A brief rundown of the Rwandan Genocide

Straying a bit from my usual self-deprecating and humor-inspired blog posts here, it recently dawned on me that a substantial portion of us (myself included) were never truly taught about the Rwandan Genocide! In my personal educational experience, international mass-murder did not exist within the curriculum outside the European realms of World War II. In fact, a good portion of my life was spent believing that the Holocaust was the only global atrocity worth learning about. Judging by the overarching topic of this whole trip, I figured it might be worthwhile to shed some light on Rwanda’s history. So without further adieu, please enjoy my brief attempt at describing the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and prior events that directly incited it.

Earlier than the 14th and 15th centuries, Rwanda was inhabited by three coexisting groups known as the Tutsis, Hutus, and the Twa. The Tutsis were pastoral, specializing in raising cattle, while the Hutus were agronomists, responsible for farming crops. The Twa, which made up only a very small portion of the Rwandan population, thrived on traditional hunting, foraging, pottery methods, and general defense. The interesting fact about these three groups was that despite their occupational differences––they were ethnically tantamount, each speaking the same language and holding the same religious beliefs. They even ruled with equality through trifecta chiefdoms that appointed one administrative representative from each group to balance out responsibilities and power. One could say they were living in harmony.

This changed when a European by the name of John Speke, set foot in Rwanda during 1861 and began making anthropological assumptions about the native inhabitants. Speke was an early believer in the infamous “Hamitic theory,” which is essentially religious justification for racial hierarchy. Long story short, the theory claimed that Ham, one of Noah’s three sons, saw his father naked after passing out from his long arc journey (you know saving all those animals must’ve been pretty tiring and all.) Anyway, Noah was so upset that his son saw him in such a vulnerable state that he cursed all of Ham’s descendants to be blackened with unruly hair and large noses. This Hamitic theory would later play a massive role in how German and Belgian colonizers viewed the three groups of Rwanda.

In 1890, Germany took control of Rwanda. Their rule was brief however, as they lost the lands to Belgium following World War I. The timeline quickly shifted to Belgian colonization in 1916 and that’s where things really started to get divided.

Upon arrival, the Belgians noted several quasi-anthropological observations about impressively advanced Rwandans who had managed to coexist for thousands of years. First, they found that the Tutsis, or at least who they thought were Tutsis (generations of intermarriage made it physically impossible to actually distinguish these groups) were more beautiful, smarter, had narrower noses, and supposedly harnessed a natural affinity for leadership. The Hutus, they found to be duller, darker, shorter, wider-nosed, thicker-lipped, and spontaneous. Unfortunately, the Twa were so few in numbers that they were labeled Pygmies and essentially banished to the Rwandan countryside to forage in the woods.

Because the Tutsis appeared to be more phenotypically pleasing––the Belgians believed that they simply must have been migrants from another land. Remember that handy dandy Hamitic theory? Well the Belgians quickly came to the conclusion that the Tutsis were Hamites, half-white and half-black, thus superior to the indigenous Hutu and Twa who they deemed Bantu or Negroid.

Tutsis were almost immediately given a majority of power by the Belgians while the Hutus were stripped of authority and exploited through forced labor. By 1932, the socio-economic status became such a defining factor amongst Rwandan identities that anyone with more than 10 cows was issued a Tutsi identity card and anyone with less, a Hutu one. Over the next twenty years, Hutus became increasingly angered at their subjugation and by the 1950s, began to call their fellow Hutus to action. Famous published works such as the Bahutu Manifesto and the Ten Hutu Commandments made it clear that the Tutsis were to be blamed for years of Hutu mistreatment. As Hutu propaganda increased, so did the plausibility of independence. By the mid 1950s, Ghana, Sudan, Morocco, and Guinea had all been decolonized––inspiring a fight for freedom in the Rwandan state.

On November 1, 1959, a quarrel between a Hutu and Tutsi after a church service sparked the first real signs of Tutsi bloodshed as Hutus began to pillage and murder their “artistocratic” neighbors. This event led to a series of migration waves, dispersing Tutsis throughout the bordering countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi.

