. They lived day by day in fear of their lives in the face of a
militarily superior enemy poised to seize the capital. Many of them
had homes near to the CND building where the RPF had a military
base. They abandoned them and took refuge in military barracks or
in hotels under military protection. The barracks nearest the CND
and nearby houses were attacked by the RPF on the 7th, and on the
same day the RPF seized the ministerial buildings situated on Kakiru
Hill – a day before the government was formed. The new ministers
never set foot in their offices. Unable to operate with any degree of
security, the ministers left Kigali on 12 April, when the RPF occupied
more of the city, including the buildings of the MRND and opposi-
tion parties. The RPF disabled the telecommunications that day by
bombarding the hill on which the main connection centre was situ-
ated. There were no telephone communications between Kigali and
the rest of the country after the 12th. By this date phone calls had
become impossible even within the city, with the disconnection of
phone masts.62
The interim government members left Kigali with bodyguards and
reassembled in Murambi, Gitarama prefecture. They occupied a govern-
ment building that was a training centre for civil servants. It had few
facilities, no phones and no fax. The President and the Prime Minister
shared a satellite phone. The ministers were unable to drive anywhere
without military escort. A week later, the ‘government’ moved again
to Muramba in Gisenyi prefecture.63 By mid-July the ministers had left
Rwanda for Zaïre.
From its inception, it was a government in name only. While its
requests for cease-fires with the RPF were rejected, it resorted to
appeals for calm, condemned ethnic killings and stressed the need
for unity. A summary of broadcasts on Radio Rwanda by the govern-
ment between 10 April and 6 June 1994 shows almost daily appeals
for calm and an end to ethnic killings.64 United Nations observers
knew that the government was powerless. Cables from Kofi Annan
to the Secretary-General on 9 April stated that the government
‘did not appear to have any authority’, and on 11 April that it ‘was
unable to control the behaviour of the soldiers, Interahamwe, or the
population’.65
150 Rwanda 1994
Two days after the interim government was installed, all or virtu-
ally all of the ministers met with eight of the eleven prefects to hear
their reports on the situation in their prefectures. All the prefects
spoke openly about the killings of Tutsi that were taking place. One
of the prefects who was absent, the prefect of Butare, was criticized
for being ‘inactive’ that is, for not having started any killings in his
prefecture. This was not surprising because the prefect, Jean-Baptiste
Habyalimana, was the only Tutsi prefect in Rwanda.
Despite the clear reports of violence directed against part of the popu-
lation, the government took no action. The prefects were told merely
that there would be directives from the government at some future time.
The prefects were sent home with no clear orders or additional resources
for ending the violence. In this highly centralized political system where
superiors regulated even minor details of policy implementation, the
absence of a message was itself a message: the killings were to continue.66
The closest Des Forges gets to demonstrating any order to kill civil-
ians is this questionable interpretation of what was said. She admitted
when she used this section from Leave None to Tell the Story to write
her report that she was unaware of Kambanda’s address to the préfets at
the meeting being broadcast on Radio Rwanda, or that a recording of
the broadcast was available. The source she used for the statement that
all the préfets spoke openly about the killings of Tutsi that were taking
place was préfet Fidele Uwizeye. However, Uwizeye later testified under
oath that the préfets did not speak about the violence in their areas.
The record of the broadcast contradicts Des Forges’ writing. It shows
that Kambanda spoke against inter-ethnic violence and urged people to
defend their neighbours whoever they were:
This reference was also to writing in Leave None to Tell the Story
and contained in Des Forges’ court report. In response, the defence
152 Rwanda 1994
Unfortunately some of them did not attend that meeting. Your préfet
is one of those who did not show up, and we do not know why, but
we gave up the message all the same. In that message we asked the
population to avoid turning against one another and starting violence
on ethnic or regional grounds, as I said earlier, or any other factors
that usually bring division among Rwandans.69
constituted proof for the prosecution that the interim government had
implemented genocide. This ‘proof’ was in a sealed envelope that has yet
to be made publicly available.71 Kambanda’s confession was not heard or
tested in court. He claimed that he had signed the confession with a view
to telling his story in court. The circumstance of this confession under-
mines the credibility of its contents, and cannot be cited as convincing
evidence of the implementation of genocide.
The army
And what of the Rwandan army, the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR): did
it use ‘its machinery and its authority to carry out the slaughter’?
Having been cleared of conspiracy to commit genocide, Bagosora’s direct
responsibility for murders was annulled. The Appeal Chamber still man-
aged to convict him on the charge of genocide simply because, for the
three days of 7–9 April, while he was deemed to be in charge of the mili-
tary while the chief of the army was out of the country, he failed to prevent
killings by his subordinates. He was acquitted of having committed any
crimes before or after those dates.72 Bagosora’s life sentence was reduced to
thirty-five years.73 The highest-ranking officer, Brigadier General Gratien
Kabiligi, Chief of Rwandan Operations, was cleared of all charges. Major
Aloys Ntabakuze and Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva were convicted of
command responsibility offences.74 No convictions were made on the
basis of orders given to kill civilians. This prompted Thierry Cruvellier,
a journalist who has spent a considerable amount of time covering the
ICTR, to state that ‘there was a genocide, yes, but it was brainless’.75
The police
The police force, or gendarmerie, was incapacitated from the start. When
the RPF invaded in October 1990, the force was 2000 strong. They
were rushed to the front and used as infantry. Though well-trained and
experienced as police officers, they were poorly equipped for this role
and were decimated. They were withdrawn and built up over a period
of only four weeks to 6000, with ineffective instructors. Their capabil-
ity was judged by General Dallaire on 30 March 1994 as ‘minimal, if
not ineffective’.76 Earlier, he had stated, ‘[e]ven with the best will in
the word, the gendarmerie are totally inadequate to effectively com-
bat crime in Rwanda and preserve law and order’.77 Dallaire’s mission
inspected the gendarmerie’s barracks at Kacyiru, and found that ‘[s]tores
check lists of inventory were months out of date, and the impression
gained was that the Gendarmerie are only barely able to function’.78
154 Rwanda 1994
The militia
The most notorious organisation of all, the Interahamwe, needs careful
consideration. What was termed Interahamwe after April 1994 is a loose
term that embraces the original Interahamwe za MRND, the youth mili-
tia formed by the former ruling party, the militia of the other parties,
the Mpuzamugambi, Inkuba, JPL and Abakombozi, deserting soldiers, gen-
darmerie and bandits. Any group of civilians armed in any way – clubs,
knives, machetes or guns – were termed Interahamwe. Complicating
matters further was the fact that the RPF had infiltrated its members
into the different militia prior to April 1994. As previously shown, the
original organisation was armed only in October 1993 as a civil defence
force, and not for the purpose of killing civilians. The Rwandan state
was in a state of disintegration towards the latter half of 1993. Dallaire’s
Reconnaissance Report of October 1993 highlights a problem of ‘army
desertions, stolen uniforms and weapons, roadblocks set-up for criminal
purposes, social chaos with cheap weapons and grenades for sale in the
markets’.79
The leadership of the Interahamwe za MRND had no control whatso-
ever over the actions of this ‘Interahamwe’. Its leaders, President Robert
Kajuga (who happened to be a Tutsi) and Vice-President Georges
Rutaganda, both assisted UNAMIR Captain Amadou Deme in saving
Tutsi refugees. It was Rutaganda who saved the lives of Tutsis and of
Deme himself from ‘Interahamwe’ at a roadblock, not General Dallaire
as portrayed in the Hotel Rwanda film. Rutaganda was not armed,
and risked his life confronting an armed and angry youth who nei-
ther knew nor liked him, eventually getting their agreement to allow
their convoy of Tutsis to return unharmed.80 According to Deme,
neither leader had influence, much less control over armed youth at
roadblocks.81
Other groups of killers were deserting soldiers. With each encounter
with the RPF, the Rwandan army had to retreat. As Dallaire recorded,
The RPF
While there was no state institution or central organisation supervis-
ing genocide, there was an organisation inciting violence on a massive
scale – the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its army, the Rwandan
Patriotic Army (RPA). The central figure behind both was Paul Kagame,
who remains Rwanda’s strongman nineteen years on.
The aerial assassination of Rwanda’s most important political figure
was designed to provoke retributive killings in a society that already
had a dysfunctional government, an impotent police force and an army
that was no match for the RPA. As will be shown, it was also conducted
with the knowledge that international opinion would be predisposed to
blame the resulting violence on Hutu extremism.
Without the resumption of the war, there would have been no mas-
sacres of civilians. The war was resumed by the RPF because it had the
military capacity to seize power, following the departure of French forces
from Rwanda. It was gambling on its political ability to justify its total
destruction of the negotiated peace. Shooting down the President’s plane
eliminated the country’s most popular political figure and guaranteed a
violent reaction. The slaughter in Burundi only months before had set
a clear precedent. Kagame ordered his troops on the move the moment
he received confirmation of the successful plane attack. The pretence
was that the RPF was shocked into military action by civilian massacres.
As a result of months of planning, the RPF managed to take the
eastern third of Rwanda, all the way to the Burundi border, in just two
weeks. After 20 April 1994, massacres of civilians in this region could
not be attributed to Hutu extremists. The tens of thousands of bodies
that floated down the Kagera River and into Lake Victoria were macabre
evidence of the RPF’s work.83
With a government on the run, an army pinned down in a losing
war with the RPF and the absence of law enforcement agents, the scene
was set for a frenzied vigilantism. The ICTR has itself acknowledged ‘the
156 Rwanda 1994
For weeks, [the] RPF seemed to have frozen its offensive over Kigali
itself and was just putting pressure on the city with heavy shelling.
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 157
On 18 July 1994, the RPF captured Gisenyi and declared the war over.
The following day the new government was sworn in, with Pasteur
Bizimungu President and Faustin Twagiramungu Prime Minister.
Behind the Hutu window-dressing was the power of the ‘Ugandan’
generation of Rwandan Tutsis, under Paul Kagame, Vice-President and
Defence Minister and de facto dictator. With Twagiramungu’s resigna-
tion in August 1995, and of Bizimungu’s in 2000, Kagame lost the
façade of a government of national unity with so-called ‘moderate’
Hutus at the front, and had to step up and become President as well as
strongman. In 2013, at the time of writing, the man who told Dallaire
that his war was a political war for democracy is changing the Rwandan
constitution to enable him to extend his nineteen-year blood-soaked
grip on Rwanda.
How did Kagame and the RPF get away with it? They certainly had
a sophisticated propaganda machine and a crack army. They called for,
and obtained, an international tribunal designed to show the world the
kind of people they were up against. They were good, but not that good.
Behind them was the US military, the real secret of their success.
External support
At each step of the way, from the day they first invaded Rwanda on
1 October 1990, they enjoyed discreet support from the Pentagon,
which in turn generated British support. RPF war propaganda was
endorsed by US military documents. As the RPF was poised to take over
Rwanda in May 1994, a Defense Intelligence Report legitimised its war
from start to finish.
While the US Department of State was involved in organising the return
of Rwandan Tutsi refugees from neighbouring countries on the request of
President Habyarimana, the RPF destroyed their schedule by invading.
They claimed that they had to invade to force the issue of refugee return
on President Habyarimana. The Defense Intelligence Report stated:
When the defeated RPF was pushed back into Uganda, President
Museveni, whose government had stated publicly that they were ‘desert-
ers’ from the army who would feel the force of Ugandan law should they
return, allowed them to rebuild their army in Uganda and resume the war
as soon as they were capable. The US Embassy in Kampala denied any
knowledge of Ugandan RPF bases. But the Report states:
[t]he RPF possessed a little over 2 percent of the country when the
rebels and government signed the Arusha Accords in August 1993.
The RPF could then have based all its military units inside Rwanda;
however, it continued to use Uganda and eastern Zaïre for training
and logistic purposes.
The RPF shot down Habyarimana’s plane and ordered its troops out of
Mulindi on the night of 6 April 1994. They blamed the aerial assassina-
tion on the Akazu. The Report states:
[i]t is believed that the plane crash that killed the Rwandan and
Burundian presidents and their entourages was actually an assassina-
tion conducted by Hutu military hardliners. … The RPF had little
choice but to launch an offensive to rescue its besieged battalion in
Kigali and to stop the wanton slaughter of civilians. … Around 8
April, the RPA commander decided to launch an offensive with two
objectives: to reinforce the Kigali battalion and to stop the massacre of
Tutsis and moderate Hutus. … According to the U.S. Ambassador prior
to the offensive, RPF-controlled areas were devoid of civilians because
of Hutu distrust and fear. It appears this perception of the RPF is chang-
ing because displaced persons have been moving into rebel territory…
The Report inadvertently let slip the nature of the civilian killings:
The original intent was to kill only the political elite supporting
reconciliation; however, the government lost control of the militias,
The Myth of the Akazu Genocide Conspiracy 159
Dallaire was aware of the links between the RPF and the Pentagon.
When he was asking for UNAMIR to be given Chapter VII powers that
would enable it to threaten force to stop the killings, he was frustrated
with America’s prevarication:
[f]or four more days, the Americans put obstacle after obstacle in our
way, with the British playing a coy supporting role … the RPF pub-
lished a statement … arguing that [it] was too late to stop the killing
and could potentially destabilize the RPF’s struggle for power. In fact it
was not too late; the massacres would continue for weeks. If I had been
a suspicious soul, I could have drawn a link between the obstructive
American position and the RPF’s refusal to accept a sizable UNAMIR-2.
In the pre-war period, the U.S. military attaché from the American
embassy was observed going to Mulindi on a regular basis.92
On the key issue of legitimising the RPF’s war on the basis that it was
compelled to restart military action in order to save civilian lives,
Human Rights Watch chimed with the Pentagon:
With military, diplomatic and moral support provided from such quar-
ters, the audacity of the RPF’s war strategy is understandable. With an
international tribunal subsequently endorsing the narrative of the Akazu
genocide conspiracy, and devoting all its energies for the best part of two
decades to the prosecution of their political opponents for the worst of
all crimes, the RPF’s continued impunity for wholesale massacres and
targeted assassinations is also not surprising. Kagame started a war in
1990 against corruption and dictatorship; his version of good govern-
ance and democracy has endured to date. He is an ironic product of
Western post-Cold War ‘ethical’ foreign policy.
6
Hate Speech, the Audience and
Mass Killings
[t]wo tools, one very modern, the other less [modern] were particu-
larly used during the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda: the
radio and the machete. The former to give and receive orders, the
second to carry them out.3
These claims cut to the heart of so much that is written about Rwanda.
From 1990 onwards, and especially after the democratic constitution
became law in June 1991, Rwanda’s print media proliferated. All sides
were represented. A paradox that is seldom explored is that this extension
of a wide range of civil liberties took place during a time of war. War-time
conditions are better known for generating a curtailment of civil liberties,
yet in Rwanda at this time there were simultaneous extensions of civil
liberties alongside acts of repression. Controls on the media and on the
organisation of political opposition were relaxed. At the same time, there
were mass arrests in the wake of the RPF’s 1990 invasion from Uganda,
160
Hate Speech, the Audience and Mass Killings 161
and repressive measures were taken against the media. At least six editors
were jailed, while others were at times beaten and interrogated.4 The
war-time conditions were characterised by ever-increasing levels of eth-
nic polarisation. It is hardly surprising therefore that this polarisation
was reflected in the media. Copies of newspapers of the period are filled
with racist caricature and sinister threats from all parts of the spectrum.
A breakdown of the print media at the time is provided by Jean-Marie
Vianney Higiro, who was appointed director of ORINFOR, the govern-
ment agency that managed the public media at the end of July 1993.
Higiro fled Rwanda on 9 April 1994.5 His classification of the media is
as follows:
Pro-RPF publications:
Buracyeye, Kanyarwanda, Kanguka, Kiberinka, Le Flambeau, Rwanda
Rushya and Le Tribun du Peuple (also known as Umuvugizi wa Rubanda
et Le Partisan). Their editors were all Tutsi and RPF members living in
Rwanda.
Kangura
The most notorious paper was Kangura, owned by Hassan Ngeze, and
Kangura’s most notorious piece was the ‘Hutu Ten Commandments’,
a racist rant published in its sixth edition on 10 December 1990:
1. Every Hutu male should know that Tutsi women, wherever they may
be, are working in the pay of their Tutsi ethnic group. Consequently,
shall be deemed a traitor any Hutu male who marries a Tutsi woman,
any Hutu male who keeps a Tutsi concubine; any Hutu male who
makes Tutsi women his secretary or protégée.
162 Rwanda 1994
2. Every Hutu male must know that our Hutu daughters are more
dignified and conscientious in the role of woman, wife and mother.
Are they not pretty, good secretaries and most honest!
3. Hutu women, be vigilant and bring your husbands, brothers, and
sons back to their senses.
4. Every Hutu male must know that all Tutsis are dishonest in their
business dealings. They are only seeking ethnic supremacy.
5. Strategic positions in the political, administrative, economic, mili-
tary and security domain should, to a large extent, be entrusted to
Hutus.
6. In the education sector, it must be in the majority Hutu.
7. The Rwandan Armed Forces should be exclusively Hutu. That is
the lesson we learned from the October 1990 war. No soldier must
marry a Tutsi woman.
8. Hutus must cease having any pity for the Tutsi.
9. Hutu males, wherever they may be, should be united in solidarity,
and be concerned about the fate of their Hutu brothers.
10. The 1959 revolution, the 1961 revolution, and the Hutu ideology
must be taught to Hutus at all levels. Every Hutu must propagate
the present ideology widely. Any Hutu who persecutes his brother
having read, disseminated, and taught this ideology shall be
deemed a traitor.6
Inyenzi means cockroach. It was also the name of the Tutsi rebel move-
ment that made incursions into Rwanda in the 1960s and 1970s. The
rebels would attack under cover of darkness and withdraw before day-
break. The analogy is with cockroaches hiding when a light is switched
on. One explanation for the origin of the term is given by Higiro. Inyenzi
is also an acronym for ‘Ingangurarugo yemeye kuba ingenzi’. Ingangurarugo
was an army division under the Tutsi King Rwabugili [also spelled
Rwabugire] who ruled Rwanda at the end of the nineteenth century.
It was a name that they gave themselves.11 It was not coined later by
Hutus because of a pejorative connotation, though that doubtless had
appeal to its detractors. Calling the RPF Inyenzi was to imply that they
had the same objectives, the restoration of a Tutsi monarchy and the
subjugation of Hutu. Inkotanyi was a term that the RPF used for itself.12
Kangura made no attempt to disguise its contempt for Tutsis. But nowhere
did it call for their extermination. Calls to kill the ‘Inyenzi-Inkotanyi’ are
164 Rwanda 1994
You abused the trust of the public by using your newspaper to insti-
gate genocide. The Chamber notes that you saved Tutsi civilians
from death by transporting them across the border out of Rwanda.
Your power to save was more than matched by your power to kill.
You poisoned the minds of your readers, and by words and deeds
caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians.15
RTLM
The role of the most notorious medium during the period in question,
Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), ‘the free radio of a
thousand hills’, is central to the issue of the media and the killings.
According to Dallaire, ‘RTLM was created specifically as a tool of the
génocidaires to demonize the Tutsi, lay the groundwork, then literally
drive on the killing once the genocide started.’16
RTLM was registered as a private company on 8 April 1993 and began
broadcasting on 8 July. The impetus for its establishment was the need
on the part of MRND-CDR supporters to counter the war propaganda
of the RPF’s Radio Muhabura, which had been reaching all but the
south of Rwanda since mid-1992. The political reforms that had taken
place by then had resulted in the Ministry of Information being given
to the opposition MDR, in the person of Pascal Ndengejeho. Radio
Rwanda, which had had a monopoly of the airwaves until 1992, was
no longer the voice of the MRND and the army. The opposition par-
ties declared Radio Rwanda ‘liberated’, while MRND radicals referred
to it as ‘Muhabura-bis’ (Muhabura-two).17 Yet at its inception, RTLM
was more like a Western-style radio talk-show than a political propa-
ganda organ. It became popular for its irreverent humour and relaxed
Hate Speech, the Audience and Mass Killings 165
style, and gained a wide audience. Even members of the RPF listened
to it. President Alexis Kanyarengwe is reported as having been an avid
listener, enjoying its humour. The Canadian ambassador to Rwanda at
the time said of the station:
But as the war intensified and ethnic polarisation deepened, the radio
became more vitriolic and threatening. Until April 1994, the station
attracted little external attention. People were used to RPF propaganda
from Muhabura and FAR propaganda from RTLM. Both were at times
vitriolic and threatened their opponents with military victory. For its
part, Muhabura relentlessly attacked the government for committing
atrocities, and, from the time of its February 1993 offensive onwards, for
committing genocide. It would not countenance the possibility of RPF
atrocities. During its offensive of February 1993, eight administrative
officials and several of their relatives in Ruhengeri town were summarily
executed, along with large numbers of other civilians. Muhabura denied
any civilian killings on the part of the RPF: ‘[t]o kill innocent citizens is
a shameful crime that the RPF could not dare commit’.19
After 6 April 1994 matters took a different turn. According to one
of its journalists, Georges Ruggiu, RTLM’s programming content was
expanded to promote a pro-Hutu agenda and to support the army. The
army provided protection to the station and to journalists, and arranged
the move of the transmitter and the journalists from Kigali to Mount
Muhe in Gisenyi as the RPF took Kigali on 4 July. RTLM’s last broadcast
was transmitted on 13 July 1994.20
When analysing the role of radio incitement, context is crucial. The
broadcasters of RTLM were living in a city that had been abandoned by
its government within days of the resumption of the war in the face of a
rebel army comprised overwhelmingly of Tutsis. While all calls to incite-
ment are abhorrent, one needs to think of the distinction between encour-
agement to kill the military enemy and incitement to commit genocide.
It is the insistence upon this latter crime that has marked RTLM out and
for which its founder, Ferdinand Nahimana, and another major stake-
holder, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, were sentenced to life imprisonment.
The detail of the Nahimana case that follows is presented in order
to challenge both the verdict and the wider consensus that RTLM
and Kangura were part of a conspiracy to commit genocide. Ferdinand
166 Rwanda 1994
‘The Inkotanyi (RPF) … are easier to kill because they belong to one eth-
nic group.’ The RPF was overwhelmingly but not exclusively Tutsi. Some
senior members, like Lizinde and Sendashonga, were Hutu. But the
generalisation Inkotanyi equals Tutsi, combined with the injunction that
those with the physical appearance that approximates the stereotype of
Tutsis – tall with slender noses – are to have their noses broken (before,
we assume, they are to be killed) is a chilling generalisation that all
Tutsi are Inkotanyi. A careful check of the translation from Kinyarwanda
would be required, but if the call to attack individuals who matched the
Tutsi stereotype on the grounds that they must therefore be Inkotanyi
remains clear in the text, the incitement would be to genocide.
The second excerpt is of a broadcast made on 31 May 1994, some time
after the mass killings had wound down, but with the prospect of an
RPF victory becoming more certain by the day:
Our country, the Tutsi clique has plunged it into mourning. … Thus
when day breaks, when that day comes, we will be heading for a
brighter future, for the day when we will be able to say, ‘There isn’t
a single Inyenzi left in the country.’ The term Inyenzi will then be for-
ever forgotten, and disappear for good … that will only be possible if
we continue exterminating them at the same pace. As we have told
you time and again, it would be unimaginable for this clique, which
does not make up 1%, to drive us out of the country and rule it.24
The ‘clique’ that represents less than one percent of the population is
certainly not the Tutsi ethnic group, but the military enemy, the RPF. In
context, the earlier passage reads more like war-time propaganda of the
futility of the enemy’s war than incitement to genocide.
The third excerpt was broadcast on 23 May 1994:
The listener is encouraged to hunt down the parents of RPA (the military
wing of the RPF) recruits. It is an explicit case of incitement. The RPF had
recruited youth widely from villages across the country. Given the size
and structure of the villages, the families of recruits were well known.
Zahar argues that here the association is with a clearly defined war-time
enemy, and so it would be incitement to commit crimes against human-
ity (the killing of innocent civilians as part of a widespread or systematic
attack upon them) rather than incitement to commit genocide. A repre-
hensible call to take revenge upon the parents of RPF recruits is still not
the same thing as a call to kill the Tutsi ethnic group as such.
The judgement turned on linguistic semantics and upon hearsay
evidence. The final excerpt that best illustrates this is a broadcast of
2 July: ‘Come, let us rejoice: the Inkotanyi have been exterminated! Come
dear friends, let us rejoice, the Good Lord is just …’26 The Tribunal ruled:
From this, it is clear that their obsession with proving genocide seemed
to make the judges forget that it is the English word ‘exterminate’ that
may be associated with civilians rather than military operations. With
no knowledge of Kinyarwanda between them, the judges had no idea
what connotations a Kinyarwanda sentence translated for them to
mean exterminating the Inkotanyi could have other than … exterminat-
ing Inkotanyi.
The verdict of guilty of, among other crimes, incitement to genocide,
was passed on Nahimana and Barayagwiza for their roles in RTLM, and
on Ngeze for his role in Kangura. It was a landmark ruling, which has
had important ramifications on the regulation of radio and print media
in central Africa and elsewhere. For the purposes of this study the ques-
tion that is raised is what the convictions tell us about the matter of
genocide.
The individual broadcasters may well have been guilty of incitement,
but they were not the ones in the dock. Nahimana and Barayagwiza
were the ones being tried because the Court sought to demonstrate
that more than individual utterances of incitement were at stake. The
broadcasters were said to be the ‘small fish’ being directed by bigger
ones who were collaborating in the implementation of genocide. It
Hate Speech, the Audience and Mass Killings 169
Nahimana
Nahimana was not prosecuted for anything he said on RTLM (he was
not on air once during 1994), nor was he prosecuted for giving orders
to others. He was judged to have exercised effective control over the
broadcasters and was therefore responsible for their actions in a way
that is similar to the control military commanders have over their sub-
ordinates. Yet for the period in question, Nahimana was either outside
Rwanda or in a remote western part of the country. He did not maintain
any contact of any sort with these broadcasters, nor with their manager
who remained in Kigali. Furthermore, from 7 April onwards, both Radio
Rwanda and RTLM were under the protection of the military, and the
war had resumed. Effective daily management was provided by its direc-
tor, Phocas Habimana, and its editor-in-chief, Gaspard Gahigi. These
facts were demonstrated by the only two direct witnesses to appear,
both broadcasters at RTLM at the time: Georges Ruggiu, a witness for
the prosecution, and Valérie Bemeriki, a witness for the defence. At the
time of these broadcasts, RTLM was encircled by the RPF, and the front
line drew ever closer. At one point, a journalist was actually hit in the
leg by RPF fire while at his desk. Ruggiu, Bemeriki and the others at the
station were therefore dependent upon the army for their security.
The only people who had effective control of RTLM were the ones
who were in the studios in Kigali, directing, monitoring and sanction-
ing the actions of the soldier-broadcasters, who wore military uniforms
and carried out the orders of the only authority that had the means
of commanding obedience in the midst of the massacres: the army.
Dallaire confirms that when he tried to do something about RTLM’s
broadcasts, it was FAR Chief of Staff Augustin Bizimungu that he con-
tacted.27 So how could Nahimana, a civilian, have exercised control
over the radio station during this period?
