JOURNEYING THROUGH THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA
2.4 Post-colonial Rwanda (1962-1994): Learning from the past?
2.4.3 The inefficiency of the reaction of the international community
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2008, p.2). As Genocide preparation was not proved by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, they argue that it was not a genocide. Other reasons include the fact that all Interahamwe were not Hutu and that people who died included Tutsi, Hutu, Twa and foreigners killed by both the Interahamwe and the Rwandese Patriotic Front (Kambanda, 2014). Genocide is therefore considered by these scholars as massacres or civil war. On the other hand some scholars argue that the Tutsi were killed as a target group and a genocidal continuum can be traced through Rwandan history (Gouteux, 2002; Rutembesa, 2011b). Moreover, Bizimana declared that the Hutu killed during the Genocide must be considered as victims of crime against humanity (Ntakirutimana, 2014). The next section looks at the role of the international community during the Genocide. Understanding the role of different actors in the Genocide is of paramount importance because it is stated in the history curriculum. In addition, it is important to know different reactions of the international community to know to what extent different countries or institutions contributed to deter the genocidal process.
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to commit a genocide. Moreover, the presidential decision directive taken after American soldiers’ killings in Somalia limited American involvement in United Nations peacekeeping missions but accepted American intervention in case of a genocide.
Des Forges (1999) observed that the delay to recognise the Genocide allowed the perpetrators to organise their plans and silence any potential opposition to their act.
Despite the never again expressed by the international community aimed at taking concrete action against any brutality after the Holocaust, the international community failed to stop the Genocide in Rwanda in a period less than five decades after the Holocaust of the Second World War. The United Nations which had troops in Rwanda and the international community were informed about plans to exterminate Tutsi (Des Forges, 1999; Prunier, 1997; Stanton, 2004; Verwimp, 2011). Before 1994, a Genocide continuum was observed in different regions of Rwanda, most prominently in 1959, 1963, and in the 1990s where Tutsi were killed and no concrete action taken for future prevention (Hron, 2011).
The 1990s pre-Genocide killings which targeted Abagogwe, a group of Tutsi in North-West of Rwanda and other Tutsi in Bugesera, Kibilira were interpreted differently by the international community. One perspective has it that they were considered as the response to attacks by the Rwandese Patriotic Front on behalf of the population that felt threatened (Kuperman, 2006; Lemarchand, 2002; Reyntjens, 1996). They were also seen as a means of consolidating the Habyarimana regime power by gathering all Hutu under difficult condition (Des Forges, 1999). Moreover, Verwimp (2011) notes that the pre-Genocide killings can be described as a case of
‘ethnic’ cleansing. As Tutsi were considered as pastoralists, the Habyarimana regime had adopted a policy of converting pastoral lands into agricultural ones and into paysannats – the prime agrarian settlement scheme. This regime used the war between the Patriotic Front and the then Government (1990-1994) as a pretext to finish off the last remnants of pastoralism in Rwanda (Verwimp, 2011). Even if, the idea of “ethnic” cleansing can be accepted, the association of pastoralism with the Tutsi only is based on dated theories.
The Rwandan society has been agro-pastoralist for many centuries and in the 1990s there were new socio-economic activities brought about by European influences
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which were not necessarily distributed according to social classes. Very few groups of Tutsi, such as Abahima, were practicing pastoralism. Hence there were other motives about the choice of regions for the killings. Verwimp himself mentions that massacres took place in regions where the regime had strong support, regions densely populated and where the population of Tutsi was the highest in the northern prefectures and rural Kigali. The high presence of Tutsi in regions where the Habyarimana regime had strong ties should have been the main reasons which guided the killers and not economic ones as discussed by the author.
Regarding the failure of the international community to prevent the Genocide, no appropriate measure was taken against the training of militia and the distribution of weapons to civilians (Des Forges, 1999; Gouteux, 2002; Hron, 2011; IRDP, 2005).
Instead of using the peacekeeping troops to stop the Genocide the United Nations did not want to use its soldiers so that they did not die in the killings rather continued to discuss the engagement embedded in the peacekeeping protocols (Des Forges, 1999). On their side, French and Belgian troops came to evacuate their nationals (Stanton, 2002). In the process some two thousand unarmed civilians were left in Kigali by Belgian peacekeepers. On April 21, the Security Council withdrew most of the United Nations troops leaving a few hundred to protect civilians already directly under the United Nations flag. Thereafter, a large number of refugees began leaving Rwanda to neighbouring countries mainly Zaïre (current Democratic Republic of the Congo), Burundi and Tanzania. This massive exodus was a threat to the stability of the entire region. Contradictory belligerents’ positions also prevented the UN from continuing discussions about the sending of stronger force with a mandate to protect Tutsi civilians (Des Forges, 1999).
Among developed countries, a well-equipped force to the United Nations mission was only sent by Belgium. Despite the United Nations Security Council major powers failure to act, its president, Colin Keating from New Zealand had called for an increase in peacekeepers’ forces once the slaughter began (Berdal, 2005). Later on, France decided to send its troops to intervene through the controversial Opération Turquoise (Berdal, 2005; de Saint-Exupéry, 2004; Gouteux, 2002; Melvern, 2000;
Prunier, 1997; Tauzin, 2011) discussed in the literature review. Stanton (2004) details other weaknesses of the international community which did not manage to
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prevent the Genocide in Rwanda and states what it should have been done to prevent the tragedy. For instance, the international community did not react on pogroms of Tutsi which occurred early in the 1990s. During the Genocide, the Security Council led by the United States and the United Kingdom instead of changing the mandate of the peacekeepers’ mission so that it can intervene rather reduced the number of troops.