The population had grown since the refugees left, and Rwanda was now full, Habyarimana claimed. Museveni had even informed the Rwandan president that the Tutsi exiles might invade, and Habyarimana had also told US state department officials that he feared an invasion from Uganda. One afternoon in early when the news was slow, Kiwanuka Lawrence Nsereko, a journalist with the Citizen, an independent Ugandan newspaper, stopped by to see an old friend at the ministry of transport in downtown Kampala.
Two senior army officers, whom Lawrence knew, happened to be in the waiting room when he arrived. After some polite preliminaries, Lawrence asked the men what they were doing there. Lawrence shuddered. He had grown up among Hutus who had fled Tutsi oppression in Rwanda before independence in , as well as Tutsis who had fled the Hutu-led pogroms that followed it.
Instead, they swapped fantastic tales about how Tutsis once used their Hutu slaves as spittoons, expectorating into their mouths, instead of on the ground. The official was elated. The Rwandans had come to express their support for a new open borders programme, he said. Soon Rwandans living in Uganda would be allowed to cross over and visit their relatives without a visa. This would help solve the vexing refugee issue, he explained.
Lawrence was less sanguine. He suspected the Rwandans might use the open borders programme to conduct surveillance for an invasion, or even carry out attacks inside Rwanda. They were not only occupying senior army positions many Ugandans felt should be held by Ugandans, but some were also notorious for their brutality.
Paul Kagame , who went on to lead the RPF takeover of Rwanda and has ruled Rwanda since the genocide, was acting chief of military intelligence, in whose headquarters Lawrence himself had been tortured. In , for example, soldiers under the command of Chris Bunyenyezi, also an RPF leader, herded scores of suspected rebels in the village of Mukura into an empty railway wagon with no ventilation, locked the doors and allowed them to die of suffocation.
Habyarimana agreed to meet him during a state visit to Tanzania. At a hotel in Dar es Salaam, the year-old journalist warned the Rwandan leader about the dangers of the open border programme. Habyarimana was bluffing. The open border programme was actually part of his own ruthless counter-strategy. Every person inside Rwanda visited by a Tutsi refugee would be followed by state agents and automatically branded an RPF sympathiser; many were arrested, tortured, and killed by Rwandan government operatives.
Five years later, they would be crushed altogether in one of the worst genocides ever recorded. O n the morning of 1 October , thousands of RPF fighters gathered in a football stadium in western Uganda about 20 miles from the Rwandan border.
Two nearby hospitals were readied for casualties. They crossed into Rwanda that afternoon. The Rwandan army, with help from French and Zairean commandos, stopped their advance and the rebels retreated back into Uganda. But a few days after that, he quietly requested France and Belgium not to assist the Rwandan government in repelling the invasion.
Cohen writes that he now believes that Museveni must have been feigning shock, when he knew what was going on all along. We need to transform history into lessons for humanity that are relevant to our societies today. The history of Rwanda and the inspiring and haunting stories of individuals, communities, and governments during the genocide, for example, can teach us so much about moral choices and their consequences. The price of mass atrocities and genocide is always very high.
After the genocide ended in July , Rwanda was a devastated country. Its basic infrastructure was destroyed, millions of people were displaced, and many surviving Tutsis had lost their families. Many women suffered the consequences of rape and sexual violence. Thousands of children were orphaned and had to fend for themselves.
Countless survivors developed long-term psychological problems. However, over time Rwanda rebuilt itself and survivors played an important role in its development. Many showed great resilience; they remade their lives, formed survivor support groups, and even created and preserved memorial sites across the country, educating future generations about the dangers of extremism and hate.
We need to speak to release our anger; to process our experience, and reduce the trauma; to honour the memory of our murdered loved ones and community; to secure a measure of justice, and to begin the long road to peace and reconciliation. This volume showcases and honours the lives of survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, some of whom later settled in South Africa.
This collection of short vignettes will be valuable as an educational resource for students and educators. Our role in society is to pay attention and listen to the stories and warnings of these survivors. By emphasising the importance of empathy, critical thinking, and personal responsibility, we can also encourage students to be an active voice against hate speech and human rights violations, and to work towards preventing future genocides.
Weapons and hit-lists were handed out to local groups, who knew exactly where to find their targets. The Hutu extremists set up a radio station, RTLM, and newspapers which circulated hate propaganda, urging people to "weed out the cockroaches" meaning kill the Tutsis.
The names of prominent people to be killed were read out on radio. Even priests and nuns have been convicted of killing people, including some who sought shelter in churches. By the end of the day killing spree, around , Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been killed.
The Belgians and most UN peacekeepers pulled out after 10 Belgian soldiers were killed. The French, who were allies of the Hutu government, sent a special force to evacuate their citizens and later set up a supposedly safe zone but were accused of not doing enough to stop the slaughter in that area. Paul Kagame, Rwanda's current president, has accused France of backing those who carried out the massacres - a charge denied by Paris.
The well-organised RPF, backed by Uganda's army, gradually seized more territory, until 4 July , when its forces marched into the capital, Kigali.
Some two million Hutus - both civilians and some of those involved in the genocide - then fled across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, at the time called Zaire, fearing revenge attacks. Others went to neighbouring Tanzania and Burundi. Human rights groups say RPF fighters killed thousands of Hutu civilians as they took power - and more after they went into DR Congo to pursue the Interahamwe. The RPF denies this. In DR Congo, thousands died from cholera, while aid groups were accused of letting much of their assistance fall into the hands of the Hutu militias.
The RPF, now in power in Rwanda, embraced militias fighting both the Hutu militias and the Congolese army, which was aligned with the Hutus.
But the new president's reluctance to tackle Hutu militias led to a new war that dragged in six countries and led to the creation of numerous armed groups fighting for control of this mineral-rich country. An estimated five million people died as a result of the conflict which lasted until , with some armed groups active until now in the areas near Rwanda's border.
The International Criminal Court was set up in , long after the Rwandan genocide so could not put on trial those responsible. A total of 93 people were indicted and after lengthy and expensive trials, dozens of senior officials in the former regime were convicted of genocide - all of them Hutus. During the genocide, thousands of Tutsi were killed, along with moderate Hutus who sympathized with their Tutsi neighbors and resisted by defending, hiding, or providing aid to their Tutsi neighbors.
Most of the killing was carried out by two Hutu radical militant groups: the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi. These forces were fewer in number than those of the Interahamwe. The genocide was obviously supported by the Hutu-led government MRND and members of the Rwandan army: they armed and directed militias, dispatched killing orders, and even participated in the rounding up of victims themselves.
The most unsettling co-perpetrators of the genocide, however, were those Rwandan civilians who collaborated with and supported the genocide. Unlike other genocides of the 20th century, the Rwandan genocide unfolded before the eyes of the national media. Journalists, radio broadcasters, and TV news reporters covered the events live from Rwanda, until the violence escalated to fanatical levels and all foreigners were encouraged to evacuate.
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