Yet again, it was the input of Des Forges that was used by the judges to
secure a conviction. This input came despite the fact that the judges had
by this time already turned her down as a witness. On 9 May 2003 the
judges stated that ‘the Chamber sees no reason to call this witness under
Rule 98 and does not find it “essential to truth-seeking” to do so’. Six
months later, Des Forges testified as an expert witness by telephone. She
stated that on 28 February 2000 [more than five years after the fact] she
had had a telephone interview with a French official who told her that
170 Rwanda 1994
He singled out the RPF as the culprit in fomenting ethnic hatred: ‘[T]hat is
why the leaders of parties must realise without delay that the number one
enemy of Rwanda and democracy is the RPF.’ He went on to state that ‘all
of society must recognise this and stand as one against any form of collec-
tive threat or aggression. This recognition will then automatically repudi-
ate hatred and division based on ethnic and regional origin.’ The judges
managed to rule that this essay was in fact demonstrative of the intention
to commit genocide against Tutsis. They did this because Nahimana had
alluded to a ‘Tutsi league’ from which the RPF may have emerged.29
On 24 April 1994, when Ferdinand Nahimana returned to Rwanda
through the border town of Cyangugu after twelve days in exile with
his family in Burundi and Zaïre, a journalist from Radio Rwanda asked
him about his journey and the current situation. In response he cited
the need to ‘stop the enemy’, declared his refusal to accept the ‘dictator-
ship’ of the Inkotanyi, and stated his satisfaction with the way that the
country’s two radio stations had called on the people to co-operate
with the military authorities to confront the invader. The recording of
Nahimana’s words came from the archives of the RPF regime, and the
last part of it was suppressed, but the judges ignored the protests of
Hate Speech, the Audience and Mass Killings 171
the defence and refused to discuss its admissibility. There was nothing
in this statement that could be seen as a form of criminal incitement,
but the judges claimed to have found that it contained an idiomatic
expression with a double meaning – an expression that actually was not
even there (the verb gukora, which normally means ‘to work’ but in a
certain context can mean ‘to kill’). They thus misconstrued a statement
from which an essential portion had to be excised, and a word that the
accused never uttered had to be added simply to make it not explicitly
criminal, but just possibly ambiguous. And it was on the basis of these
elements alone that the judges decided that Ferdinand Nahimana’s
intention to exterminate the Tutsi population of Rwanda had been
established beyond any reasonable doubt.
Coincidentally, the matter of interpretation of calls to kill the Inyenzi
and Inkotanyi were being ruled on at the same time by a judge in
Canada. MRND official Léon Mugesera was appealing against a depor-
tation order against him that had been made after a ruling in a case
in which Des Forges, along with Reyntjens, Gillet and Overdulve, had
appeared as expert witnesses. As already discussed, the judge had heard
recordings of the speech that Mugesera had made in which he had
exhorted his audience to fight the Inyenzi and Inkotanyi because, ‘the
person whose neck you do not cut is the one who will cut yours’.30 On
8 September 2003, the day after the arguments at the ICTR media trial
had ended, the judgement was made. The judge ruled that nothing in
the speech could be seriously suspected of constituting an incitement
to a crime against humanity or an incitement to murder or even eth-
nic hatred. He ruled that Des Forges, Reyntjens, Gillet and Overdulve
only provided a ‘biased or misinformed view of the events concerning
Mr. Mugesera’.31
To summarise: not one broadcast of RTLM from July 1993 to April
1994 incited ethnic hatred. From 6 April 1994 onwards, RTLM was
under the protection of the military. Individual broadcasters did incite
killing, and at least one broadcast is shown to be an incitement to
commit a crime against humanity. These individuals may well have
committed offences that were punishable by war crimes courts, but the
evidence of RTLM acting as a vehicle for genocide is forced.
Nazi media
The flawed approach to the issue of media incitement to genocide
that was used by the ICTR judges can be better seen when contrasted
with that of the judges at Nuremberg when they assessed Nazi media.
At Nuremberg, Julius Streicher, editor of Der Stürmer, received the
death sentence. His incitement to commit genocide was explicit
172 Rwanda 1994
[t]he continued work of the Stürmer will help to ensure that every
German down to the last man will, with heart and hand, join the
ranks of those whose aim is to crush the head of the serpent Pan-
Juda beneath their heels. He who helps to bring this about helps to
eliminate the devil. And this devil is the Jew.33
The audience
In addition to analysing the matter of incitement from a legal perspec-
tive, it is important to ask the question: what do we know of the ways in
which the media was received at the time, and what can be said about
the connection between media incitement and the killings of Rwandan
Tutsis at this time?
The first point to make here is that Rwandans had a choice of what
to read and what to listen to. As far as the print media goes, racist
caricature and sinister threats against people were the stuff of everyday
journalism. Higiro shows examples of this. The pro-RPF press produced
cartoons depicting the MRND and CDR as monsters that thrive on
human flesh (Kanyarwanda No. 1, 23 September 1992; Rwanda Rushya
No. 18, 22 February 1992). Kanguka published a cartoon showing the
members of the CDR as monkeys (No. 58, May 1992), and Kiberinka
warned the Prime Minister Nsengiyaremye not to carry the hyena
(meaning the MRND) on his shoulders. Impuruza described Hutus as
‘termites’, ‘wild rats’ and ‘ugly creatures’ … ‘the enemies of Rwanda,
they are nothing but a bunch of dishonorable dirt’. It asked: ‘When will
the RPF arrive so that the Hutu will also be exiled for 30 years?’35 Kimani
makes the point that RTLM did not introduce the ‘language and ideol-
ogy of hatred into the Rwandan community. Such language and the
ideology of ethnic conflict and polarisation already existed in Rwanda
in the form of a powerful social construct involving ethnic identity’.36
Secondly, if RTLM were regarded as having influenced its listeners,
perhaps the listeners would also have been influenced by the opponents
Hate Speech, the Audience and Mass Killings 173
of the MRND/CDR who also spoke on that radio. RPF officials spoke on
it no less than fifteen times, MDR members eleven times, the PL once
and UNAMIR once.37
Members of the government went on radio to call for an end to the
killings. There are thirty-five documented transcripts of Radio Rwanda
that called for calm and an end to ethnic killing.38 Before 6 April 1994,
Radio Rwanda offered UNAMIR thirty minutes a week on air. Dallaire
stated that they did not have anyone who had the skill to do this: ‘In
fact, some weeks we didn’t even go on air. Without interpreters or media
analysts, we didn’t have the ability to present a lucid programme.’39
The RPF’s Radio Muhabura, according to Gasana, led a campaign to
stir up ethnic hatred, which led to the denunciation of the radio by the
Rwandan government to the Organisation of African Unity.40
So what can be made of Chrétien’s assertion that the radio and the
machete were the two tools of the genocide, the former to give and
receive orders, the second to carry them out? Those who support
Chrétien’s claim would share his assumption that the terms Inkotanyi
and Inyenzi were effective as coded synonyms for Tutsi, that there was
an organised group of Hutu extremist conspirators, that these con-
spirators controlled RTLM and gave the orders, and that the orders were
remarkably effective in motivating the general population into becom-
ing genocide actors en masse.
It is tempting to simply dismiss the last claim about the effectiveness
of orders as groundless and fanciful in the way that Carver does:
Rwandan culture
For hate speech to affect violence of the scale and nature of genocide,
there has to be a claim for the existence of a mediating link between
words heard on air and the hunting down and slaughter of Tutsi civil-
ians that is peculiar to this particular audience. How does Des Forges
know that RTLM was not just the sole source of news, but the sole inter-
pretation of the meaning of the news? A reading of much of the literature
that is supportive of the idea of RTLM being an instrument of genocide
174 Rwanda 1994
Obedience
For Scherrer, the Rwandan genocide
Kellow and Steeves claim that strong traditions of hierarchy and author-
itarianism increase ‘the likelihood of blind obedience to the orders of
officials on the radio. Norms of rote obedience were and continue to be,
exceptionally strong in Rwanda.’43
Omaar introduces one of her publications with a quote from a local
priest: ‘In Rwanda, genocide of Tutsis was taught and assimilated, to the
point of becoming instinctive.’ She goes on to explain:
(t)he lessons began in 1959 developed into an art – and a sport – that
has been passed from one generation to another. … The seeds grown
in 1959 were reaped in 1994 when genocide became a family affair
and a communal project. Husbands and wives collaborated, broth-
ers worked as teams and parents took their children along on killing
sprees, as if on a family outing.44
For Omaar, this obedience to authority ‘made it easier for the architects
of the genocide to encourage or force both men and women to become
murderers’.48
Temple-Raston gives this account of the influence of Jean-Paul
Akayesu, the mayor of Taba commune:
The men in communes like Taba were of the herd: they listened to
those in authority with bovine obedience … [w]hen he ordered them
to kill, they did. When he ordered them to rape, they did that as well.49
A strong state?
secteur and the cellule. In this manner, we can think of a policy directive
from the President, through the Cabinet, and then through these insti-
tutions to the individual homesteads throughout the country. If we
then add the culturally embedded trait of obedience we get nothing
short of perfected authoritarianism. We can imagine the Akazu con-
spirators usurping this unique system and watch the order to kill every
Tutsi move seamlessly to the recipients in their homes, who would then
immediately pick up their machetes. This is how Des Forges claims that
[o]rders from the prime minister were handed down to the prefect,
who passed them on to the burgomasters, who called local meetings
throughout the communes where they read the instructions to the
population … [b]y appropriating the well-established hierarchies
of the military, administrative and political systems, leaders of the
genocide were able to exterminate Tutsi with astonishing speed and
thoroughness.54
Rwanda may never have had such a tightly centred political system. It
certainly did not have such a one in 1994. The fragmentary divisions
that were unleashed by the domestic reform process combined with the
havoc created by the war resulted in a situation that resembled more
the opposite of perfected authoritarianism: state institutions that frag-
mented and then collapsed, producing an anarchic vacuum.
The RPF’s war, the political reforms and the sharp economic deteriora-
tion heralded far-reaching changes to society. It became increasingly a
period of administrative dysfunction and civil disobedience.
The breakdown of effective governance was evident toward the end
of 1993. The tendency toward breakdown was a consequence of the
allocation of ministries to different parties in the coalition government
formed in April 1992. The division of ministries across parties led to
these ministries becoming regarded as fiefdoms of the designated parties.
This debilitated the delivery of services and weakened administration.55
In particular, it frustrated attempts to improve security. The Central
Intelligence Agency was transferred from the President’s Office to the
Prime Minister’s Office, which had been allocated to the MDR. The
head of the CIA was a member of the PSD and RPF sympathiser – who
would later become a cabinet minister under Kagame.56 Replacements
of MRND appointees with those from the opposition parties took place
at all administrative levels. The successor interim government, which
lasted all of five days in the capital, had no ability to change local gov-
ernment appointments, assuming it had wanted to.
178 Rwanda 1994
Disobedience
The promotion of civil disobedience was the strategy of the internal
opposition during 1992. Ukubohoza (‘liberation’) was their slogan.
Gasana demonstrates that it meant creating disorder in order to under-
mine the authority of MRND officials. This involved confiscating the
land of an MRND member, or driving MRND officials out of areas of
Kigali that they controlled. There were consequently many regions
where the MRND officials had little control.57
Many writers who accept the central tenet of the dominant narrative
that orders to kill Tutsis were passed from central to local government
are nevertheless sceptical about the culture of obedience. Peter Uvin
provides examples of disobedience among the peasantry – uprooting
coffee trees at a time of official exhortation to boost coffee production,
non-compliance with officially promoted agricultural techniques, and
non-attendance of communal meetings.58 In similar vein, Pottier des-
cribes a co-operative in Butare in the mid-1980s, where ‘rank and file
members, women in particular, regularly challenged their leaders within
the context of the co-operative’s activity and policy’.59 In his study of
the motives of the killings drawn from convicted prisoners, Scott Strauss
also rejects the notion of blind obedience, though he does not question
the matter of the killings being ordered from above.60
The democratic process itself invited an end to deference and pro-
moted dissent. Justin Bahunga points out that
The claims about Rwandans having peculiar cultural traits that enabled
them to be exhorted into becoming participants in genocide would
Hate Speech, the Audience and Mass Killings 179
clearly set them apart from the rest of humanity. They are simply a
fanciful (and racist) means of explaining away the absence of evidence
of planning, ordering and overseeing genocide. If media utterances
could do the work as effectively as proponents of this narrative claim
they did, such evidence may even be superfluous, or even impossible for
non-Rwandans to discern, given the cultural coding and nuances that
may be deployed. The identification of such a toxic culture as a way of
explaining genocide conveniently dispenses with the need for produc-
ing hard evidence for orders to kill and for the means by which state
institutions were utilised for the purpose of genocide.
7
Genocide and Humanitarian
Intervention in the Twentieth
Century
180
Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention 181
As Stein points out, there are many legal and academic experts who take
issue with this definition. Many consider the criteria to be insufficiently
broad, and argue for the inclusion of sub-groups that have often been
the target of killing, such as members of political parties and social
classes.5 Others argue that the intent to destroy in whole or in part ren-
der imprecise parameters.6 Determining whether, or precisely at what
point, massacre of specified group constitutes genocide is consequently
problematic. Bauer warns of the limitations that are inherent in defini-
tions of any kind: ‘Because life is infinitely more complex than any
definition, definitions, by definition, can never be fully adequate to the
events they are supposed to define.’7
The Genocide Convention was the outcome of negotiations between
the members of the United Nations Security Council. The definition of
genocide had to be acceptable to the victors of the Second World War.
It was conditioned by the politics of the moment – the interregnum
between the end of the Second World War and the Cold War. The
resulting definition was therefore the outcome of a political consensus
informed by wider considerations. Political consensus necessitates com-
promise, and this found its expression in the definition arrived at in the
Genocide Convention. The definition is at variance with Lemkin’s (who
did not specify religious groups)8 and that of others’, but is nonetheless
generally accepted as one that is workable.
