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Straus (2006), in interviews with accused perpetrators, identifies different motivations for different forms of killing. He writes, “motivation and participation were clearly heterogeneous,” with different forms of killing with different motivations occurring simultaneously (Straus 2006, 95). The forms of killing were (1) killing, torture, rape, and mutilation perpetrated against civilians—mainly Tutsi but also politically moderate Hutu—by militias, Forces armées rwandaises (FAR) soldiers, and willing ordinary people; (2) killing, torture, rape, and mutilation perpetrated against Tutsi by ordinary Hutu, typically under duress from local leaders; (3) intended killing of soldiers and collateral killing of civilians (Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa) in the course of the conflict between the RPF and the FAR; (4) killings carried out by the RPF against civilians (Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa); and (5) murder motivated by theft and looting as well as the settling of scores between ordinary people (Straus 2006, 113–18, 135– 40, 163–69. On alleged RPF crimes, see Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2010). Ordinary Rwandans understand that all of these different types of killings took place during the genocide, and they use the phrases “les événements de 1994” (the events of 1994) and “en 1994” (in 1994) to describe “everything that happened in 1994, not just the genocide” (field notes 2006). Straus’s findings on individual motivations to kill are particularly instructive as they reveal the intentional simplification of the government in grounding its approach to postgenocide justice in the presumed ethnic hatred of all Hutu for all Tutsi (discussed more fully below). His research shows that “preexisting ethnic animosity, widespread prejudice, deeply held ideological beliefs, blind obedience, deprivation, or even greed” did not motivate individual Hutu to kill individual Tutsi (Straus 2006, 96, corroborated by Fujii 2009, 185–86). Instead, Straus finds that “Rwandans’ motivations [for killing]
(Straus 2006, 96). Among ordinary Hutu this participation was driven by intra-ethnic pressure from other, usually more socially powerful Hutu, security fears in the context of civil war and genocide, and the opportunity for looting and score settling. Straus concludes that these factors “were salient in a context of national state orders to attack Tutsis, war, dense local institutions, and close-knit settlements” (Straus 2006, 97). As Jean-Claude, a prisoner convicted of genocide crimes, told me, “I killed. I even killed more than ten people. I told [government officials] the names of those I killed, and I told them where and how I killed them. But I didn’t kill them because of hatred. I only killed people I didn’t know because I feared being killed myself ! Even I was told [it is not clear by whom] that my wife would be killed if I did not kill!” (interview 2006). The available evidence simply does not support Rwandan government claims that ethnic enmity drove the participation of ordinary Rwandans in the 1994 genocide. Officially, this ethnic enmity is called “genocide ideology.” Much of the work of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission is concerned with identifying and eliminating the genocidal thoughts of ordinary Hutu to prepare them to engage in state-led reconciliation activities. In practice, as is further analyzed in the next chapter, an accusation that an individual harbors “genocide ideology” is a tool used against any individual or group that steps outside the accepted boundaries of government policy (Senate of the Republic of Rwanda 2007). As an RPF member and private businessperson said during my reeducation, “we [senior RPF members] would rather be conscious of our enemy [read Hutu] than naively pretend, like you whites, to think we have no enemy out there planning to exterminate us but instead to hopelessly fantasize about a utopian Rwanda” (field notes 2006).5 Approaching postgenocide justice on the presumption of a criminal (adult male Hutu) population is a useful mechanism that the RPF strategically deploys to control political opponents, deflect criticism of its actions during the genocide, and justify its continued military presence in the eastern Congo (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 2010; United Nations Group of Experts for the Democratic Republic of the Congo 2012. See Pottier 2002 on the media savoir-faire of the RPF). The policy of national unity and reconciliation legitimates the moral right of the RPF to rule postgenocide Rwanda. The policy is supported by a historical narrative about Rwanda’s past in an effort to shape the collective memory of the genocide, a narrative that eliminates the real socioeconomic inequality and forms of political exclusion faced by most ordinary Rwandans under colonial and postcolonial rule. In particular, it reformulates the violence against Tutsi in 1959, 1962, and 1973 as well as during the 1994 genocide as strictly ethnic in origin, thereby ignoring important class and regional dimensions of those conflicts (see Burnet 2012 on the gender dimensions of these waves of violence). For example, and as analyzed in chapter 2, the policy of national unity and reconciliation ignores the fact that the labels Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa represented status differences that elites sometimes violently enforced in precolonial Rwanda while overlooking the ways in which these labels became politically significant during the colonial period. In addition, it overlooks the ways in which Tutsi elites participated in and benefited from colonial rule (Berger 1981; Des Forges 2011). The policy also depicts the events of 1959 as a “practice genocide” when in fact it was a social revolution of Hutu against Tutsi elites, as discussed in chapter 2 (Kinzer 2008, 11; see also C. Newbury 1988 on the cohesion of Hutu oppression). This narrow “official” interpretation of the genocide legitimates the repressive approach of the postgenocide government in three ways. First, it invokes the heroic status of the RPF in liberating Rwandans from “oppressive rulers” (NURC 2004, 9). Second, it provides the RPF with a virtual carte blanche with which it can reconstruct Rwanda and “reconcile” Rwandans according to its own “vision of how things should be done” (MINECOFIN
