Rwanda’s Killing Fields: A Legacy Of Imperialism


IT IS now ten years since the extremist Hutu power elements of the Rwandan
military, business and landowning sectors launched a genocide that lasted three
months and left around a million people dead, mostly Tutsi people killed
because of their perceived "race". 
But as JAMES RADCLIFFE explains,
the actions of the Western powers not only failed to prevent the slaughter but
actually contributed to this holocaust.

AT THE 2001 Labour Party conference Tony Blair set out his "moral
commitment" to the world. He told the delegates that if Rwanda happened
again today we would have a moral duty to act to stop it. However, the British
government actually contributed to the slaughter by reducing the peacekeeping
forces on the ground, giving a diplomatic green light to the killers to
continue and preventing others from stopping it. Other governments have an even
worse record.

The sheer violence involved is difficult to overstate. Victims were hacked
to death with machetes, their Achilles cut to stop them running away. The hate
radio station RTLMC (Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines), set up by the
architects of the genocide to spread its hate, would read out lists of people
to be killed every morning, and members of the interhamwe militias would
consider mass murder as "going to work".

Genocide

Victims were massacred in the churches where they had sought sanctuary and
women were raped before having their limbs chopped off and bleeding to death.
The killing was remarkably ‘efficient’, with 800,000-1,000,000 people massacred
in a three-month period. A killing rate more ‘efficient’ than the Nazis had
during the holocaust.

The genocide was orchestrated and planned by a group known as the Akazu,
which contained members of the Hutu government and military. This group was
opposed to the Arusha accords signed in 1993 that had ended the civil war
between the Tutsi RPF (Rwandan Patriotic front) and the Hutu dictatorship of
president Habyarimana.

However, planning for the genocide had probably started earlier with the
setting up of RTLMC to demonise the Tutsi, the compiling of lists of persons
deemed "enemies of the country" and the importing of large quantities
of arms.

The Akazu organised interhamwe militia groups around the country and
distributed arms supposedly as part of a new defence initiative.

Each group was trained in how to use the weapons and how to get groups of
people to concentrate in a specific area for maximum efficiency. The government
established a register of Tutsis towards the end of 1993, a register then used
by the interhamwe to identify victims. Tutsis were also required to carry
identity cards.

Role of UN

By January 1994 the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission led by General
Romeo Dallaire received detailed intelligence on the military preparations for
genocide. Dallaire was sufficiently concerned by this to report it to his
seniors and start demanding that his small peacekeeping force was strengthened
to prevent the genocide.

In April 1994 the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s plane was blamed
on the RPF and used as a pretext for the genocide to begin. RTLMC started
calling on Hutus to kill Tutsis, and broadcast lists of people to be killed. It
is still unknown who actually shot the plane down, France recently claimed it
was the RPF. However there is also some evidence that Hutu extremists were
responsible.

Western powers

The role of the West in this genocide is still largely unexplored. It
involves many factors. Firstly is the role of the IMF and World Bank. Rwanda
was under a structural adjustment programme and receiving money from the World
Bank.

Observers from the World Bank were regularly visiting Kigali in 1993 and
cannot have failed to notice how the money was being used to finance the
purchase of arms. Yet only once was concern at the country being flooded with
arms raised, in the form of an IMF letter to Habyarimana asking him to cut
military spending (and probably spending on education etc as well).

These weapons were being purchased from whatever sources the Rwandan
government could find, including Egypt which had agreed several arms deals from
when Boutros Boutros Ghali (secretary-general of the UN, 1992-97) was Egyptian
Foreign Minister. This was in addition to the military aid and training the
Rwandan army was receiving from France.

Secondly, is the role of the US and UK governments at the UN. Despite
knowing that genocide was planned from January 1994 when Dallaire began to send
intelligence reports back to UN HQ, his requests for a strengthened
peacekeeping force were rejected. Instead, the UK and US endeavoured to disrupt
the force by depleting its numbers and not providing it with sufficient
equipment, rendering it largely useless.

At the start of the genocide Dallaire was asking for reinforcements and
permission to protect Tutsis that had fled to the UN compound. However, this
was refused and states that provided peacekeepers were withdrawing them.

Meanwhile, the governments of the US/UK were continuing to insist that what
was occurring in Rwanda was a minor ethnic conflict and there was no need to do
anything. There was not even any token condemnation. Such actions must have
been interpreted as a green light to the killers to continue.

Moreover, there are the actions of the French government to consider. French
imperialism had long had a strategic interest in Central Africa, dating back to
the colonial period. In the case of Rwanda it had backed president Habyarima’s
one party Hutu dictatorship since 1975, providing military aid, training and
diplomatic support.

During the genocide France launched operation Turquoise, officially a
military operation to evacuate French ex-pats, but unofficially an operation
that greatly assisted the interhamwe by preventing the RPF’s advance from
Uganda that was resisting the Genocide. This also allowed the interhamwe to
continue their massacres under the protection of a foreign military force.

Colonialism

Finally, there is the historical legacy of colonialism to consider.

It was the Belgian colonial administration that had first created the
Hutu/Tutsi dichotomy with a census in 1933. Prior to this census there existed
no formal division between the groups. They spoke the same language, shared the
same religion, were spread across different social classes and had a shared
culture. Which makes Rwanda’s history even more tragic.

It was only with colonialism that one group was favoured over the other
(Tutsi prior to the late 1950s, then Hutu) and the ethnic distinction became
important in Rwandan society and politics.

There is of course far more detail to consider, and in a short article like
this it is impossible to fully detail events. Furthermore, there is a lot of
information still unknown about this genocide. The culture of secrecy at the UN
and in the UK ensures it will unfortunately be decades before the whole truth
emerges.

However what we do know should be widely publicised and those who took the
decisions made to account for their actions.

So next time an apologist for imperialism uses the Rwandan genocide as an
example of "we did nothing and look what happened," remember that
actually they did do something. They made things worse.