Returning to the definition of genocide, the Genocide Convention
has drawn a mass of criticism from legal scholars, historians and politi-
cal scientists. The criticisms relate to three parts of the definition:
At the widest end Fein places Israel Charny, President of the International
Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, who includes
He decries the fact that as a result the term ‘has progressively lost its
meaning and is becoming dangerously commonplace’.15
Genocide, as a political phenomenon, is not an event but a complex
process, or set of processes. What was unprecedented about the Nazi
Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention 183
The groups were persecuted for who they were perceived to be, not what
they were perceived to be doing. There are many examples of groups of
people who were exterminated, not for who they were, but rather for
the role they played, or were regarded as playing by the perpetrators.
Bauer argues that the inclusion of religion or political affiliation into
the targeted group makes no sense. This is because these categories are
not fixed. He points out that people persecuted for their religious beliefs
changed their beliefs in order to save themselves. The same goes for
political affiliation. Many communists saved themselves by joining the
Nazi party. Religion and politics are matters of choice; ethnicity and race
are not.20
Genocide signifies ‘the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic
group’,21 and implies, as Destexhe states,
The first [operation] was launched on June 22, 1941, with the
invasion of the USSR. Small units of the SS and Police were dispatched
to Soviet territory, where they were to kill all Jewish inhabitants on
the spot. Shortly after these mobile killings had begun, a second
operation was instituted, in the course of which the Jewish popula-
tion of central, western, and south-eastern Europe were transported
to camps equipped with gassing installations. In essence, the killers
in the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside of this
arena the victims were brought to the killers.
the Waterberg region, which was the last major water source before
the Omaheke desert.54 However this success was viewed as a defeat
because it entailed a tactical retreat by the Shutztruppe at Oviumbo. The
General Staff demanded complete military victory. This was ratified by
the Kaiser with the result that Leutwein was replaced by General Lothar
von Trotha, who arrived with a reputation for ruthlessness in his quell-
ing of resistance in German East Africa in the 1890s. The Kaiser gave
von Trotha supreme command, which elevated him above the civilian
leadership.
Phase two was implemented with the declaration of martial law and an
attempt to surround the Herero at the Waterberg, and defeat them in a
single battle. The decks were thus cleared, according to Hull, for the war
to be conducted according to the purely military considerations of the
time. The Herero fighters were not accorded the status of soldiers but of
rebels engaged in illegal combat. This meant that they were not subject
to the ‘customs of war’ (Kriegsbrauch) and therefore could, if caught red-
handed, be summarily executed. Total destruction of the armed forces was
planned over two months. The intention was to surround and destroy the
Herero fighters with a single blow and have stations built to search out
and disarm those who escaped. A bounty was to be put on the heads of
the captains to bring them under von Trotha’s control and then put to
death.55 The attack did not go to plan, and Herero fighters, civilians and
cattle broke through the lines and fled south-east along dry riverbeds into
the desert. Many authors claim that driving the Hereros into the desert
was in fact the intention at the outset, with the motive being genocide.
Yet Hull cites credible sources to show that von Trotha was ‘aghast at his
failure to achieve the textbook victory’. He had made preparations to
accommodate the 8000 prisoners he had anticipated capturing, ‘he had
promised Berlin a “complete success”, and civilian officials had already
allotted the expected prisoners to various economic enterprises’.56
The flight of the Herero was perceived as a military embarrassment.
Phase three of the war was then implemented: a rushed attempt to
redress this setback. At this point it is possible to discern a line being
crossed, from an intended military defeat to an intended genocide.
Stragglers and prisoners of both sexes were either shot down or sum-
marily executed. Although von Trotha forbade shooting women and
children, he repeated the order to execute armed men. However, most
Herero did not die of gunshot wounds but of thirst, the direct result
of the policy of pursuit. Two mobile units were set up and chased the
Herero farther and farther into the desert. Negotiation was ruled out.
Finally, with the German supplies exhausted, the pursuit was called to a
halt. Von Trotha ordered a cordon sanitaire to seal off the desert against
Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention 193
infiltration back into the colony.57 At this point he issued his infamous
declaration. It was translated into the Herero language and taken by
captured women back into the desert:
The Herero people must leave this land. If they do not, I will force
them to do so by using the great gun [artillery]. Within the German
border every male Herero, armed or unarmed, with or without cattle,
will be shot to death. I will no longer receive women or children but
will drive them back to their people or have them shot at.58
Many authors, including the widely cited Horst Drechsler, refer to this
declaration as proof of von Trotha’s intent upon genocide. But there are
two problems with this claim. First, Dreschler omits the order that von
Trotha then gave to his troops,
Second, the extermination had already been under way when this
declaration was made. Hull states that von Trotha and his officers had
already ‘seen heaps of bodies at dried-out waterholes, and they received
reliable eyewitness testimony to the mass deaths by thirst farther out
in the desert’.60
Other utterances of von Trotha and subsequent practice reveal his
intent to annihilate the Hereros as a people. The shift was from a total
military victory against armed combatants to the disappearance of the
Herero, by death or expulsion:
Rwandan Tutsis
had no agenda for genocide, and took measures to stop killings, going
frequently on air, calling for cease-fires so that military resources could
be released for the purpose of civilian protection, and appealing for an
international intervention force to end the killings.68
The refutation of the claim of conspiracy to commit genocide upon
Rwandan Tutsis is ironically provided by the ICTR itself. All four
individuals in the ‘Military I’ trial, including the ‘mastermind of the
Rwandan genocide’ Théoneste Bagosora, were found not guilty of
conspiracy to commit genocide. The verdict is instructive:
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the passing of the Cold War had a
major impact on relations between major Western capitalist states and
the states of the Third World. Where analysis of Western relations with
Rwanda is concerned, the passing of the Cold War had a momentous
impact. This tiny state was a focus of significant Western interest despite
the fact that it was situated in the centre of the world’s least developed
continent and was of no economic or strategic significance. Perceived
to be on the Right side of the Cold War ideological divide, independent
Rwanda had enjoyed disproportionate levels of aid.90
A second ‘wind of change’ blew through the continent at the end of
the Cold War, which terminated the rule of a large number of autocrats
as demands for democratic elections gathered momentum. Yet the con-
ditions that facilitated democratisation also placed severe limitations
upon the extent to which people in the developing world could make
meaningful political choices. For any leadership to be fully accountable
to its electorate, it needs to have the capacity to be fully in charge of
the affairs of the nation. Sovereignty is a precondition for democracy,
yet a characteristic feature of the post-Cold War era is the diminished
sovereignty of developing states, resulting from a newly forged consen-
sus that sovereignty should not confer impunity upon leaders where
domestic human rights violation is concerned.
This diminution of sovereignty was an expression of the fact that
the high point of Third World nationalism had passed. Western powers
were consequently able to renegotiate their relations with the develop-
ing world on terms more favourable to themselves. This global power
shift reversed the loss of Western influence over the internal affairs of
developing states that had been a feature of previous decades. Western
intrusion into other states’ affairs was more often than not condemned
as imperialistic meddling. Yet the sociologist Frank Füredi reminds us
that imperialism was not always a term that had negative connotations:
It is easy to forget that until the 1930s the moral claims of imperial-
ism were seldom questioned in the West. Imperialism and the global
expansion of the Western powers were represented in unambiguously
Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention 201
The end of the Cold War brought about a sea-change in this arena.
One commentator stated that ‘the West is now more secure and confi-
dent in the superiority of its values than it has been at any time since the
end of the Second World War’.95 This renewed confidence would express
itself as zealous interventionism into the developing world. Intervention
tended to be ever more extensive in the range of issues tackled, and inten-
sive in the degree to which it would penetrate the core of government
structures and institutions. The marginal position of sub-Saharan Africa
in the global economy made it an especially attractive target for Western
intervention. With little strategic or economic significance, much of the
region afforded a degree of experimentation. As the academic Todd Moss
stated, ‘Africa’s increasing marginalisation has allowed certain groups
committed to spreading “American values” an unprecedented ability to
shape policy and turn the continent into a liberal socio-political experi-
ment.’96 The logic of this experiment, as Tom Young asserts, ‘goes well
beyond a demand for changes in particular policies (the routine stuff
of relations between states) and calls for the wholesale restructuring
of the state and political institutions’.97 Christopher Clapham refers
to these external policy directives as ‘political conditionality’, which is
divisible into three distinct categories: human rights, democracy and
governance. He argues that ‘taken together, political conditionality
constituted an ambitious project for reforming African states, in accord-
ance with external models and subject to external controls’.98 It is clearly
an all-encompassing form of intervention.
Political conditionality was an intrusive interventionist approach
ostensibly towards the end of better governance. However, the
Western mood of triumphalism soon gave way to a more sober per-
ception that the developing world was not only ripe for new Western
initiatives, but that new initiatives were required to face new dangers.
Increasingly, the Third World became identified as the source of new
threats to the new international order. Intervention was not only
about making the developing world a better place for its inhabitants,
but increasingly about neutralising threats that were emanating from
within its boundaries.
Daniel Yankovitch, President of the American Public Agenda
Foundation, observed that the end of the Cold War has ‘unleashed the
passions of ethnic tribalism all over the world’.99 Professor of political
science Peter Schraeder argues this point as well:
The problem is not a new world order but a world of chaos, of ethnic
strife everywhere. In Africa the geopolitical stakes may be lower, but
Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention 203
In fact, the RPF took to the field the moment Kagame received confir-
mation that their rocket attack on President Habyarimana’s plane had
succeeded,3 before any massacres had begun. And they took to the field,
205
206 Rwanda 1994
Victors’ justice
The ICTR has still validated the Akazu genocide conspiracy myth as a
kind of ‘greater truth’ that transcends the facts, sentencing prominent
members on the government side to life for acts of genocide, without
having established the prior fact of the Akazu genocide conspiracy
having occurred. It has made no attempt to prosecute members of
the RPF, and it is doubtful that it ever intended to. When Richard
Consequences 207
Goldstone, the ICTR’s first Chief Prosecutor, was asked years later to
comment on the fact that the ICTR has not investigated any crimes
committed by the RPF, he replied,
It appears then, that the main purpose of the Tribunal is not justice,
but victors’ justice. After all, the RPF had called for an international
tribunal as a more appropriate response to the killings than an inter-
national intervention force.9 But international tribunals do not come
about simply when rebel armies call for them, but when the interests
of rebel armies and great powers converge. The convergence of these
interests also explains the shutting down of the investigation into
the assassination of two Presidents, and the discrediting of Gersony’s
findings. In the course of its actions, the ICTR has also set a low point
in judicial standards by using illegal methods of arrest and detention,
incarcerating the accused for record periods before and during their
trials (Théoneste Bagosora was arrested in 1996 and sentenced in mid-
2007)10 and for judgements based to a significant extent upon hearsay
evidence. The Tribunal’s ability to jail a suspect for over a decade with-
out trial and without any condemnation from human rights quarters
is testimony to the presumption of guilt conferred by the Akazu myth.
Bagosora’s alleged role as the key architect of the genocide had by
then been so extensively written about that his guilt seemed to be a
foregone conclusion. Yet, after this marathon investigation, he and his
co-defendants in the ‘Military I’ trial were found not guilty of the spe-
cific charge of conspiracy to commit genocide due to lack of evidence.
The ICTR clearly demonstrated is the subordination of international law
to international politics.11
Victors’ impunity
Instead of fulfilling its brief, which was to end impunity, the ICTR con-
ferred impunity upon the victors of the Rwandan war, who continued to
208 Rwanda 1994
When it became clear that the US was willing to ‘sort out the results’
-in other words provide diplomatic cover- for a massacre of over four
thousand people, Kagame’s impunity was assured. This paved the way
for the new Rwandan army’s similar treatment of Rwandan refugees in
former Zaïre.
Kagame made his intentions towards the refugees in eastern Zaïre
apparent with a visit to New York and Washington in early August
1996. The camps holding over a million refugees were to be cleared one
way or another.14 Large-scale massacres followed. As the UN ‘Mapping
Report’ shows, unarmed men, women and children were often specifi-
cally targeted. At times they were lured to meetings with promises of
food and then gunned down with automatic weapons. At other times
adult men were separated and then killed.15 The largest attack was upon
Mugunga, the world’s largest refugee camp at the time. Mugunga was
subjected to six hours of fire from automatic weapons on the night of
14–15 November 1996. The result was the return of 500,000 refugees
to Rwanda, and dispersal of 700,000 others.16 The attack succeeded
with its second objective, having an international intervention force
mandated by a UN Security Council resolution aborted. Zaïre became
the Democratic Republic of Congo after an alliance of Rwandan forces,
Congolese rebels and the Ugandan army overthrew President Mobutu.
The ability of the Rwandan army to lead a war against a neighbour
Consequences 209
ninety times its size and overthrow its government is testimony to what
can be done with support from Washington.