while evoking the genocide guilt card with international audiences (Reyntjens 2004, 2011). The words of a donor representative resident in Kigali illustrate the impact of the genocide guilt card in international circles: “We decided to withdraw from Rwanda at that time [1994] and it is well known that the positions left behind . . . where many Tutsi had gathered around the blue helmets [meaning the United Nations peacekeeping force], they were left there to be killed. We don’t feel comfortable with that. This feeling perhaps plays a role too, in our development cooperation programs” (Western diplomat speaking in Kigali in 2009, quoted in Zorbas 2011, 106). Finally, the policy of national unity and reconciliation does not acknowledge the lived experiences of Rwandans outside the categories of Tutsi survivors and Hutu perpetrators. Conspicuous by their absence are Tutsi and Twa perpetrators, Hutu and Twa rescuers, Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa resisters, and Hutu and Twa survivors. The words of Scholastique, a poor Hutu woman whose husband died during the genocide, sum up the situation well:
husband and four of my children during the events. Now I suffer without hopes and dreams. My brother is in prison, and I have no one to take care of or to take care of me. I feel alone even when I am with other people. And then the government forces us to tell the truth about what we saw. I saw a lot of bodies but never did I see someone getting killed. I heard people dying, but I did not see anything. How can I tell my truth when the government has told me what I have to say? I fear being sent to prison, and I think now that my neighbors do not like that I live in [the same community as before the genocide]. Where can I go, what can I do? The government says Rwanda has been rebuilt, but my life and home are still not repaired. (Interview 2006)
reconciliation wipes away the specificity of individual acts of genocide, the death after death after death that is the aggregated whole. Such an approach ignores how ordinary Rwandans were enticed into participating or coerced to do so. Each act of violence—a killing, a rape, a threat, a looting—is different and took place within a specific set of circumstances as individuals made their choice to kill, hide, resist, or stand by. This is not to downplay the genocide’s magnitude for its Tutsi victims but rather to point out that in assigning collective responsibility to all Hutu, many of whom did not commit acts of genocide, the policy of national unity and reconciliation does more than simply misinterpret the nature of the genocide. It is likely to re-create, given Rwanda’s history of ethnic conflict, the same conditions of ethnic inequality, political repression, and socioeconomic exclusion that it claims to undo. The next section illustrates the shortcomings of considering the genocide as an isolated incident rather than as part of a broader continuum of violence that shapes individual lived experiences of fear and insecurity.
violence that in turn created the context of fear and insecurity that led to the 1994 genocide. In addition to that violence, there were two additional periods in which state-led violence was particularly acute and had varying impacts on the lives of ordinary peasant Rwandans depending on their social location and their ethnic identity as determined by the state. This section analyzes the dynamics of violence during the political transition and civil war (October 1990–April 1994) and the three phases of the “emergency period”: the immediate postgenocide period (July 1994–December 1995), the mass return of Hutu refugees from neighboring countries (1996–97), and the rebel insurgency in the northwest (1997–2000). The bulk of the analysis that follows focuses on the civil war period (October 1990–April 1994) to highlight the extent to which RPF military maneuvers and political decisions were part of the broader context of violence that resulted in the 1994 genocide.6
POLITICAL TRANSITION AND CIVIL WAR (OCTOBER 1990–APRIL 1994) Before the rebel RPF entered Rwanda from Uganda on October 1, 1990, the country was already in crisis and economic decline. The RPF crossed into Rwanda from Gatuna town in Uganda and made its operational base in the Virunga mountain range in northwestern Rwanda between Gisenyi and Ruhengeri towns (see fig. 2, page 33). International donors, including France (President Habyarimana’s primary ally), began to pressure Rwanda to liberalize its political system to allow for multiparty politics (Reyntjens 1995, 564). At the same time, the economy faltered as donors tied their funding to political liberalization and the adoption of structural adjustment measures. Record low prices for Rwanda’s main sources of foreign income, coffee and tea, compounded an already dire socioeconomic situation (Uvin 1998; Verwimp 2003). Widespread unemployment and famine resulted. Ordinary Rwandans began to express their discontent with the regime by refusing to pay MRND party membership dues or their taxes or even to show deference to local officials (Longman 1995). Joseph U. explained the risks of failing to pay MRND dues: “We [not clear if he means peasants or other Hutu] just felt like our backs were breaking with everything that was going on. Some