Resources: The Genocide
President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on 6 April at 8:30 p.m Kigali tome. Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and other moderate ministers were immediately barricaded in their homes. Within an hour of the plane crash, Hutu militia set up hundreds of roadblocks around the capital city to stop Tutsis or moderate Hutus escaping. Prominent Tutsis who had been on death lists were killed immediately by some 1,500 elite members of the Rwandan Armed Forces.Moderate Hutus were the first to be targeted because the government intended to remove all opposition in order to proceed with the genocide without hindrance. On 7 April, Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana sought protection with the UN. The Prime Minister and her husband were found by the Presidential guard and both were murdered. The ten Belgian UN peacekeepers protecting her were removed, tortured and shot. This led Belgium to recall the rest of its troops, leaving the remaining UN force pitifully weak.
In parallel with the radical Hutu leaders’ primary objective – the extermination of all Tutsis – the first wave of killing was instigated to secure their power base. They took only a few days to make their position safe and their targets included:
- Moderate government members and opposition party leaders;
- Moderate Hutus of significance;
- Critical voices within Rwandan society, including journalists, jurists and human rights activists.
Theodore Sindikubwabo became President. Jean Kambanda was appointed Prime Minister. From then on, Kambanda effectively took control of the genocide. By 11 April – five days after Habyarimana’s death – 20,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus had already been killed in Kigali. From 12 April, the focus of killing was on the Tutsis.
As the killings spread, many people moved to what they thought would be safe places: churches, hospitals, schools, stadiums and community centres. But there were no safe places. Many sought shelter in churches. Grenades were thrown in; then the killers would walk in and shoot or hack the wounded. The Tutsis were made to dig large graves and were buried alive.
Machetes, clubs with nails, axes, knives, poles, grenades and guns were used. Achilles tendons were cut to leave victims writhing in agony, awaiting their fate, immobilised. Guns were available but rarely used, as they were considered a painless means of killing. The genocide was to be complete; no survivors were to remain. Fields, forests, swamps and hills were all searched for escapees and survivors. The genocide started in Kigali, but quickly spread through the network of Prefects, Burgomasters and local administrators. The efficient system of local government and the chain of command from central government worked effectively. Threats were issued to all non-compliant Hutus, followed by the killing of a number of Prefets, Burgomasters, priests, nuns, professionals and officials who disobeyed the instructions.
Most Rwandan were members of the Catholic Church or other Christian denominations. The spiritual and moral leadership of the clergy was important in conditioning the response of Christian people to the incitement to kill. There were a small number of clergy who carried heroic acts of goodness. However, the Christian leadership failed even to make a clear denunciation of the genocide until it was too late.
Teachers betrayed their own students and in some cases even murdered them. Doctors often refused to treat wounded Tutsis or dismissed them prematurely. Hospitals were known hunting grounds for the killers, who knew that injured escapees were likely to go there.
International Bystanders
The reaction of the international community was typified by its evacuation of its foreign nationals at the beginning of the genocide, the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers. The UN pulled its force out and foreigners were evacuated to safety and the reluctance of national government and international bodies to commit resources to relieve the suffering of the victims, giving the killers a clear signal that they could continue unrestrained. General Romeo Dallaire, head of the UN assistance mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), cabled New York shortly after the plane crash and said, “Give me the means and I can do more.” But the response from the Security Council indicated that there was no interest in intervening. Dallaire calculated that he needed 5,000 troops to contain the potential violence that could erupt. Later he wrote: “We watched as the evil took control of the paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.”
Two weeks into the conflict, the Red Cross identified it as a tragedy on a scale rarely witnessed. At this time, Rwanda had a seat on the UN Security Council and was even able to vote on issues pertaining to Rwanda, while its own government was carrying out the genocide. On 17 May, the Security Council agreed to establish UNAMIR with 5,500 men and the mandate to use all necessary force. It also imposed an arms embargo to Rwanda. A critical feature of UNAMIR was the provision by the United States of armoured personal carriers. The transfer of the 50 vehicles became bogged down in leasing, shipping, painting and sticker arrangements, to the extent that it took more than one month for them to arrive in Uganda, which had the nearest large airport. By the time the UN reinforcements arrived in Rwanda to stop the genocide, it was already over. The Rwandan Patriotic Army had liberated Kigali on 4 July 1994 and halted the systematic killings.
