The African Holocaust

Twenty years after Rwanda: History of a Genocide
800 000 deaths among Tutsis and moderate Hutus in less than a hundred days. As was to be expected that the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda has left the population decimated? Twenty years later, the reasons, the horror and the consequences of what is remembered as the African Holocaust


"In these countries, genocide is not too important."
Phrase attributed to French President Francois Mitterand by Philip Gourevitch in his book The Reversals of War, The New Yorker, April 26, 1999.

"The international community, together with the African states, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy. We have not acted quickly enough after the killing began. Would not have allowed the refugee camps to become refuges for assassni. Did not we called suffered these crimes by their name: genocide. But we can not change the past. "
Bill Clinton in his speech to the survivors, March 25, 1998

Twenty years later this genocide "not too important" saw the adults become children of his horror, the 20 000 children born from rape than half a million women during the hundred days of ethnic cleansing in which the Hutu militias have killed 800 thousand people between Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Yet, on that 1994 seems to belong to all intents and purposes the last century, there is still much to tell.

The shooting down of the presidential
The official start date of the African Holocaust is April 6, 1994: The plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both Hutus, was shot down. This opens up the dances of death: from Kigali to the most remote areas of this state in Central Africa, slightly larger than England, it kills at a rate of 9000 people per day.

The failure of the international community
It 'a page of mixed blood, that of the genocide in Rwanda, where the international community's failure to protect the population from an organized massacre is reflected in the words of then-President Clinton in Kigali, in 1998: "The international community - is a passage of his speech in front of the survivors - must bear its share of responsibility in this tragedy. "
As Paul reminds Magri, Director of ISPI, "the inaction of Bill Clinton was the product of many factors, not least the failure in Somalia in October 1993." Writes William Ferroggiaro - that the National Security Archives at George Washington Univerity oversaw a research on the documentation provided by the intelligence and diplomatic network to the Clinton administration: "The diplomats, the intelligence agencies, the heads of the defense and senior officers even humanitarian workers, have provided the necessary information in time to the chain of command. "

The "genocide fax"
The reference is to 11 January 1994, four months before killing the presidential plane, the day when the commander of the UN peacekeeping forces, Romeo Dallaire, send what is now known as the fax of genocide. It is this cable, which did not get the desired result, where Dallaire quotes a "senior source" that the Hutu militias Interhamwe are planning "the extermination of the Tutsis." A controversial document, which has never closed the question of what was expected, the genocide in Rwanda.

The source Jean Pierre
Jean Pierre was a reliable source, the source of Dallaire, Abubakar Turatsinze? Half Hutu and half Tutsi, worked on the border of the two fronts of Rwanda and, curiously, until 1993, his career in the Hutu militias Interahammwe was not affected by its ethnic blend. He knew that genocide was being organized, it also supports his wife, Tutsi, at a hearing of the International Tribunal (text, in English, you can read it here): "He told me about the end of 1993 or at 'beginning of 1994, he was told that if he stayed in NRMD should have started to kill me and his mother (Tutis, ed) and so I knew that the massacre would have been against the Tutsis. "Disappointed by the lack of effect of his revelations, it suggests the general Dallaire in his memoirs, Jean Pierre is "back in the ranks of the Interahamwe, furious for our waver, and has become an accomplice of genocide."

The colonial roots of ethnic cleansing
What is genocide in Rwanda that has its roots in the more remote years of colonial rule, when Belgium and the population census gives each resident an identity card with written ethnicity: Hutu, Tutsi, Twa. Brussels leans against the Tutsi minority, traditionally farmers, to the detriment of the Hutu agricultural vocation. The Hutu revolt in 1959 against the Tutsi and against the Belgians: 300 000 Tutsis at that point, they flee to Uganda, becoming a minority even thinner. Two years later, even the Tutsi monarchy took the road of exile.

The independence
When Rwanda became independent, predictably, to take power are Hutus. In 1973 he came to power, General Juvenal Habyarimana, the one who will be killed in 1994, and for twenty years concentrating power in his own hands and those of his party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD).

The invasion of 1990 and the Civil War
Two years earlier, from exile in Uganda, was born the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which collects the majority of the Tutsis who fled Rwanda. And 'the beginning of the carnage, with the Television Radio Milles Collines, which in 1993 began to spread hatred and ethnic cable that comes close to the RPF conquered Kigali.

The peace conference in Arusha
In Tanzania, at the conference in August, Tutsi and moderate Hutu reach an agreement that provides for a reduction of the powers of Habyarimana and the input of the RPF in the transitional government. "A delicate peace - says the director of ISPI, Paolo Magri - The parties agree to a reduction of armaments, but can not guarantee that they do also the militias of the two factions, over which they have control." It 'October, when the UN Security Council, the UN resolution 872 baptizes the UNAMIR, the UN mission in Rwanda to oversee the implementation of the Arusha accords.

The hundred days of genocide
The agreement does not hold, with the shooting down of what still is not called genocide occupies every street and village in Rwanda with its dead blows of machetes and firearms, with the churches that transform into theaters death. The massacre of Gikondo, with hundreds of Tutsis killed in Pallottine Missionary Catholic Church, a few days after that of the Catholic Church Nyarubuye, where Tutsis killed thousands. The radio makes you kill the neighbors, provides instructions every day, even when one of the Kibuye massacre of 12 thousand Tutsis were killed after they had sought refuge in the stadium of Gatwarp, the same day when the dead on the hills of Bisesero over 50 thousand. And is not that on April 18. The day after the UN votes on the withdrawal of 90% of the peacekeeping forces: "While the UN debate on the possibility of intervention - are the words of Magri - genocide is in progress."

And 'when the dead almost does not count more than the French President Mitterrand decided to send 500 thousand men, an operation that will cost to France accused of not doing enough to curb the death squads. If the United States and Belgium have apologized to the world in the years immediately after the genocide, France will wait for 2010, with Sarkozy that he hopes to "leave behind a painful chapter of history."

A story is not over yet
In mid-July 1994, the RPF proclaims the victory after the country has lost a fifth of its population. To date, only 93 of those responsible for the genocide have been indicted by the ICTR, the International Tribunal for Rwanda, thousands are still on the loose.

The doctrine of the responsibility to protect
In his Millennium Report of 2000, the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, recalls the failure of the Security Council in a decisive manner in Rwanda and Kosovo: "If humanitarian intervention is an unacceptable assault on the sovereignty of a state - asks - how should we respond to cases such as Rwanda or Srebrenica, a huge and systematic violation of human rights that offend every definition of humanity? "The response of the international community will come a little later:" Rwanda is the frame in which develop the motivations of the United Nations to develop the doctrine of the responsibility to protect - concludes Magri - to prevent genocide. "A debate that exploded in 2011, when the responsibility to protect is mentioned explicitly in resolution 1973 for the intervention in Libya a few days later, NATO will start bombing Gaddafi's armed forces.