Rwanda gained official independence on July 1, 1962, however only Hutus benefited from the newfound freedom as they were the only ones with access and power at the time. It was around here that exiled Tutsis created the first armed struggle resistance with the intent to drive out Belgian colonizers, repatriate all Rwandans, and restore a monarchical governing system. This initial attempt of rebellion failed in 1967 due to lack of military-training and international support.

During the 1970s, Major General of the Revolutionary Movement Formation of the Government (MRND), Habyarimana Juvenal became the president of Rwanda. For the first five years of Habyarimana’s presidential term, things went swimmingly: a good climate made for ample harvests of coffee and tea, peace and unity was a seemingly nationwide view, positive negotiations brought in loans from Western powers, and Tutsis were left relatively undisturbed for the time being.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s though, things began to go economically awry. The tin industry was bankrupt, crop harvests were cut in half due to poor weather, and coffee farmers struggled to keep up with a competitive market. The deteriorating state of Rwanda’s money situation led to lay-offs, salary freezes, and a growing distance between the poor majority and wealthy minority. As Rwandans began to doubt Habyarimana’s leadership––corruption took over and anyone who opposed the government suddenly became a target for assassination.

In 1987, the second rebel group known as the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) organized in Uganda. Unlike the first resistance group, the new RPF was comprised mostly of young, military-trained Tutsis with a clear mission, fueled by the fire of exile. In 1990, the RPF attacked Rwanda’s small army spurring a major conflict. In response to the attack, Rwanda increased it’s military ten-fold, yet struggled to oust the rebel group once-and-for-all. Instead, Habyarimana’s regime began to associate any and all Tutsis with the RPF, once again making them Hutu targets. It was also around this time that Habyarimana introduced several new corrupt political parties focused on ousting Tutsis such as the interahahmwe, a youth Hutu extremist military group, PARMEHUTU, PL, PSD, MDR, and PDC.

After a few years of unresolved fighting between Rwanda and the RPF, the international community began to worry and threatened to pull funding unless Habyarimana would negotiate peace with the rebels. This brought forth the Arusha Peace Agreement which Habyarimana reluctantly signed in 1993. The agreement meant that Rwanda would have to follow the rule of law, punish perpetrators of innocent Tutsis, repatriate Rwandan refugees, and merge the RPF within the national army to combine power forces. Most of the country’s population disfavored the agreement as they interpreted Habyarimana’s compromise as negotiating with the enemy.

A year after it was signed, the clauses of the agreement still weren’t met. The armed forces still hadn’t been combined, refugees still struggled in neighboring countries, and Tutsis were still in a state of fear as they were regular targets of violence by their Hutu neighbors. On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana was forced to revisit and promise the implementation of the agreement at a meeting in Tanzania. On his way back to Kigali that night, the president’s plane was shot down, killing him and the President of Burundi. Habyarimana’s death was promptly broadcast on Rwanda’s largest radio station (RTLM) and falsely credited to Tutsis, triggering the genocide instantly. Within an hour of the president’s death, Hutu groups like the interahamwe began to organize and carry out murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus by setting up roadblocks that prevented citizens from escape. Almost all Hutus were mobilized in the war against their own through media propaganda, incentives of material gain, and most importantly, a shared hatred for Tutsis. Machetes were the preferred weapons of choice for genocide perpetrators as they were cheaper than rifles to distribute and provided a more intimate relationship with killing. One must be much more methodical in carrying out a murder with a machete than they would with a bullet.

Over the course of 100 days, more than 800,000 Tutsis (around 75% of them) were murdered in every inch of Rwanda. While tens of thousands were killed in mass-exterminations within churches and school facilities, many were massacres in their homes, on the street, and in the forest while attempting to abscond persecution. International aid was only sent to Rwanda in the form of villainous “safe-zones” after the RPF gained control of Kigali in July. These zones instituted by the French ultimately allowed for more killings and perpetuated rape and abuse of those supposed to be protected.

So that’s more or less the story as I’ve come to know it. There are several aspects such as the role of the Catholic Church, other international influences and economic factors that I failed to mention for the sake of blog-length, but hopefully you get the gist. I encourage any- and everyone to look further into the Rwandan Genocide and consider it not as a random act of heinous violence but rather a systematic result of a culmination of many political, social, economical, and environmental factors.