Most remaining refugees fled westwards. They were pursued by the
Rwandan army, who told the local Congolese population that these
refugees were all génocidaires and should be shown no mercy. Wherever
the refugees went, the army would find and kill them. Tingi-Tingi camp
was one of the more notorious of several killing sites.17
Throughout this hideous drama, the Akazu myth served to dehumanise
Rwandan Hutus. The exodus from Rwanda had been portrayed, not as a
rational response of people with direct experience of the RPF’s war, but
as evidence of the spellbinding influence of the génocidaires’ propaganda
that told them to flee because the RPF were going to kill them. Ever
since the war began and local populations had fled RPF’s offensives,
US officials had chosen not to blame the RPF for what could have been
termed ethnic cleansing, but to blame the population themselves for
fleeing. According to US Secretary of State for Africa Herman Cohen, ‘[t]
he mass flight to escape RPF incursion demonstrated how thoroughly
indoctrinated the Hutus were with anti-Tutsi fear and hatred’.18
Once over the border the line was that the refugees wished to return
but were being held hostage by the génocidaires, who had taken con-
trol of the camps and were using them as human shields against the
Rwandan army and were recruiting for the purpose of returning to
Rwanda to complete the genocide. Those who remained after Mugunga
had been attacked and closed were depicted as the hardcore génocid-
aires and their families. Not surprisingly, the international force to
assist the refugees was called off, and the Western world looked the
other way while Kagame’s men went ever deeper into Zaïre/Congo to
finish them off.19
When Laurent Kabila, the newly installed President of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, turned against Kagame because he could no
longer defend himself against the charge of being Kagame’s proxy, he
was in turn overthrown by another Rwandan-backed war. Massacres,
disease and starvation resulting from these two wars took a toll of mil-
lions.20 Yet a decade later, the US was still supporting Rwanda’s military
presence in the Congo by peddling the extended version of the myth
that the Hutu génocidaires were still lurking about bent on returning to
Rwanda to complete their interrupted project. US Deputy Secretary of
State at the time Robert Zoellick stated that ‘Rwanda has legitimacy to
defend itself against any threat from the ex-FAR and Interahamwe mili-
tias.’21 The mythmakers maintain a false moral distinction between the
violence of the rump of the FAR and militia gangs – genocide, and the
210 Rwanda 1994
Hutus criminalized
What is more, virtually every able-bodied Hutu male who survived the
war and the massacres in the refugee camps and returned to Rwanda was
thrown into prison as a genocide suspect. Carina Tertsakian, who has cov-
ered events in Rwanda extensively for Amnesty International and then
became Human Rights Watch’s representative in Rwanda, has written
an extraordinary book about Rwanda’s prison life. Prisoners are forced
to stand for hours on end in overcrowded and filthy enclosures. Some
had their feet amputated as a result of gangrene before being returned
to the same conditions. Prisoners too weak or sick to move died where
they lay. Tertsakian has revealed that between September 1994 and May
1995, 13% of the prison population had died as a result of overcrowd-
ing, a situation ‘unparalleled in any part of the world’.22
Murderous oppression
in 2003. The first casualty of the divisionism legislation was the only
sizeable opposition party, the MDR. The RPF-dominated Transitional
National Assembly forced it to dissolve, its prominent members being
arrested, terrorised into exile or ‘disappeared’. As part of the crackdown
in advance of the elections, former President Pasteur Bizimungu and
former government minister Charles Ntakirutinka, who had set up the
opposition Democratic Party for Renewal (PDR-Ubuvania), were jailed.
In 2004, after grossly unfair trials, they were sentenced to fifteen and
ten years respectively.26
Faustin Twagiramungu was the MDR leader at the party’s incep-
tion and the first Prime Minister under ‘Vice President’ Kagame. He
and Interior Minister Seth Sendashonga broke with Kagame in August
1995 over the issue of civilian killings by the new Rwandan army.
Sendashonga was due to be the first member of the RPF to testify at the
ICTR, but was assassinated in Nairobi in May 1998. Unable to stand for
the MDR, Twagiramungu stood in his own capacity, but was accused of
promoting divisionism and harassed, three of his major meetings being
cancelled owing to INCORRECT PAPERWORK. Many of his representa-
tives were arrested and detained for the duration of the election period.
The result was 95.1% of the vote going to Kagame and 3.6% going to
Twagiramungu.27 Fearing arrest, Twagiramungu returned to Belgium.28
The parliamentary elections of September 2009 were no more cred-
ible. Kagame won with 92% of the vote. According to Kenneth Roth of
Human Rights Watch, ‘evidence collected by the European Union and
Rwandan monitors suggested that the government actually inflated
the percentage of opposition votes so as to avoid the appearance of an
embarrassing Soviet-style acclamation’.29
The second Presidential Election of August 2010 took place with
Kagame’s main opponent Victoria Ingabire languishing in prison. With
three remaining ‘opposition’ parties that were in fact drawn from the
ruling coalition, Kagame took 93% of the votes.30 Ingabire had returned
from exile in January 2010 to contest the elections. She was placed
under house arrest in April and charged in October with, among other
things, genocide ideology and divisionism. Two years later she was
sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for ‘conspiracy against the coun-
try through terrorism and war’ and ‘genocide denial’.31 In December
2013, the Rwanda Supreme Court upheld her conviction and increased
her jail term from eight to fifteen years.32 The court found her guilty
of ‘spreading rumours with an intention to incite the public to rise up
against the State, endangering state security and minimising the 1994
Genocide against the Tutsi’.33
212 Rwanda 1994
In the run-up to the elections Rwanda was in the grip of fear. Former
General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who had been named by Aloys
Ruyenzi as being in the room with Kagame when the preparations for
President Habyarimana’s assassinations were made, had turned dis-
sident and was residing in South Africa when he was shot and badly
wounded by an assailant he recognised. A second attempt on his life
was subsequently made when he was in hospital. Rwandans are among
the members of the alleged hit team currently on trial. Jean Leonard
Rugambage, an editor of the banned paper Umuvugizi who was investi-
gating the attempted assassination, was murdered outside his home in
Kigali. Soon after, the body of Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, vice-president
of the Democratic Green Party, was found partially decapitated on a
riverbank near Butare. Jwani Mwaikusa, a Tanzanian lawyer who had
defended a prominent Hutu genocide suspect at the ICTR, was the next
to be killed.34
Kagame lionised
asked, ‘[i]f we use the word “genocide” and are seen as doing nothing,
what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?’41
Rwanda following reports of Kagame’s support for the M23 rebel group
in the Congo.47
The United Kingdom is now increasingly isolated as Kagame’s strong-
est supporter. In keeping with its ‘special relationship’ with the US,
Britain complimented Washington’s policy toward Museveni and then
towards the RPF. From providing diplomatic cover to the invasion from
Uganda in October 1990,48 refusing the former Rwandan government’s
request to expose Uganda’s support for the RPF’s war,49 and being sym-
pathetic toward the RPF’s claim in 1993 that a ‘genocide’ was being
committed in Kigali,50 Britain recognised the RPF-dominated govern-
ment from its inception and became Kagame’s staunch ally.51 Support
was strongest under Tony Blair and with Clare Short as Secretary of State
for International Development. Blair and Short deflected all criticism of
Kagame with reminders that Kagame had ended the genocide. David
Cameron visited Rwanda when he was Leader of the Opposition with
over forty ministers, candidates and activists in 2007.52
Despite having no historical connection with Britain, Rwanda joined
the Commonwealth in November 2009. That year British Army Chief
of General Staff General Sir Richard Dannatt visited Rwanda and under-
lined British support for Kagame’s then joint operation with the Congo:
‘we fully support what you are doing in securing peace and stability
for this region, especially considering the negative influences in the
Eastern part of the country which pose a security threat to Rwanda’.53
These ‘negative influences’ were the Forces Démocratique de Libération
du Rwanda, said to consist of around six to eight thousand armed dis-
sidents, including remnants of the FAR and militia. The joint operation,
codenamed Umoja Wetu, resulted in the deaths of many FDLR, forced
repatriation of their families and significant numbers of dead civil-
ians.54 Again, atrocities committed by Rwandan forces are set against
the greater evil of the presumed génocidaires.
However, once regime change has been effected and Western powers
decide to back the succeeding regime, consideration for human rights
abuses may be downplayed overnight. This has been the case with the
regimes of Kagame and the other ‘New African generation of leaders’
already mentioned. In a speech to the African Union in Addis Ababa
in 1997, then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright praised Africa’s
‘New Generation Leaders’. They ‘sometimes resorted to tactics of which
Americans might disapprove, but their circumstances left them lit-
tle choice’, she said. According to her biographer Thomas Lippman,
Albright had concluded that the new leaders ‘were not interested in
hearing lectures from Washington about human rights’. She made ‘an
effort to treat them as equals, tolerating if not approving of certain
counterinsurgency and crowd-control tactics that would have outraged
human rights purists, and avoiding putting pressure on leaders such
as Museveni and Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi to hold elections and ensure
political openness’.59
As far as human rights agencies are concerned, Western intervention
and their ability to influence its course are key considerations, regardless
Consequences 217
A caged lion
The order was repeated in 2009, but this time they were informed that if
they refused prisoners would be sent to do the exhumation. His brother
and sister decided to comply, and produced the remains to officials.
That did not satisfy them – the bones had to be washed…63
An ethnically based army destroyed a reform process that had resulted
in a democratic constitution being written into law, assassinated a head
of state in order to provoke civilian slaughter on a grotesque scale for
its own political gain – with the death of a second President being col-
lateral damage – and conducted large-scale massacres of Rwandan and
Congolese civilians. It has continued to visit deaths squads upon its
political opponents, operate one of the world’s most inhumane prison
systems, and to enjoy the trappings of state power in its twentieth
year… The myth of the Akazu genocide conspiracy is a crucial ideologi-
cal pillar of Africa’s first morally constituted tyranny.
Notes
Foreword
1. Raul Hilberg (2002) The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee) 123.
2. Hilberg, The Politics of Memory 69–70.
3. Tristan McConnell, ‘One man’s Rwanda’. Columbia Journalism Review, http://
www.cjr.org/feature/one_mans_rwanda.php. Accessed 20 December 2013.
4. Carlo Ginzburg (1994) ‘Checking the evidence: The judge and the historian’.
In: Questions of Evidence: Proof Practice and Persuasion Across the Disciplines,
ed. James Chandler, Arnold I. Davidson and Harry Harootian (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
5. The troubled reception of the work of political scientists Christian Davenport
and Allan C. Stam comes to mind. See: http://www.psmag.com/politics/
what-really-happened-in-rwanda-3432/.
6. Judith Shklar (1964) Legalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 156.
219
220 Notes
the Hutu population.’ Current Affairs Issues No. 10, 1999. Uppsala, Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet.
7. For example, when the deputy editor of an opposition newspaper, Jean-
Leonard Rugambage, published an article linking Rwandan intelligence
agents to the attempted assassination of former army chief Faustin Kayumba
Nyamwasa, he was found dead by that night, shot by a gunman in front
of his house. Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2010/08/08/AR2010080802827.html. Accessed 10 December
2012.
8. The Economist (24 January 1998) ‘Spreading poison in the Great Lakes: the
Hutu–Tutsi divide’.
9. See Chapter 2, and notes 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44 and 46.
10. ‘From the top floor of the CND building, Kayonga saw the plane explode.
Lt.-Col. James Kaberebe informed Kagame of the success of the attack.
Kagame immediately ordered remaining RPA units to move out of Mulindi.’
Taken from Bruguière, J.-L. (27 November 2006) ‘The Report by French Anti-
Terrorist Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière on the Shooting Down of Rwandan
President Habyarimana’s Plane on 6 April 1994’. Paris. English translation
by Cirqueminime/Paris. 1 October 2007. http://cirqueminime.blogspot.
com/2007/10/completed-bruguiere-report-translatedhtml. Accessed 29
February 2008.
11. The final offensive of the RPF was ordered by Kagame within minutes of
learning of the successful missile attack: ‘… long before any retaliatory,
civilian killings had occurred anywhere in Rwanda’. Lead Defence Council
for the ICTR, Erlinder, P. (06.04.06) ‘Open letter to [Canadian – author]
Prime Minister Harper: Regarding state visit of current President of Rwanda’.
Copy given to author by Erlinder.
12. During the Security Council’s private deliberations, the US, UK and France
used their influence to prevent the deployment of a reinforced peacemak-
ing operation in the first few weeks after the genocide began in April
1994. Citizens for Global Solutions (2010) The Responsibility Not to Veto:
A Way Forward (Washington, DC). www.globalsolutions.org. Accessed 17
November 2013. The article also cites Keating, C. ‘Rwanda: An Insider’s
Account’. In: Malone, D. (ed.) (2004) The UN Security Council (Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner) 509.
13. Herman Cohen, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs at the time,
later acknowledged that the US had ‘silently acquiesced in the invasion’.
Cohen, H. J. (2000) Intervening in Africa: Superpower Peacemaking in a Troubled
Continent (New York: St Martin’s Press) 178.
14. Human Rights Watch’s key person for Rwanda, Alison Des Forges, worked as
a consultant for the US Department of State. Her curriculum vitae submitted
to the Canadian High Court of Appeal states under ‘other professional
activities’: Consultant, U.S. Department of State, Agency for International
Development, July 1991, July 1992. In Mugesera v. Canada another connection
may be inferred from the fact that when Rwandan party representatives went
to the United States in September 1991 at the expense of the American
embassy, they spent a night at Des Forges’ home. Des Forges worked with
the State Department to co-ordinate their itinerary: Mugenzi, J. Author inter-
view, ICTR detention centre, Arusha, Tanzania. 23 March 2006. Mugenzi
Notes 221
was one of the representatives who stayed at Des Forges’ house. The others
were Eliezer Niyitegeka (MDR), Agnes Ntamabyaliro (PL), Edouard Karemera
(MRND), Emile Nyungura (PSD) and Népomucène Nayinzira (PDC).
15. On claims about cultural obedience, see Scherrer, C. P. (1999) Genocide and
Genocide Prevention: General Outlines Exemplified with the Cataclysm in Rwanda
1994. COPRI Working Papers 14/1999. http://www.diis.dk/graphics/COPRI_
publications/COPRI_publications/publications/14 1999.doc. 17, 14, 21;,
Kellow, C. and Steeves, H. (1998) ‘The role of radio in the Rwandan geno-
cide’. Journal of Communication, 48 (3) 107–128, cited in Li, D. (March 2004)
‘Echoes of violence: Considerations on radio and genocide in Rwanda’.
Journal of Genocide Research, 6 (1); Omaar, R. (Autumn 1997) ‘A genocide
foretold’. Soundings 7 (London: Soundings Ltd) 110.
16. On claims about cultural impunity, see Nash, K. (2007) ‘A comparative
analysis of justice in post-genocidal Rwanda: Fostering a sense of peace and
reconciliation?’ Africana (1)1. http://www.africanajournal.org/PDF/vol1/
vol1_4_Kaley%20Nash.pdf. Accessed 17 November 2012; International
Crisis Group (1999) ‘Five years after the genocide in Rwanda: Justice in ques-
tion’ (1) 2, 3.
