The Rwandan Genocide occurred in 1994 towards the end of the Rwandan Civil War. It involved the dominant ethnic group in Rwanda, the Hutus, which attempted to wipe out the Tutsi minority within the country. Tensions between the two groups had been inflamed during colonial times, as the Belgians who controlled Rwanda in the aftermath of World War I favored the Tutsi minority over the Hutus. The genocide was perpetrated by the Hutu Power movement and led to the murder of between half a million and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in a period of approximately 100 days. The violence led upwards of two million people to flee from Rwanda in the mid-1990s into neighboring countries such as Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Uganda and Tanzania. In the case of the exodus into Zaire, the migration destabilized the country sufficiently to be a major contributory cause of the outbreak of the First Congo War in 1996 and later the Second Congo War, the latter of which raged from 1998 to 2003, resulted in well over five million deaths and is often called the "Great War of Africa". Hence, the impacts of the Rwandan Genocide and the migration which followed it have been very substantial indeed.[1]
Chronology of events
The causes of the Rwandan Genocide are rooted in the country’s colonial past. Located in the center of the continent, the region did not experience European intervention until late in the nineteenth century when both Belgium and Germany attempted to take over the Kingdom of Rwanda. At the Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885, called to mediate numerous disputes between Europe’s nations, it was agreed that Germany would take over Rwanda, with the German Empire carrying out that decision in the 1880s and 1890s. From the beginning, the Germans exploited the ethnic divisions of Rwanda to control it more effectively, favoring the Tutsi elite, which constituted about 15% of the population, over the Hutu majority, which made up over 80% of the population. After the First World War, when Germany was stripped of its colonies and Belgium took over Rwanda, the Belgian government continued this policy of ethnic divide and rule, even introducing identity cards to this effect. Hence, when Rwanda achieved independence in 1962 there were extreme divisions after emerging between the Hutus and the Tutsi.[2]
In independent Rwanda, the Hutu majority began to reassert itself after years of colonial and Tutsi domination. Many Tutsis fled Rwanda during this time, with tens of thousands establishing themselves in Uganda, from which country a guerilla war over the border into Rwanda was waged. This largely caused the outbreak of the Rwandan Civil War in 1990, when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, invaded Rwanda from Uganda. The war would drag on for several years, but eventually, peace negotiations resulted in the Arusha Accords agreed in Tanzania in the late summer of 1993. Through these, it was agreed that a new political system that would allow for multiple political parties representing both Hutus and Tutsis would be established in order to bring the fighting to an end.[3]
The Arusha Accords were a false dawn as members of the Hutu Power movement, a Hutu ethno-supremacist ideology that asserts the ethnic superiority of Hutus, began to gain popularity in Rwanda. They had espoused the Hutu Ten Commandments since 1990, which called for the supremacy of the Hutus in Rwanda, if necessary by destroying the Tutsis. They were already in the ascendant as a group in Rwanda by the spring of 1994, but the killing of President Juvénal Habyarimana, when his plane was shot out of the sky on the 6th of April, was a tipping point when Hutu Power ideology reached a fever pitch.[4]
The first killings in what became the Rwandan Genocide occurred the next day. Over the next three months, violence spread across Rwanda as Hutu militias, typically armed with machetes, set out to mass-murder Tutsis across the country. In the space of a hundred days at least half a million Tutsis were killed across Rwanda, though most scholars accept the figure was probably closer to 800,000, while hundreds of thousands of women were raped in a wave of sexual violence. Approximately 10,000 of the 30,000 Twa minority in Rwanda, often referred to as the ‘Forgotten Victims’ of the genocide, were also killed during this period. The killing only ended when the Tutsi army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front seized the capital Kigali in early July 1994.[5]
The genocide triggered mass migration over the borders of Rwanda into neighboring countries like Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi. Many of these were actually Hutu refugees who fled from Rwanda when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame seized control of the government in Kigali, fearing that reprisals from the new Tutsi government against the Hutus would follow for the genocide. There these groups of refugees began fighting a new guerilla war over the border into Rwanda, eventually leading Rwanda to invade eastern Zaire in 1996, triggering the First Congo War. This in turn led to the Second Congo War in 1998, a conflict known as the World War of Africa, one which resulted in over five million deaths down to 2003 and involved a dozen African nations.[6]
Extent of migration
Rwanda had a population of nearly eight million people in 1993 prior to the genocide. By 1995, after the genocide and the mass flight from the country, this had fallen to just over 5.6 million people. Some of the decline was caused by the genocide itself, which is estimated to have killed between 500,000 and 800,000 people, with on average six or seven thousand people being killed every day during the spring and early summer of 1994. Of the nearly two million people who fled from Rwanda in its aftermath, the bulk left for neighboring Tanzania and Zaire. This is often referred to as ‘The Great Lakes Refugee Crisis’ of the mid-1990s as there was also a refugee crisis at this time in neighboring Burundi.[7]
Demographic impact
It is estimated that 1.3 million Rwandans fled west into eastern Zaire in the second half of 1994 and early 1995, while approximately half a million migrated toward Tanzania, with the latter group faring much better as Tanzania has consistently proved to be a safe haven for refugees from Rwanda and Burundi, another country in the region destabilized by the ethnic tensions between the Hutus and the Tutsis. There are still over 300,000 refugees from these countries and the Congo living in Tanzania today.[8] Those who fled to Zaire were less fortunate as they simply moved from one war-torn region to an even more brutal conflict. This development, combined with reconciliation efforts by the Rwandan Patriotic Front-led government at home in Rwanda, which has dominated the country’s politics since it seized power in 1994, has led many refugees who fled Rwanda after the genocide to return home in recent years, as the country stabilizes and develops steadily.[9]
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References
- ↑ Rwandan Genocide. History Channel
- ↑ Belgium’s role in Rwandan genocide. Le Monde dilpomatique
- ↑ The Rwandan Refugee Crisis: Before the Genocide: Part I. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- ↑ Rwanda: The Failure of the Arusha Peace Accords. National Security Archive
- ↑ Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter. BBC News
- ↑ HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT. Eastern Congo Initiative
- ↑ Crisp, Jeff; Tan, Elizabeth. INTRODUCTION: THE REFUGEE CRISIS IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION OF AFRICA. Refugee Survey Quarterly. Vol. 17, No. 2 (1998), pp. vi-xii
- ↑ Rwandans in Tanzania give a thumbs up to reconciliation efforts. Anadolu Ajansı
- ↑ Why Rwanda is held up as a model for reconciliation, 26 years after genocide. CBC Radio