About Rwanda
The following article originally appeared in December of 2004 in The Mirror. It is reprinted here for educational purposes.
2004 marked the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda in which nearly one million people died in just three months.
The roots of one of the most horrific episodes in 20th century history go back to old colonial times. By 1916, Belgium had a colony covering almost one million square miles in central Africa, known as the Belgian Congo.
After the first world war, Rwanda and Burundi, which had belonged to Germany were mandated to Belgium by the League of Nations and added to the Belgian Congo.
The area was populated by two main ethnic groups - the Hutus and the Tutsis - who share the same language and many traditions.
But the Belgians treated the two groups very differently - favouring the Tutsis, who were given 'privileges' over the majority Hutu tribe. This encouraged divisions between two groups which had previously lived peacefully together.
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The Hutus, who outnumbered the Tutsis by four to one, were resentful, and the pressure built towards a series of riots in 1959, that left around 20,000 Tutsis dead. Thousands more Tutsis fled to neighbouring Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda.
In 1962, Rwanda won independence from Belgium. The Hutus took over and took revenge on the Tutsis who had done so well under colonial rule.
In the early 1990s, Tutsi refugees who had fled the Hutu regime, formed their own rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). They plotted to overthrow the Hutu-led Rwandan government so that Tutsis could return to their country.
On October 1st 1990, 5,000 well-armed RPF rebels invaded Rwanda from Uganda. The Rwandan army fought back with the help of Belgium, France and Zaire. Thousands of Tutsis and Hutus accused of being 'collaborators' were shot or hacked to death, or herded into football stadiums and left to starve.
In 1991, the RPF invaded again, this time with more success, getting within 18 miles of Kigali by early 1993.
On August 4th 1993, Rwanda's President Juvenal Habyarimana, signed the Arusha peace treaty with the RPF. It promised a ceasefire, equal rights for both Hutus and Tutsis and accepted 2,500 UN peacekeeping troops into Rwanda to oversee the treaty.
Five months later, in January 1994, General Romeo Dallaire, the head of the peacekeeping mission, warned the UN that Hutus were preparing to massacre Tutsis.
On April 6th, 1994, President Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down and both the rebel Tutsi RPF and the more extreme Hutu groups were suspected of assassination.
The following day, more than 30,000 Hutu militia known as the Interhamwe, began systematically killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the Rwandan version of Hitler's Final Solution.
Prominent figures opposed to the killings were also murdered by the Interhamwe militia, with the help of the Presidential guard.
National radio broadcasts were used to coordinate the killings. Ten Belgian UN peacekeepers were also tortured and killed in the hope of persuading Belgium to remove its troops.
On April 21st, the UN Security Council voted to withdraw all but a small number of troops - exactly as Interhamwe had planned.
Interhamwe's leader was Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, the alleged architect of the genocide. His death squads ranged at will across the country, and any church or place of refuge that refused them was simply blown apart.
But the Tutsi RPF fought to take back the country, taking the capital Kigali the following July. By this time, 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been exterminated.
Fearing violent retribution and more bloodletting, two million Hutus fled the new Tutsi regime, heading to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where thousands died in squalid refugee camps.
Today Rwanda has done a remarkable job of rebuilding itself, as the horrific scars of its tragic history slowly heal.
Rebels remain in DRC, and many of the 'genocidaires' remain at large in neighbouring African countries, making the peace precarious. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda continues to track down suspects wanted on for involvement in the 1994 genocide.
But the RPF government has done much to rebuild trust between the two communities, Hutu and Tutsi - and there everywhere in Rwanda are the signs that people are desperate for peace to hold.