17. http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/africa/central-africa/rwanda.pdf.
Accessed 17 November 2013; Walters, S. (2005) The Gacaca Process:
Eradicating the Culture of Impunity in Rwanda? Institute for Security Studies
Situation Report. http://dspace.cigilibrary.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/1/
050805RWANDA.pdf? Accessed 17 November 2013.
18. Scherrer, C. (1999) Genocide and Genocide Prevention: General Outlines Exemplified
with the Cataclysm in Rwanda, 1994, COPRI Working Papers 14/1999.
http://www.diis.dk/graphics/COPRI_publications/COPRI_publications/
publications/14-1999.doc. Accessed 12 February 2002.
19. Human Rights Watch (1999) 8.
20. Schraeder, P. J. (1994) United States Foreign Policy Toward Africa: Incrementalism,
Crisis and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 21.
21. Reuters news report, 1 September 1994.
22. For example, according to Lt-Col. Anthony Marley, ‘The [1993 human
rights] report, however, put the Government on the defensive as far as its
international image [was concerned], and permitted the RPF to play the role
of the noble defender of the victims. The RPF, of course, was quick to master
this role.’ Marley, A. Author e-mail correspondence, 17 September 2004.
23. The death tolls of the two wars waged in the Democratic Republic of Congo
are disputed. A survey by the International Rescue Commission found that
5,400,000 people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998.
http://www.rescue.org/special-reports/special-report-congo-y. Accessed 17
November 2013. Ugandan and Rwandan forces intervened directly in the
first war and indirectly in the second. See Clark, J. F. (2001) ‘Explaining
Ugandan intervention in Congo: Evidence and interpretations’. Journal of
Modern African Studies 39 (2) 261–287.
2 Apocalypse 1994
1. This account of the plane shooting was e-mailed to the author by Jean-Luc
Habyarimana on 16 February 2012.
222 Notes
2. This account is drawn from the report of French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière.
3. This point is corroborated by Amadou Deme, UNAMIR intelligence officer,
in his book: Deme, A. (2012, 2nd edn) Rwanda 1994 and the Failure of the
United Nations Mission (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform) 160.
4. Senate Committee on International Operations and Human Rights of the
Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives. 105th
Congress, second session. Des Forges, A. 5 May 1998. Statement at hearing,
‘Rwanda: genocide and the continuing cycle of violence’.
5. Military I Trial Documents: Defence Brief, Part Three. 143, paragraph 452,
note 477: Testimony of Flaten, 30 June 2005.
6. On 28 March 1994 Dallaire reported that, because of the depredations of
war, the Gendarmerie were unable to handle ordinary law enforcement,
and had to be completely rebuilt by UNAMIR. Military I Trial Documents:
Defence Brief, Part Three. 146, paragraph 459, and note 491, referring to
Dallaire’s 28 March Code Cable.
7. Bruguière Report, Testimony of Defence witness Colonel Luc Marchal
(T. 30111106, 25–26) Military I Trial Documents: Defence Brief, Part Three:
Evidence. Alternative Explanations of the Tragic Events in Rwanda, 145,
paragraph 458. http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net.
8. Military I Trial Documents: Part Three. 145, paragraph 458.
9. Defence witness BRA-1 (T.06104106, 68) Military I Trial Documents: Part
Three, paragraph 458.
10. In fact, Gen. Kagame admitted to Gen. Dallaire on 22 April 1994 that the
predicted massacres were an integral part of his war plan. Dallaire testified
that, in response to Dallaire’s complaint that the RPA/F was not using its
troops to save the predicted ‘Tutsi’ victims of the renewed combat, Gen.
Kagame said that ‘There will be many sacrifices in this war. If the refugees
have to be killed for the cause, they will be considered as having been part of
the sacrifice’ for his war plan. Testimony of Dallaire (T.27101104, 87–88) and
his book (Exhibit DNT33) on page 358 (English) or 451(French): Testimony
of Reyntjens (T. 21109104, 49–50). When commenting on the Kagame
statement, Reyntjens confirmed that other RPF leaders made the same state-
ment (T. 21109104, 49–50). During his testimony, Ruzibiza corroborated
Reyntjens (T. 09/03/06, 62). Taken from Rwandadocumentsproject.net,
‘Major Ntabakuze Final Brief’, paragraph 457, and note 486.
11. Jonathan Musonera, a Rwandan Tutsi, joined the RPF in November 1990,
along with Tutsi from Zaïre and Burundi. Rwandan Tutsis were treated with
suspicion and contempt and did not rise through the ranks as easily as Tutsi
from other countries. Author interview, London. 24 January 2013.
12. Human Rights Watch (1999).
13. Des Forges’ curriculum vitae submitted to the Canadian High Court of Appeal
states under ‘other professional activities’: Consultant, U.S. Department
of State, Agency for International Development, July 1991–July 1992. In
Mugesera v. Canada.
14. Mugenzi, J. (23 March 2006). Mugenzi was one of the representatives who
stayed at Des Forges’ house. The others were Eliezer Niyitegeka (MDR), Agnes
Ntamabyaliro (PL), Edouard Karemera (MRND), Emile Nyungura (PSD) and
Népomucène Nayinzira (PDC). ICTR Detention Facility, Arusha, Tanzania.
Author interview.
Notes 223
27. Africa Confidential (15 April 1994) ‘Rwanda: From coup to carnage’ 35 (8) 8.
28. Lemarchand, R. (1995) ‘The rationality of genocide’. Issue (African Studies
Association of USA) 23 (2), in Millwood, D. (1995) 1:50.
29. Memorandum from Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, Toby
T. Gaty to Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs George Moose
and Department of State Legal Adviser Conrad Harper, ‘Rwanda–Geneva
Convention Violations’, circa 18 May 1994. Secret/ORCON (originator con-
trolled). Source: Freedom of Information Act Release by the Department of
State.
30. Shattuck, J. (2003) Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa (Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner) 31 and notes 23, 341.
31. Bruguière Report, paragraph 78.
32. International Strategic Association (21 April 2000) ‘An eyewitness testimony
to the shooting down of the Rwandan presidential plane’.
33. Lyons, J. (6 April 2001) Statement at a conference organised by US
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney: ‘Covert action in Africa: A smoking
gun’. Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC.
34. Human Rights Watch (1999) 182.
35. ‘ICTR/Military-Lieutenant Abdul Ruzibiza Piles Accusations on the RPF’.
Hirondelle News Agency Arusha, Tanzania. 14 March 2003.
36. Press release, ‘Major General Paul Kagame behind the shooting down of
late Habyarimana’s plane: An eye witness testimony’, 2nd Lt Aloys Ruyenzi.
Norway, 5 July 2004. http://www.inshuti.org/ruyenzi2.htm (the italics are
Ruyenzi’s).
37. Tega, F. Author telephone interview. 27 December 2005.
38. Bruguière, J.-L. (2006).
39. Antoine Ribanje, Rwandan pilot, author interview. London. February 2012.
40. Debré, B. Deposition before French Parliamentary Commission on 2 June
1998. Cited in Bruguière Report, paragraph 115.
41. Radio Muhabura (English), 0030 GMT, 30 January 1993. ‘Kigali regime con-
tinues with massacres’, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 2 February 1993.
42. Casòliva, J. and Carrera, J. ‘The Great Lakes: Ten years of suffering, destruc-
tion and death’. Online publication: http://www.fespinal.com/espinal/
English/visua/en93.htm≠n3. Accessed 13 June 2005. The same statement
was given by Wayne Madsen at the ‘Covert Action in Africa’ conference on
6 April 2001.
43. Madsen, W. part of statement for ‘Covert Action in Africa’ conference.
44. Erlinder, P. ‘Different justice at the UN Rwanda Crimes Court’, http://
jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2008/03/different-justice-at-un-rwanda-war.php.
Accessed 10 March 2008.
45. http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october012011/rudasingwa-confession-
jf.php. Accessed 24 January 2012.
46. Human Rights Watch (1999) 185.
47. Anonymous former RPF official. Author interview, Brussels. 9 April 2005.
48. Willum, B. 6 April 2004. ‘Phone call from Rwanda’. Information (Denmark),
posted on http://www.willum.com/articles/information6april2004_2/index.
htm. Accessed 1 November 2004. This account is also given by James
Lyons in a public statement at ‘Covert Action in Africa’ conference 2001.
Hourigan’s affidavit is reproduced in Deme, A. (2012, 2nd edn), 201–210.
Notes 225
49. Erlinder, P. ‘Bush and other war criminals meet in Rwanda: The great
“Rwanda Genocide” coverup’. http://cirquemime.blogcollective.com/blog/_
archives/2008/2/22/3539156.html.
50. Bruguière, J. L. (2006), paragraphs 138 to 144.
51. For an example, see Prosecutor v. Joseph Nzirorera, Case No. ICTR-97-20-T.
52. Prosecution v. Rutaganda, ICTR 96-3-T, transcripts of 7 February 1997,
44–45. Cited in Dickson, T. (2005) ‘Mission impossible: The Defense at the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’. Posted on Cirqueminime:
http://cirqueminime.blogcollective.com/blog/_trackback/633096. Also con-
firmed in author telephone interview with Dickson, August 1998.
53. Prosecution v. Rutaganda, ICTR 96-3-T, transcriptions of 24 November 1997,
19–20, cited by Dickson, T. (2005).
54. Prosecution v. Rutaganda, ICTR 96-3-T, transcriptions of 24 November 1997,
cited by Dickson, T. (2005) 113–114.
55. http://69.94.11.53/ENGLISH/cases/Rutaganda/judgement/1.htm. Accessed 3
March 2008.
56. Aktuelt (Denmark). Interview with Carla Del Ponte, 17 April 2000. In:
Karemera, E. (2006) 59.
57. Willum, B. 6 April 2004.
58. Citations from Hartmann, F. (2007) Paix et châtiment: Les Guerres de la
Politique (Paris: Flammarion). Posted on the website of the Hirondelle
Foundation, 14 September 2007. ICTR/BOOK ‘Peace and Punishment’: An
Explosive Book on International Justice. http://www.hirondellenews.com/
content/view/844/2951/. Accessed 2 April 2008.
59. Moghalu, K. (2005) Rwanda’s Genocide: The Politics of International Justice
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan).
60. Rwanda: Interview with Benjamin Gumpert, Counsel Representing Justin
Mugenzi. UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, posted on http://
allafrica.com/4 August 2006, the date of the interview.
61. Erlinder, P. (20 February 2008) ‘Bush and other war criminals meet in
Rwanda: The great “Rwanda Genocide” coverup’. http://www.globalresearch.
ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8137. Accessed 10 March 2008.
62. Hirondelle News Agency, 12 December 2006. ‘April 6th 1994 attack fits
ICTR mandate – Goldstone’. http://allafrica.com/stories/200612140658.
html. Accessed 12 December 2006.
63. Moghalu, K. (2005) 52.
64. Philpot, R. 26 February 2005. ‘Second thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda.
Boutros-Ghali: a CIA role in the 1994 assassination of Rwanda’s President
Habyarimana?’ Online journal Race and History: http://www.raceandhistory.
com/historicalviews/2005/2602.html. Accessed 26 December 2012.
65. Summary of United Nations Presentation before Commission of Experts,
10 October 1994. ‘Prospects for early repatriation of Rwandan refugees cur-
rently in Burundi, Tanzania and Zaire’.
66. Khan, S.M. (2001).
67. Khan, S.M. (2001) 49–56. Author’s italics.
68. Khan, S.M. (2001) 56.
69. Sendashonga, S. (22 October 1997) Author interview, London. Twagiramungu,
F. (17 January 2003). Author interview, London.
70. Human Rights Watch (1999) 731–732.
226 Notes
29. Newbury, C. (1988) 11, cited by Pottier, J. (1995) 42. Newbury has ‘Tutsi’
spelled as ‘Tuutsi’.
30. Vansina, J. (2004) 138.
31. Maquet, J.-J. (1954) in: Pottier, J. (1995) 39.
32. Pottier, J. (1995) 39, 40.
33. This analysis of pre-colonial society is shared by Vidal, Newbury and
Jefremovas. Reyntjens also states that ethnic identities preceded colonialism,
‘Chacun sait qu’il est Hutu, Tutsi ou Twa’ (each person knows whether he is
Hutu, Tutsi or Twa), see Pottier, J. (1995) 45–54.
34. Rwanda government, official website: http://www.gov.rw/. Accessed 22
December 2013).
35. I am indebted to Mamdani, M. (2001) 73–74 for this observation.
36. Newbury, C. (1988) 57; Prunier, G. (1995) 48.
37. Louis, W. R. (1963) Ruanda-Urundi (1884–1919) (Oxford: Clarendon Press)
79–81, cited in Prunier, G. (1995) 56.
38. Newbury, C. (1988) 57.
39. Newbury, C. (1988) 229, citing Vansina, J. (1962) 56.
40. Newbury, C. (1988) 121.
41. Mamdani, M. (2001) 106–107.
42. German embassy, Kigali: http://www.kigali.diplo.de/Vetretung/kigali/
en/03/Bilaterale_Beziehung en?Bilaterale_Beziehungen.html. Accessed 22
December 2013.
43. Newbury, C. (1988) 129; Reyntjens, F. ‘Burundi: Recent history’, in: Africa
South of the Sahara, 23rd edn 1994 (Europa Publications Ltd 1993) 203.
44. United States Department of State, International Boundary Study No. 69,
2 May 1966. Rwanda–Tanzania boundary. http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/
collection/LimitsinSeas/IBS069.pdf.
45. Mamdani, M. (2001) 94–96.
46. Newbury, C. (1988) 112.
47. Mamdani, M. (2001) 98.
48. Mamdani, M. (2001) 98–99.
49. Mamdani, M. (2001) 89–90. Mamdani states that Hutu were educated in
Kiswahili; he must have meant Kinyarwanda – author.