crops failed. People were hungry. Those who could send their kids to school could no longer do so. So there was pressure on all of us [peasants]. So, to protest, some farmers just agreed to stop paying our dues. We did, and nothing happened [meaning there was no punishment from local officials]. So others in [my community] stopped paying as well. Soon, it seemed like almost no one was paying dues, even though we all knew it was the law” (interview 2006). In the face of mounting criticisms of his one-party regime, Habyarimana tried to steer the democratization process from the outset. He created a Commission nationale de synthèse (CNS), charged with identifying what democracy meant to ordinary Rwandans, and with drafting a new constitution (Bertrand 2000, 44). Ordinary Rwandans I consulted recalled the consultations and remarked that local officials from the MRND “told us what democracy meant and then offered us alcohol to support their vision at community festivals and [sensitization] meetings” (interview with Thomas, a salaried poor man, 2006). Aurelia, a poor Hutu widow, remarked, “Democracy was and still is something that elites talk about; we just hope their politics don’t affect us too much” (interview 2006). Habyarimana stacked the CNS with members and close allies of his MRND and, having revised the constitution to allow political parties to form, promoted the creation of small parties that were mere satellites to the MRND (Bertrand 2000, 43; Reyntjens 1995, 266).7 Despite Habyarimana’s efforts to control the democratization process, a robust opposition quickly emerged. Several parties that had first been created at the time of independence (1959–62) reemerged, notably the Mouvement démocratique rwandais (MDR), which was a reincarnation of former President Kayibanda’s Parti du
mouvement de l’émancipation hutu (PARMEHUTU) (discussed in chapter 2). The MDR was founded in March 1991 by disaffected Hutu elites from central Rwanda who seized the opportunity to reenter politics following the coup of 1973 and Habyarimana’s subsequent ban on political activity (C. Newbury 1992, 201). Unlike the original PARMEHUTU, which was a party for Hutu, the MDR sought to identify as “a party of the masses” (Bertrand 2000, 94). The party saw itself as the main challenger to the one-party rule of the MRND, which favored Hutu from the north. Its goal was to move beyond the regional and ethnic politics of the MRND in order to bring the issues of all Rwandans to the table. The MDR leadership saw the civil war as further evidence of the regime’s incompetence in dealing with Rwanda’s pressing socioeconomic issues, not least of which was the return of Tutsi refugees still living abroad. Other parties emerged in pursuit of a common goal—to overthrow the MRND. The other opposition parties, the Parti social démocrate (PSD), a left-of-center party that drew its membership from the south, and the Parti libéral (PL), a right-of-center party that attracted urbanites, including prominent Tutsi businesspeople, joined forces to press the Habyarimana regime to find a way to end the civil war and solve the economic crisis. In November 1991, the three parties signed a joint memorandum that highlighted the regime’s refusal to enact “real” democratic reforms (Prunier 1997, 134). In response, the MRND swore in a new cabinet on December 31, 1991, and appointed one person from the “opposition,” a member of the pro-MRND satellite, the Parti chrétien démocrate (PCD) (Reyntjens 1995, 109). The formal opposition (that actually opposed the MRND) took to the streets in a rare act of mass protest that took place throughout the country (Bertrand 2000, 141–42). In March 1992 the formal opposition forced Habyarimana to accept an agreement with the now united opposition parties to form a new government, with the coveted post of prime minister going to a representative of the MDR. The agreement also required Habyarimana to begin power-sharing peace talks with the RPF (Prunier 1997, 145–50). On the surface, the Habyarimana regime softened its authoritarian control of the state. Behind the scene, members of the MRND’s inner circle—the akazu—broke away to form their own party, called the Coalition pour la défense de la république (CDR). The CDR not only opposed peace talks with the RPF but also was overtly racist, favoring a Hutu-only Rwanda. Opposition appeals for the RPF and the MRND to fight their battles at the negotiating table fell on deaf ears when the RPF attacked FAR forces stationed near Byumba in February 1993, a blatant violation of a ceasefire agreement that had been negotiated at Arusha (Des Forges 1999, 109). The attack also led the opposition coalition to question its support of the RPF, whose relentless aggression on the battlefield brought into question its willingness to negotiate at the peace table in good faith. The perception among members of the opposition coalition was that the RPF wanted to seize power by any means necessary, not share it (Des Forges 1999, 109–10; Kuperman 2004, 61–63).8 Many of the ordinary peasants in southern Rwanda that I consulted felt jostled by elite political machinations. Ephrem’s words are emblematic of the fears that rural folks must have felt at the time: “I knew that there was tension among the politicians and I feared. My family always fears when the government starts talking about change because it means new rules and regulations. Of course we could not imagine something as dramatic as the genocide, but violence, yes, that is part of our everyday life. Our governments do what they need to keep power. About politics, peasants like me know what we are told [in local sensitization meetings] or what is announced on radio. We knew about this idea of power sharing because it was sometimes discussed by our officials. I don’t think anyone knew it would result in genocide!” (interview 2006).