The only intervention from the international community was mounted by France, a long-time ally of the late President, which for years had armed, trained and protected his regime that set up a humanitarian zone (Operation Turqoise) in the south-west of the country. Initially introduced to stop the killings but in reality this was designed to provide military protection for the killers and the Rwandan army, who by this time retreating in the face of the advancing Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPF)forces. With the French protection, thousands of Hutu refugees were guaranteed a gateway into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) including killers.
It was due to the offensive by RPF forces from the north and neighbouring Uganda that the killings finally stopped. When the genocide was unleashed, RPF fought its way through the country, driving the Hutu extremists before it. By mid-July the RPF had won control of most of the country and announced the establishment of a broad-based government of national unity.
Awareness of this failure to stop the genocide resulted in the strong, if sometimes uncoordinated response from the international aid agencies to cholera epidemics that hit Hutu refugee camps in Zaire immediately afterwards. The convention of providing relief for refugees (among them killers in the genocide) served to salve a Western conscience that was troubled by the absence of political response.
Indiscriminate Rape
The campaign of genocide saw widespread use of rape as a weapon, in a deliberate strategy to destroy the fundamental fabric of interpersonal relations in the community and to shatter the sense of security and identity of the victims. Rwandan women and girls not only witnessed the torture and killing of their families and the destruction of their homes, they were also subjected to brutal forma of sexual violence. Those who escaped murder were subjected to rape, gang rape, and rape with objects such as sharpened sticks or gun barrels, and sexual mutilation. Many died a as result of their abuse. Women in late-stage pregnancies and those who had recently given birth were not exempt from rape: the attackers were indiscriminate.
The effects of HIV/AIDS as a result of these attacks are becoming increasingly visible among these women, many of them deliberately infected by their attackers. Over 70 per cent of women who have come forwards to take an HIV test are found to be HIV positive. Many are dying because of lack of medication, general poverty, trauma and isolation. Many are running out of time, dying and leaving children orphaned for the second time. There is now hardly a woman who was infected in 1994 who is not either dead or dying. The children of Rwanda, who have already lost the rest of their families, now wait to face the future alone. While the rapists who deliberately infected women and girls with HIV get free medication and HIV drugs where there are serving sentences in the international prison in Arusha, their victims are dying of AIDS with no support or means to cater for their families and die with no money even to buy coffins.
Lost childhoods
Of all survivors, the neediest are children. Many are orphans who have been left with not adult figure to love or guide them. Children and orphans are often left to fend for themselves. They are forced to quit school, join the workforce, and care for younger brothers and sisters. Often they are caregivers, sometimes to more than ten siblings. 260,000 children have been orphaned in Rwanda through HIV/AIDS, many forced to watch their parents die and face the possibility that they are too scared to get tested, do not understand why they are ill, or are unaware that they have been at risk.
Many children have no inheritance from parents, neither money nor land; they have to fend for their own basic needs, including finding shelter for their brothers and sisters.
Those children who survived were pulled alive from heaps of corpses, or found wandering alone, aimlessly and helplessly, though the deserted streets. Some had survived by hiding in cupboards or in the bushes, only to hear their families being massacred while they could do nothing. No words can describe the suffering of those who died, the cruelty of the killers, or the pain of those who survived, traumatised for life. Children killed other children, forced or encouraged by adult. More than half of children who survived saw their families killed and most saw other people cut down.
The world abandoned Rwanda to genocide, torture, maiming and sexual violence. UN troops who could have stopped it were flown of the country, and the foreign governments instructed their personnel not to use the word genocide because it would imply an obligation to respond. As UN commander Dallaire said: “While much of the world looked the other way, the slaughter and rape continued unabated”.
Today the world remains largely indifferent, the survivors forgotten and ignored. As survivors, we feel that we were betrayed in our hour of utmost need. That hour will also rank as one of the unfinest hours of the entire humanity.
Heroes and Friends
Despite overwhelming terror, mass murder and unimaginable horror, some people were a ray of light in the darkness. When it seemed that all sense of humanity was lost, a great many Rwandan showed extraordinary courage. These are the heroes of the genocide – those who showed some humanity and consideration for their neighbours while looking death in the face.
Gisimba, for example, who saved 100 people in his father’s orphanage. All around Rwanda there were people who tried to defend themselves, most notably in the hills of Bisesero, Nyamasheke’s church yard, where men organised themselves and fought back with sticks and spears guns. While they were fighting in the hills, their women and children were raped in the villages. Few of them survived, but they resisted for weeks and died with honour.