Prelude to Genocide. David Rawson

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СКАЧАТЬ December 1963, the monarchist UNAR party planned attacks from Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi. While the other attacks were turned back, a refugee force from Burundi pushed to within twenty miles of Kigali before the Rwandan National Guard stopped the column. Tutsi opposition leaders were immediately arrested and executed without trial. Kayibanda ordered his ministers to organize civil defense in each prefecture; the national radio called for citizens to defend their country; some local officials urged the elimination of all Tutsi as the only solution. An orgy of hut burning and murder broke out, especially in areas of high Tutsi population. Some ten thousand men, women, and children were hacked to death.³⁴

      In 1964 and 1966, refugees again attempted cross-border attacks. Each was turned back and followed by an anti-Tutsi pogrom. The 1963 victory at the Kanzenze bridge brought pride to the National Guard, solidarity to the Hutu cause, and a template for handling the Tutsi threat. Given their political utility, attacks against persons and property went largely unpunished; impunity for ethnic crimes became an unwritten understanding.

      As the outside threat receded, internal divisions increased. Parmehutu became a de facto single party coping with land tenure issues, tensions within the National Guard, intraparty struggles, and disputes with the Catholic church. At the local level, burgomasters and prefects recreated networks of clients, extracting dues for services just like subchiefs and chiefs under the monarchical regime. Mismanagement and malversation abounded.³⁵

      Hutu advancement remained at the core of the Parmehutu agenda, arbitrarily enforced in school admittances, civil service recruitment, and even checks on business payrolls. Hutu who fled the 1972 genocide in Burundi gave a further impetus toward Hutu identity. Ethnic solidarity became the watchword among Hutu intelligentsia and especially among politicians campaigning for elections in 1973. Vigilantism gave way to hut burnings and murders. The harassment and intimidation triggered yet another massive emigration of frightened Tutsi who had hoped to make their accommodation with the new regime.

      SECOND REPUBLIC

      In a situation of looming chaos, President Kayibanda finally called on the National Guard to restore order. On July 4, 1973, top ministers from the government attended the national day celebration at the US residence, then repaired to a nightlong meeting with President Kayibanda. In the early morning hours, the National Guard surrounded the meeting place and arrested all participants. A Committee for Peace and National Unity, made up of the National Guard High Command, had decided not only to restore peace but also to take over power.³⁶

      The committee declared martial law, displacing all institutions of the First Republic, including the party, the national assembly, and the Supreme Court. President Kayibanda and seven other top members of his regime received suspended death sentences at a court martial.³⁷ Coup leaders settled into high ministerial and administrative posts, with the newly promoted National Guard commander, Major General Juvénal Habyarimana, being named president and minister of defense.

      In 1975, Habyarimana established the Revolutionary National Movement for Development (MRND) as a nationwide movement dedicated to unity and development. By 1978, Rwandans adopted by referendum a new constitution legitimizing the movement with Habyarimana as its president. Military committee members held onto their sinecures, but power and decision making flowed to the president, who instituted an ethic of punctuality and hard work focused on rural development.³⁸ A policy of balance in regional development and in ethnic quotas for admittance to schools or civil service initially reduced interregional and ethnic tensions. Buttressed by connections to the president, some Tutsis prospered in the private sector, but others were denied access to higher schools or jobs.

       Transition

      The Kayibanda regime had held on shakily for eleven years, beset with attacks from without and social tensions from within; in contrast, the Second Republic constructed a system that lasted twenty-one years and projected an image of efficiency, economic growth, and national integration. Over time, however, Habyarimana’s policies of ethnic and regional balance devolved into instruments for preserving Hutu hegemony or for channeling projects and perquisites to the regime’s home areas of Gisenyi and Ruhengeri. The MRND single-party system, organized down to the ten-person “cellule,” became a means for political mobilization and autocratic control at the national and local level.

      CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS

      Whatever the achievements of the Habyarimana administration, thoughtful commentators would have agreed that, by the late 1980s, Habyarimana’s one-party regime was losing its capacity to keep ahead of the political and developmental game. In response to political agitation and economic stagnation, Habyarimana promised constitutional reforms in 1990. These reforms were to establish political pluralism, to organize the eventual return of Tutsi refugees (after years of the regime’s efforts to get them squatters’ rights in neighboring countries), and to accept an economic structural adjustment program.

      THE FRONT INVADES

      Then, on October 1, 1990, the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA), the military arm of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), invaded from Uganda. Frustrated Tutsi in countries of asylum conceived the attack, which Hutu exiles’ tales of corruption, human rights abuse, and incompetence within the Rwandan regime had incubated. The RPF’s perception that Habyarimana and President Museveni of Uganda might agree to controlled repatriation midwifed the attack, which took disciplined, experienced RPF fighters deep into Rwandan territory. But they did not win the support they expected from Rwanda’s restive population. Eventually, over one million Rwandans fled southward from RPF control. Meanwhile, Tutsis within Rwanda were subject to arrest, intimidation, and massacres; with the onset of civil war, the cycle of ethnic violence and social displacement spun out again.

      STATES INTERVENE

      Almost immediately, European governments (France and Belgium) intervened with troops to protect their citizens gathered in the capital city of Kigali. Meanwhile, neighboring African governments sought to arrange a ceasefire. As the two armed elements engaged in periodic combat, political representatives met under the auspices of neighboring chiefs of state. They signed agreements but never observed a ceasefire.

      Finally, at Paris in June 1992, France, with the backing of the United States, facilitated a framework for ceasefire talks. In July, the talks moved to Arusha, Tanzania, where, under Tanzanian facilitation, the two parties adopted an operational ceasefire plan. In August, they opened negotiations on a transition regime. These negotiations, scheduled to last two months, went on for a year, punctuated by foot dragging in Rwandan political circles, massacres in Rwanda’s north, and renewed fighting in February 1993. President Habyarimana finally signed the Arusha Accords with Rwandese Patriotic Front Chairman Alexis Kanyarengwe on August 5, 1993.

      Nine months later, on April 6, 1994, someone shot down the president’s plane with ground-to-air missiles. Murderous revenge immediately broke out against the president’s political opponents and ethnic Tutsi. Embassies withdrew their personnel and citizens; the Security Council reduced the UN peacekeeping force to a small holding operation. Even as the Rwandese Patriotic Army and forces of a self-appointed Rwandan government contested for territory, extremist Hutu organized the genocide of eight hundred thousand innocents in just under one hundred days. The road to peace gave way to a policy of extermination.³⁹

       The Legacy

      Rwanda’s past casts an illuminating beam on the 1990–94 conflict in Rwanda. Evident traits of political culture have deeply rooted antecedents.⁴⁰

      Expanding borders and centralizing power have been Rwanda’s leitmotif since the seventeenth century. While colonial agreements stopped territorial expansion⁴¹ and rules of the Organization of African Unity prohibited change to colonial boundaries, each historic dynasty persisted СКАЧАТЬ