Figure 5. Both before and since the genocide, local government officials are responsible for “sensitizing” citizens to respect the myriad directives and rules issued by central government officials in Kigali. This image was taken in western Rwanda, July 2006. (photo by author)
CIVIL WAR AND THE INVASION BY THE RPF The RPF largely drew its membership from the exiled Tutsi refugee community in Uganda, most of whom had fled Rwanda between 1959 and 1962. Hutu and Twa, as enemies of the Habyarimana regime, members of ethnically mixed families, or those who followed their Tutsi patrons, were also exiled, and some joined the RPF movement (Mamdani 2001, 159–60). Uganda was home to the majority of Rwandans who had fled the political violence during the 1959–62 independence period discussed in chapter 2. There is no agreement on how many refugees lived in Uganda. Van der Meeren (1996, 261) cites a figure of two hundred thousand Tutsi living in registered refugee settlements in Uganda, while Prunier (1997, 62) estimates that there were six hundred thousand Rwandan refugees by 1990. Burundi, Tanzania, and Zaïre also hosted numerous Rwandan refugees. Some individuals fled further afield within Africa, while others went to Europe or North America (van der Meeren 1996, 252). Many Rwandans exiled during the 1959–62 period maintained ties with one another through social and cultural associations (Prunier 1997, 66). These ties proved critical in the financing of the RPF (Kinzer 2008, 81–83). The ways in which Rwandan exiles got caught up in the national political struggles in Uganda shaped the RPF’s decision to invade Rwanda in 1990. Uganda’s then president Milton Obote (1962–71 and 1980–85) identified Tutsi from Rwanda as a “public enemy against whom to unite his party” (van der Meeren 1996, 261). In December 1980 Obote branded Rwandan refugees living in Uganda as
“alien foreigners” and forced them to live in guarded camps (Scherrer 2002, 49). He later labeled Rwandan Tutsi the “natural allies” of his political foe Yoweri Museveni, leader of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) (Mamdani 2001, 168). This prompted “scores” of young Rwandans to join Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) to take up arms with the purpose of overthrowing Obote (Scherrer 2002, 50). Mamdani estimates that approximately a quarter of the NRA membership of sixteen thousand were Rwandan refugees (Mamdami 2001, 170). The participation of Rwandan refugees, several of whom rose to prominence as respected officers in the NRA, would later prove problematic for Museveni once he became Uganda’s president, in January 1986 (Mamdani 2001, 174– 76). The large number of Rwandans in senior positions within NRA ranks forced Museveni to respond to public perceptions that Rwandans were taking over Uganda’s political leadership. In late 1989 Museveni “released” from military service two high-ranking Rwandan officers—Paul Kagame, the deputy chief of military intelligence, and Fred Rwigema, the deputy minister of defense (Rake 2001, 185). These dismissals provided the impetus for the RPF to organize its invasion, particularly as the joint Rwanda-Uganda ministerial commission set up in 1989 to solve the Rwandan refugee crisis had failed. President Habyarimana refused to accept the mass repatriation of Tutsi refugees from Uganda, allowing only those refugees who would make no land claims to return to Rwanda (Hintjens 1999, 290). In early 1990 Kagame and Rwigema created the military wing of the RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA); the NRA reported more than three thousand deserters to the RPA but took no steps to bring them to barracks (DANIDA 1997, 69). President Museveni provided tacit support, allowing southern Uganda to be used as the RPF’s base of operation (Scherrer 2002, 50). Rwandan exiles living Directory: wp-content -> blogs.dir blogs.dir -> 3rd EurasiaTrajeco Conference blogs.dir -> Tsl 3378 – Pronunciation and tesl professor Paula Golombek blogs.dir -> Electrical engineering degree technical elective requirement blogs.dir -> The Security Organs of the Russian Federation a brief History 1991-2005 blogs.dir -> Aurelia aubert blogs.dir -> Task: Choose a play in which an important theme is effectively highlighted by one specific scene or incident blogs.dir -> Press release Huawei Releases LampSit 0 for Indoor mbb blogs.dir -> Dues Increase & State of the Union blogs.dir -> Civil Division General Information Booklet blogs.dir -> Away in the basement Download 3.15 Mb. Share with your friends:
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