50. Mamdani, M. (2001) 90–91.
51. Mamdani, M. (2001) 93.
52. Newbury, C. (1988) 209.
53. Newbury, C. (1988) 181.
54. Prunier, G. (1995) 44.
55. Mamdani, M. (2001) 105.
56. Mamdani, M. (2001) 114.
57. Newbury, C. (1988) 184–185.
58. Newbury, C. (1988) 185, citing Maquet, J.-J. and d’Hertfelt, M. (1959)
Elections en société féodale: Une étude sur l’introduction du vote populaire au
Ruanda-Urundi (Brussels: ARSC).
59. Newbury, C. (1988) 187.
60. Newbury, C. (1988) 191.
61. Newbury, C. (1988) 192, citing Nkundabagenzi, F. (1961) Rwanda Politique,
1958–1960 (Brussels: CRISP) 24–28.
62. Mamdani, M. (2001) 120, and Prunier, G. (1995) 47.
63. Prunier, G. (1995) 48.
228 Notes
39. This was told to the author by Jean-Baptiste Mberabahizi, member of RPF
from June 1993 and July 1994, and a more senior former RPF member, who
was in the organisation between January 1991 and March 2000, but chooses
to remain anonymous. Both interviewed in Brussels on 9 April 2005.
40. Millwood, D. (ed.) (1995) Study 1, 76.
41. Strizek, H. (2003) Human Rights in Rwanda: Life after Genocide (Aachen,
Germany: Missio).
42. Gribbin, R. E. (2005) 62.
43. Jones, B. interview with Assistant Secretary of State, Herman Cohen, and
another confidential interview with the United States Department of State,
in Washington, DC in June 1995. Jones, B.D. (2001) 29.
44. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Author interview, Angers St Laud, France. 23 September
2006.
45. Cohen, H. J. (2000) 164.
46. Museveni, Y. (2000) What is Africa’s Problem? (Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press) 106, cited in Philpot, R. (2003) 30, 31.
47. Flaten, R. Personal interview. Northfields, Minnesota. 7 June 2003.
48. Gribbin, R.E. (2005) 63.
49. Cohen, H. J. (2000) 178.
50. British High Commissioner to Uganda, Charles Cullimore, FM Kampala to
London Foreign Office, 2 October 1990. OF 020928Z.
51. Cullimore, FM Kampala to London FO, 2 October 1990. OF 021305Z.
52. Cullimore, FM Kampala to London FO, 10 October 1990. OF 110827Z.
53. Cullimore, FM Kampala to London FO, 18 October 1990. OF 121135Z.
54. Cullimore, FM Kampala to London FO, 2 October 1990. OF 020928Z.
55. Cullimore, FM Kampala to London FO, 2 October 1990. OF 021305Z.
56. Cullimore, FM Kampala to London FO, 10 October 1990. OF 110827Z.
57. Reyntjens, F. (1994) L’Afrique des Grands Lacs en crise: Rwanda, Burundi 1988–
1994 (Paris: Karthala) 102.
58. Report of Judge Bruguière, paragraph 278, citing Herman Cohen’s submis-
sion to the French parliamentary commission.
59. Gribbin, R. E. (2005) 66.
60. Robert Flaten, Author interview, Northfields, Minnesota. 7 June 2003.
61. Lt-Col. Tony Marley, email correspondence with author. 17 September
2004.
62. Gowing, N. ‘New challenges and problems for information management in
complex emergencies: Ominous lessons from the Great Lakes and Eastern
Zaire in late 1996 and early 1997’. Paper presented at a conference entitled
‘Dispatches from Disaster Zones’ funded by the European Community’s
Humanitarian Office, in London, May 1998. Reported by John Githongo
in East African Alternatives (Nairobi: Series on Alternative Research in East
Africa) September/October 1998.
63. Madsen, W. ‘What a difference an election makes, or does it?’ Prepared
statement at ‘Blood Money out of Africa’. Forum prepared by US
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in Washington, DC, on 6 April 2002.
Published online at ‘From the Wilderness’: http://www.fromthewilderness.
com/. Accessed June 2003. Gribbin confirms that ‘a fair number’ of RPF
soldiers were trained in military schools in the United States. Gribbin, R. E.
(2005) 42.
232 Notes
64. Vianney Higiro, J.-M. ‘Rwandan private print media on the eve of the
Genocide’, chapter in Thompson, Allan (ed.) (1997) 80.
65. Sellström, T. and Wohlgemuth, L. ‘Historical perspective: Some explanatory
factors’. Volume 1 of Millwood, D. (1995) 35.
66. Adelman, H. (1998) 7.
67. Kuperman, A. J. (2004) 71.
68. Cohen, H. J. (2000) 165.
69. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 67.
70. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Personal interview, Anger St Laud, France. 23 September
2006.
71. Report of Judge Bruguière, paragraph 276.
72. Gribbin, R. E. (2005) 65.
73. Harald Marwitz (1994).
74. Reyntjens, F. ‘Rwanda: Recent history’. Africa South of the Sahara, 23rd edn
1994 (London: Europa Publications Ltd 1993).
75. Adelman, H. (1998) ‘Mediation and the Arusha Accords’. Addis Ababa:
Paper for the International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate
the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events created by the
Organisation of African Unity 14.
76. Adelman, H. (1998) 4.
77. Gasana, J. K. Author interview, Lausanne, Switzerland. 16 April 2004.
78. Prunier, G. (1995) 108.
79. Mugenzi, J. Personal interview, ICRT Detention Facility, Arusha, Tanzania. 23
March 2006.
80. Adelman, H. (1998) 5.
81. United Nations (1996) 115.
82. Callamard, A. (1999) ‘French Policy in Rwanda’ in Adelman, H. and Suhrke, A.
(1995) 178, note 21.
83. Two documentaries: ‘SOS Butaro’ and ‘SOS Byumba’ contain testimony
obtained in July 1992 in internal displacement camps by journalists of the
L’ORINFOR television project. Cited in Gasana, J. K. (2002) 80. Author’s
translation.
84. Africa Research Bulletin. 1–30 November 1990.
85. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 279–280.
86. Sellström, T. and Wohlgemuth, L. ‘Historical perspective: Some explanatory
factors’. Volume 1 of Millwood, D. (ed.) (1995) 42.
87. Human Rights Watch (1999) 49. Confirmed by Gasana, J. Author interview,
Lausanne, Switzerland. 16 April 2004.
88. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 336 and Human Rights Watch (1999) 49.
89. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 66.
90. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 67.
91. Africa Research Bulletin. 1–30 November 1990.
92. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Author interview. 23 September 2006.
93. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 336.
94. ‘SOS Butaro’ and ‘SOS Byumba’ in Gasana, J. K. (2002) 80.
95. Hearing held at Québec, on 28–29 April 2003. Mugesera deportation appeal.
96. P.-C. Kanyarushoki, personal interview. 23 September 2006.
97. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 83. Muvunanyambo’s name was supplied to author by
ex-RPF Captain Frank Tega. Telephone interview to Uganda. 27 December 2005.
Notes 233
98. Ruzibiza, A. J. (2005) Rwanda: L’Histoire Secrete (Paris: Éditions du Panama) 132.
99. Gribbin, R. E. (2005) 67.
100. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Author interview. 23 September 2006.
101. Harald Marwitz. ‘Another side of Rwanda’s blood bath: Onus may be dis-
placed in tribal war’. The Washington Times, 11 August 1994. <http://www
.udayton.edu/~rwanda/articles/harald.html>. Accessed 13 June 2005.
102. Strizek, H. (2003) ‘Human rights in Rwanda: Life after Genocide’. Missio,
online publication of the Pontifical Mission Society, Aachen, Germany.
http://www.missio-hilft.de/media/thema/menschenrechte/studie/
15-ruanda-en.pdf. Accessed 30 September 2012.
103. Website: International Constitutional Law Project Information. <http://
www.oefre.unibe.ch/law/icl/rw00000_.html.> Accessed 19 December 2005.
104. Economist Intelligence Unit. Country Profile: Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi.
1991–1992. 42.
105. Cohen, H. J. (2000) 177, 178.
106. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Personal interview. 23 September 2006. The Goma
talks were arranged by Zairian Foreign Minister Karimba wa Mutalika.
107. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Author interview. 23 September 2006. Kanyarushoki
also represented the Rwandan government at each of the preceding secret
meetings with the RPF.
108. Callamard, A. (1999) 163, and notes 40, 180.
109. Adelman, H. (1998) 8.
110. Ruzibiza, A. Testimony posted on internet 14 March 2004: <http://
rwandaforum.org/Ruzibiza_English.htm.> Accessed 5 June 2006. Ruzibiza
confirmed his statement before the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda, where he appeared as a defence witness.
111. Jones, B. D. (2001) 57.
112. Jones, B. D. (2001) 67.
113. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Author interview. 23 September 2006. Houdek had
been US Ambassador to Uganda 1985–1988.
114. Twagiramungu, F. Author interview, London. 22 March 2003.
115. Prunier, G. (1995) 47.
116. Mamdani, M. (2001) 154.
117. Mberabahizi, J.-B. Author interview, Brussels. 9 April 2005.
118. Gasana, J. (2002) ‘Natural resource scarcity and violence in Rwanda’. In:
Matthew, R., Halle, M. and Switzer, J. Conserving Peace: Resources, Livelihood
and Security (Winnipeg: IISD & IUCN) 14.
119. Higiro, J.-M. V. ‘Rwandan private print media on the eve of the Genocide’.
In: Thompson, A. (ed.) (2007).
120. Prunier, G. (1995) 145, 181, 300.
121. Justin Mugenzi, former leader of PL. Author interview, ICTR Detention
Facility, Arusha, Tanzania. 23 March 2006.
122. Jones, B. D. (2001) 62.
123. Jones, B. D. (2001) 63.
124. Robert Flaten. Author interview, Northfield, Minnesota. 7 June 2003.
125. Peter Erlinder, ICTR Lead Defence Counsel. ‘The great Rwanda “Genocide
cover-up”’. Global Research.Ca, online journal <http://www.globalresearch
.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8137>, citing Erlinder’s interview with
Robert Flaten in Arusha, Tanzania. July 2006. The italics are Erlinder’s.
234 Notes
293. US Department of State (31 January 1994) Burundi Human Rights Practices,
1993. http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/democracy/1993_hrp_report/93hrp_
report_africa/Burundi.html. Accessed 3 April 2007.
294. Bahunga, J. Author interview, London. 29 November 2002. Bahunga also
stated that journalist Catherine Watson asked in a press conference in
Uganda why Ndiadaye’s assassins enjoyed immunity in Uganda.
295. Lemarchand, R. (1998). .
296. Leader, J. E. (2001) 46.
297. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 130–132.
298. Bahunga, J. Author interview, London. 17 May 2005.
299. Gasana, J. K. Author interview, Lausanne, Switzerland. 16 May 2004.
300. Human Rights Watch (1999) 129–130.
301. Bahunga, J. Author interview. 17 May 2005.
302. Kanyarushoki, P.-C. Rwandan Ambassador to Uganda at the time. e-mail
correspondence with author. 14 December 2008.
303. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 139.
304. RPF dissident Aloys Ruyenzi. Author interview, Paris. 4 March 2006.
Ruyenzi’s brother had infiltrated the Interahamwe from the RPF.
305. United Nations website: <http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_
mission/unamirM.htm>. Accessed 4 June 2007.
306. Péan, P. (2005) 215.
307. Melvern, L. (2004) 92.
308. Melvern, L. (2004) 93. The letter is in Melvern’s archive, library of the
University of Aberystwyth, Wales.
309. Marchal, L. (2001) 105.
310. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 249–250.
311. J. Bahunga, Author interview, London. 17 May 2005.
312. Col. L. Marchal, Author telephone interview. 17 April 2006.
313. Dallaire, R. (2003).
314. Dallaire, R. (2003) 130–131.
315. Péan, P. (2005) 230.
316. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 239, citing a report by the Prime Minister’s military
adviser, Colonel A. Nshizirungu.
317. US Ambassador at the time, Robert Flaten, noticed how quickly weeds
began to appear in Kigali’s pavements. Author interview, Northfield,
Minnesota. 7 June 2003.
318. Senate Committee on International Operations and Human Rights of the
Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives. 105th
Congress, second session. Des Forges, A. 5 May 1998. Statement at hearing,
‘Rwanda: Genocide and continuing cycle of violence’.
319. Gasana, J. K. (2002) 198. Author’s translation. The letter is undated. Former
RPA officer and political commissar Frank Tega also supports the allegation
of the RPF’s responsibility for the murder of Gapyisi. Author telephone
interview. 27 December 2005.
320. Gasana, J. K. (2002), 197, note 122.
321. Capt. F. Tega. Second Author telephone interview. 6 January 2006, and a
former RPF official who testified at the ICTR under the witness-protected
number ALL-42. Prosecutor v. Édouard Karemera, Mathieu Ngirumpatse and
Joseph Nzorera. Case No. ICTR-98-44-T. http://www.unictr.org/Portals/0/
Case/English/Karemera/decisions/080911.pdf. Accessed 15 November 2012.
Notes 241
76. The official website of the Rwandan government states, under ‘history’,
that the RPF, from its origins, and in its war against ‘dictatorship’, were
motivated by the need to put an end to genocide and genocide ideology.
http://www.gov.rw/History.
77. Front Patriotique Rwandais/Rwandese Patriotic Front (30 April 2012)
‘Statement by the Political Bureau of the Rwandese Patriotic Front on the
proposed deployment of a U.N. intervention force in Rwanda’. Document
no. 29 of 53 released to William Ferroggiaro at the US National Security
Archive in terms of US Freedom of Information Act: http://www.gwu
.edu/~nsarchiv/SAAEBB/NSAEBB117/index.htm. Accessed April 2004.
