History of Rwanda: Encyclopedia II - History of Rwanda - The Rwandan genocide

History of Rwanda - The Rwandan genocide

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying President Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the President of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land at Kigali. Both presidents were killed when the plane crashed. As though the shooting down was a signal, military and militia groups began rounding up and killing all Tutsis they could capture as well as political moderates irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. Large numbers of opposition politicians were also murdered. Many nations evacuated all their nationals from Kigali and closed their embassies as violence escalated.

The prime minister and her ten Belgian bodyguards were among the first victims. The killing swiftly spread from Kigali to all corners of the country; between April 6 and the beginning of July, a genocide of unprecedented swiftness officially left 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead at the hands of organized bands of militia: Interahamwe. Even ordinary citizens were called on by local officials and government-sponsored radio to kill their neighbors. The president's MRND Party was implicated in organizing many aspects of the genocide.

For the next couple of weeks, many questionable decisions were made by the United Nations security council, which had authorized a peacekeeping force in the country called the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda UNAMIR in 1992. Following the killing of ten Belgium UNAMIR troops during the assassination of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, Belgium withdrew all of their forces, leaving only Ghanaian and Senegalese troops behind. The UN Security Council unanimously voted to withdraw its troops, with France and Belgium at the forefront, over the protests of the peacekeepers' top commander, Canadian Major-General Romeo Dallaire. The United States severely limited U.S. funding and involvement in the peacekeeping mission through the use of Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD25), which stated that U.S. peacekeeping operation had to be "in U.S. interests." Finally, on May 17, 1994, the UN conceded that "acts of genocide may have been committed." At that time, the Red Cross estimated at least 100,000 deaths at the hands of the Hutu extremists, the majority of those being minority Tutsis.

The RPF battalion stationed in Kigali under the Arusha accords came under attack immediately after the shooting down of the president's plane. The battalion fought its way out of Kigali and joined up with RPF units in the north. The RPF renewed its civil war against the Rwanda Hutu government when it received word that the genocidal massacres had begun. Its leader Paul Kagame directed RPF forces in neighboring countries such as Uganda and Tanzania to invade the country, battling the Hutu forces and Interahamwe militias who were committing the massacres. The resulting civil war raged concurrently with the genocide for two months.

The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the genocide in July 1994, but approximately two million Hutu refugees - some who participated in the genocide and fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire. Thousands of them died in epidemics of cholera and dysentery that swept the refugee camps. The Rwandan genocide and presence of large numbers of refugees in the aftermath were major factors in the destabilization of Zaire, which plunged into chaos and civil war in 1998, with similarly horrible destruction and death: see Democratic Republic of Congo

The international community responded with one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts ever mounted. The U.S. was one of the largest contributors. The UN peacekeeping operation, UNAMIR, was drawn down during the fighting but brought back up to strength after the RPF victory. UNAMIR remained in Rwanda until March 8, 1996.

Following an uprising by the ethnic Tutsi Banyamulenge people in eastern Zaire in October 1996, a huge movement of refugees began which brought more than 600,000 back to Rwanda in the last two weeks of November. This massive repatriation was followed at the end of December 1996 by the return of another 500,000 from Tanzania, again in a huge, spontaneous wave. Less than 100,000 Rwandans are estimated to remain outside of Rwanda, and they are thought to be the remnants of the defeated army of the former genocidal government, its allies in the civilian militias known as Interahamwe, and soldiers recruited in the refugee camps before 1996.

In northwest Rwanda, Hutu militia members killed three Spanish aid workers, three soldiers and seriously wounded one other on January 18, 1997. Since then most of the refugees have returned.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Rwandan genocide", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki