Court of Remorse: Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Historical Reference Points

Historical Reference Points Colonization and Independence In 1896, Rwanda, a country where Hutus and Tutsis had lived for several centuries, became a German protectorate and was incorporated into the German empire. In 1919 the World War I victors gave this territory to Belgium. The colonial power based its authority on the royal Tutsi government and reinforced the Tutsi monopoly in administrative and political spheres. In 1959 the monarchy was overthrown by the Hutu social revolution. The first pogroms were carried out against the Tutsi community, causing tens of thousands of Tutsis to flee to neighboring countries. Three years later, in 1962, Rwanda gained its independence. Grégoire Kayibanda, a Hutu from central Rwanda, became the first president. The Tutsi guerilla warfare continued until the mid-1960s. It was accompanied by a new round of anti-Tutsi pogroms within Rwanda, particularly in 1963 and 1964, resulting in a fresh wave of Tutsi refugees fleeing to neighboring Uganda, Burundi, and the Congo. In 1973 General Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu from the north, took power following a coup d’état. He created the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), which became the country’s single party. The Civil War On October 1, 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group consisting primarily of Tutsi refugees who had lived outside Rwanda since 1959, started a civil war by invading Rwanda from Uganda. Within the country, there were massive arrests of Tutsis. In April 1991 the MRND agreed to the principle of reintroducing a multiparty system. In November it started a xi
youth wing called Interahamwe, which progressively morphed into an armed militia group. In March 1992 approximately three hundred Tutsis were massacred in the Bugesera region, south of the capital city, Kigali. In April a new government was formed that included all the main Habyarimana opposition parties inside Rwanda, and named a Hutu as prime minister. In February 1993 a new RPF offensive in the north resulted in the displacement of a million people in Rwanda. In July the extremist Hutu radio station Radio-Télévision libre des milles collines (RTLM) began broadcasting. That same month a new government was formed, led by opposition leader Agathe Uwilingiyimana. On August 4 the government of Rwanda and the RPF signed the Arusha Peace Accords in Tanzania. This agreement was supposed to end the civil war, organize power-sharing among the various political factions, and enable the return of Rwandan refugees, who had been living abroad for thirty-five years. In October the UN Security Council approved the deployment of 2,500 peacekeepers to form the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). On October 21, Tutsi soldiers in neighboring Burundi assassinated the country’s first Hutu president, who had been democratically elected four months earlier. Widespread ethnic violence ensued, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and causing several hundred thousand people to flee to neighboring countries, including Rwanda. Political and ethnic violence in Rwanda continued to escalate . The transition government was not functioning, and the parties were blaming each other for the failure. The Genocide On April 6, 1994, Rwanda’s presidential plane was shot down by missiles upon its descent into Kigali, killing President Habyarimana, the new Burundian president (Cyprien Ntaryamira, a Hutu) and two of his cabinet ministers, the Rwandan army chief of staff, and the head of presidential security . Starting at dawn on April 7, the presidential guard assassinated Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana along with several ministers and Hutu personalities from the democratic opposition. Ten Belgian peacekeepers assigned to guard the prime minister were also killed. In Kigali, Hutu soldiers and militias , notably the Interahamwe, began to hunt down and systematically kill Tutsis. This was the beginning of the genocide and the resumption of the civil war. On April 8 Jean Kambanda was appointed prime minister of an interim government made up solely of Hutus loyal to the president. On April 11 Belgium began to withdraw its peacekeepers. Four days later the UN Security xii H i s t o r i c a l R e f e r e n c e P o i n t s Council ordered the withdrawal of the international force, reducing the number of troops from 2,500 to 270. General Marcel Gatsinzi, who had been appointed chief of staff of the Rwandan army on April 7 and who publicly stated his opposition to the massacre of...