78. See, for example, the official website of the Rwandan government: http://
www.gov.rw/History. Accessed 3 November 2012.
79. Part of text of President Clinton’s speech at Kigali airport on 25 March
1998, published by CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-
5798.html. Accessed 3 November 2012.
80. For an insightful discussion on the killers’ motivations, see Straus, S. (2006)
95–97.
81. Erlinder, C. P. (2013) The Accidental Genocide (St Paul, MN: International
Humanitarian Law Institute); Cruvellier, T. (11 December 2001) ‘ICTR:
Rwandan genocide – no master plan’. International Justice Tribune
http://www.mw.nl/international-justice/article/ictr-rwandan-genocide-no-
master-plan-long-version. Accessed 13 June 2013; Kuperman, A. J. (March
2004) ‘Provoking genocide: A revised history of the Rwandan Patriotic
Front’. Journal of Genocide Research 6 (1) 61–84. On property occupation
and looting, see Umutesi, M. B. (2000) Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of
a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press) 81.
82. The opening paragraph in his introduction offers a neat summary of the
Akazu genocide conspiracy theory, without any referencing. Strauss, S.
(2006) 1.
83. Strauss, S. (2006) 65–97.
84. Kuperman, A. J. (2004) 61–84.
85. Davenport, C. and Stam, A. C. (October 2009) ‘What really happened
in Rwanda?’ http://www.psmag.com/politics/what-really-happened-in-
Rwanda-3432/. Accessed 14 May 2013.
86. Davenport, C. and Stam, A. C. (October 2009).
87. Davenport, C. and Stam, A. C. (October 2009).
88. Senate Committee on International Operations and Human Rights of the
Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives. 105th
Congress, second session. Des Forges, A. 5 May 1998. Statement at hearing,
‘Rwanda: genocide and continuing cycle of violence’.
89. Erlinder, C. P. (2013) 86, 87.
90. In 1988, Herman Cohen, special adviser to President Reagan for African
Security Affairs, welcomed Rwanda’s broadly pro-Western foreign policy
as ‘excellent’. Economist Intelligence Unit, 1988, No. 1. Popularity among
Western donors resulted in Rwanda becoming the most aid-endowed coun-
try in sub-Saharan Africa per capita. According to Uvin, there were in 1986
more than 500 development projects funded by approximately 200 donors
in the country. Official development aid accounted for 11.4% of Rwanda’s
GNP in 1989–1990. By the end of the 1980s, Rwanda was the largest
252 Notes
recipient of Belgian and Swiss aid. It had the highest density of foreign
experts per square kilometre in Africa. Uvin, P. (1998) Aiding Violence: The
Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press) 188.
91. Furedi, F. (1994) The New Ideology of Imperialism (London: Pluto Books) 79.
92. Schraeder, P. J. (1994) United States Foreign Policy toward Africa: Incrementalism,
Crisis and Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 12.
93. Bowen, M., Freeman, G. and Miller, K. (1973) Passing By: The United States
and Genocide in Burundi, 1972. Report of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (1973) 5. Cited in Lemarchand, R. (2011) Forgotten
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(90) 5.
101. Kaplan, R. (February 1994) ‘The coming anarchy’. Atlantic Monthly.
102. Africa Confidential (1995) (36:1) 1.
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101.
104. Maynes, C. W. (1993, Spring) (90) 5.
105. Independent on Sunday, 27 November 1994.
106. Furedi, F. (1994) 110.
107. Furedi, F. (1994) 111.
108. Reuters, 1 September 1994.
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Accessed 20 November 2013.
8 Consequences
1. Lemarchand, R., citing Vidal, C., Brauman, R. and Smith, S. ‘The global crimi-
nalisation of the Hutu community’, they write, ‘poses a major threat to civil
peace. … Every Hutu is suspect since his community bears the onus of guilt
for the genocide. … The official history of genocide makes no reference to
Hutu victims or Hutu survivors, or those Hutu who saved Tutsi lives at their
own peril.’ In: ‘The politics of memory in post-genocide Rwanda’ (undated)
http://chgs.umn.edu/histories/occasional/Lemarchand_Memory_in_Rwanda
.pdf. Accessed 1 December 2013.
Notes 253
40. Following the ICTR and ICTY, the International Criminal Court was estab-
lished. Pierre-Richard Prosper served as war crimes prosecutor at the ICTR
in the Prosecution v Jean-Paul Akayesu, which resulted in the first convic-
tion for genocide since the ratification of the UN Genocide Convention.
He subsequently became US Ambassador-at-Large for war crimes issues.
US Department of State Archive. http://2001-2009.state.gov/outofdate/
bios/p/4417.htm. Accessed 1 December 2013. According to the Department
of State, this ambassador ‘coordinates the deployment of a range of diplo-
matic, legal, economic, military, and intelligence tools to help expose the
truth, judge those responsible, protect and assist victims, enable reconcili-
ation, deter atrocities, and build the rule of law’. US Department of State,
Office of Global Criminal Justice. http://www.state.gov/j/gcj/. Accessed 1
December 2013.
41. Power, S. (September 2001) ‘Bystanders to Genocide’. Atlantic Monthly
28:2. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/bystanders-to-
genocide/304571/6/. Accessed 4 June 2008.
42. United Nations Development Programme (2007) Turning Vision 2020 into
Reality: From Recovery to Sustainable Human Development. National Human
Development Report, Rwanda, 2007. 52.
43. Hayman, R. (July 2009) ‘Going in the “right” direction? Promotion of
democracy in Rwanda since 1990’. Taiwan Journal of Democracy 5 (1) 65.
44. See, for example, McGreal, C. (11 January 2007) ‘France’s shame?’ The
Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jan/11/rwanda.insideaf-
rica. Accessed 4 February 2007. See also Haspeslagh, S. (undated) ‘Safe
havens in Rwanda: Operation Turquoise’. http://www.beyondintractability.
org/cic_documents/Safe-Havens-Rwanda.pdf. Accessed 1 December 2013.
BBC (24 October 2006) ‘France accused on Rwanda killings’. http://news
.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6079428.stm. Accessed 1 December 2012.
45. BBC News (25 February 2010) ‘Nicolas Sarkozy admits Rwanda geno-
cide “mistakes”’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8535803.stm. Accessed 15
December 2012.
46. The East African ‘French judges lift arrest warrants against Rwandan military
officials’. http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/-/2558/1074664/-/view/
printVersion/-/tfiyrv/-/index.html.
47. Smith, D. (27 September 2012) ‘EU partially freezes aid to Rwanda’.
The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/27/eu-partially-
freezes-aid-to-rwanda. Accessed 16 December 2012.
48. See Chapter 4, notes 53–55.
49. See Chapter 4, note 101.
50. See Chapter 4, note 246.
51. ‘The Queen’s nation has given Rwanda around $380 million in financial
support over the last 10 years. This year alone, Britain provided over $80
million (over 65% of this is direct national budget support) easily making it the
biggest single bilateral donor to Rwanda.’ Kabagambe, I. (13 December 2006)
‘Rwanda: Kagame’s visit to UK – what impact on Rwanda?’ The New Times
(Kigali). http://allafrica.com/stories/200612130542.html. Posted to the web
13 December 2006. ‘The UK values its strong development partnership with
Rwanda. We have confirmed our commitment to providing a high level of
assistance to Rwanda over the next ten years.’ Dave Fish, UK Department for
Notes 257
Interviews
Buhanga, Justin. Former Secretary to Rwandan Ambassador to Uganda. London.
17 May 2005, 14 October 2006.
Flaten, Robert. Former US Ambassador to Rwanda. Northfield, Minnesota. 7 June
2003.
Gasana, James. Former Rwandan Minister of Defence. Lausanne, Switzerland. 16
May 2004.
Habyarimana, Jean-Luc. Son of late President Juvénal Habyarimana. E-mail cor-
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Hartley, Aiden. Reuters correspondent and author. London. 16 May 2005.
Jackson, Tony. International Alert. London. 4 May 2001.
Kanyarushoki, Pierre-Claver. Former Rwandan Ambassador to Uganda. Anger
St Laud, France. 23 September 2006.
Leader, Joyce. Former Secretary to Robert Flaten. E-mail correspondence. 18–20
November 2003, 19 January, 21 February 2004.
Lemarchand, René. Professor and author on Central Africa. E-mail correspon-
dence. 23 August 2007.
Marchal, Col. Luc. Former Deputy Leader of UNAMIR. Telephone interview.
16 April 2006.
Marley, Anthony. Former Military Advisor to the Africa Bureau of the US
Department of State (August 1992–August 1995). E-mail correspondence.
17 September 2004.
Mberabahizi, Jean-Pierre. Former RPF member. Brussels. 9 April 2005.
Mugenzi, Justin. Former PL member. ICTR Detention Facility, Arusha, Tanzania.
23 March 2006.
Munyambuga, Emmanuel. UNAMIR employee. London. 3 September 2003.
Musonera, Jonathan. Former RPA Section Commander. London. 24 January
2013.
Ntagurera, André. Minister of Transport in Interim Government. Safe house near
Arusha, Tanzania. 24 April 2006.
Rawson, David. US Ambassador to Rwanda 1993–1996. E-mail correspondence.
26 January 2004.
Ruyenzi, Aloys. Former RPA officer in High Command Unit and in President
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Sendashonga, Seth. Minister of the Interior in first RPF-dominated government.
London. 22 October 1997. (He was assassinated on 16 May 1998.)
Tega, Frank. Former RPF Captain. Telephone interview to Uganda. 24 December
2005.
Twagiramungu, Faustin. Rwandan Prime Minister, July 1994–September 1995.
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Former senior RPF figure, anonymous. Belgium. April 2005.
258
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A Boutros–Ghali, Boutros, 34
Adelman, Howard, 132 Broad Based Transitional Government
Africa Confidential, 23, 203 (BBTG), 97, 118, 119, 124, 196
African Rights, 22–3 Bruguière, Jean–Louis, 25, 206
Akazu, 130 Bucyana, Martin, 126
Akazu genocide conspiracy theory, Bunyenyezi, Chris, 57–9
19–20, 122, 130, 177 Burundi
Albright, Madeleine, 216 haven for Inyenzi attacks, 51
Alternative explanation for mass October 1993 crisis, 120
killing in Rwanda, 155–7, 195 and Western intervention, 1972
Andreu, Judge Fernando, 28 and 1994, 10–11
Arbour, Louise, 30–1 Bwanakweri, Chief, 48
Arendt, Hannah, 186
Arusha Peace Process, 87–116 C
Arusha Accords, 113–18 Catholic White Fathers, 45, 46
L’Association pour la Promotion Carter, US President Jimmy, 201–2
Sociale de la Masse (APROSOMA), Carver, R., 173
50 Charny, Israel, 182
Chrétien, Jean–Pierre, 160, 173
B Civilian massacres
Bagosora, Col. Théoneste, 20, 94, 142, Bagogwe, January 1991, 95
195, 207 Bugesera, March 1991, 95
Bahunga, Justin, 178 Kagera River, 1994, 102
‘Bahutu Manifesto’, 48 Kibeho, 208
Barayagwiza, Jean–Bosco, 165–8 Kibilira, October 1990, 95
Bauer, Yehuda, 181, 185, 187 Mugunga, 208
La Baule, Francophone Africa Summit RPF March 1993 offensive, 105
1990, 53–4, 67 Tingi Tingi, 209
Bayingana, Major Peter, 57, 59 Claeys, Lt–Col. Frank, 136
Belgium Clapham, Christopher, 202
Brussels meeting May–June 1992, 79 Clinton, former US President Bill, 10,
colonialism, 44–9 203–4, 212
human rights policy, 71 Coalition pour la Défense de la
pressurising Habyarimana, 128 République (CDR), 94, 98
response to invasion, 68, 69 Cohen, Herman, 22, 62–3, 75, 77, 83,
shift toward RPF, 69–71 89, 209
Bicamumpaka, Jérôme, 132 Cruvellier, Thierry, 153
Bizimungu, Pasteur, 77, 157, 210 Cullimore, Charles, 64–6
Black, Chris, 136–8
Blair, former British Prime Minister D
Tony, 212 Dallaire, Roméo (Head of UNAMIR),
Bloxham, Donald, 189–91 17, 116, 118, 123, 126, 136, 138,
Booh–Booh, Roger, 124, 126, 137, 148 144–5, 153, 156
268
Index 269
L N
Lemarchand, René, 49, 50, 53, 120 Nahimana, Ferdinand, 165–71
Lemkin, Raphael, 180, 181, 183, 186 Nazi Holocaust, 183–7
Lizinde, Major Théoneste, 61, 89 Ndahindurwa, King, 49
Logiest, Colonel, 49 Ndasingwa, Landoald, 88, 118
Lyons, James, 24 Ndiaye, B.W., 106
Ndori, Ruganzu, 37
M Newbury, Catherine, 40–1, 46, 47,
Mamdani, Mahmood, 22, 44–5, 46, 49, 113
50–1, 53, 99 Ngeze, Hassan, 161–4
Maquet, J.J., 39 Ngirumpatse, Matthieu, 146–7
Index 271
United States W
and the aborted September 1992 Western intervention, 10–11,
RPF offensive, 93 201–5, 216–17
arranging RPF – GoR talks, 75 Winter, Roger, 67
on Arusha Accords, 114 World Bank, 82, 83–5, 128
financial and aid relations with
Uganda and Rwanda, 81–6 Y
isolating Habyarimana, 78, 122, 128 Yankovitch, Daniel, 202
Support for RPF, 61–3, 66–8, 73–7, Young, Tom, 202
80, 85–6, 157–8
‘third circle’ strategy, 77–8 Z
Uvin, Peter, 81, 178 Zahar, Alexander, 162–3
Uwilingiyimana, Agathe, 89, 111 Zaïre
response to 1990 invasion, 68
V ‘Zero Network’, 99–100, 132
Vansina, Jan, 37, 40–1
von Trotha, 192–4