URL: http://kanga.ifrc.org/utv/main1.html
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The roots of crisis: race, caste and violence in Rwanda
Geographers, in Afric maps
With savage pictures fill their gaps;
And o'er inhabitable downs
Place elephants for want of towns.
Mapping Africa has come far since Jonathan Swift penned these scornful
lines for 18th century travellers but ethnic landmarks can still be missed.
Certainly, a consensus on Rwanda's roots has yet to be found.
It depends on who you talk to, but many would say the Batwa - "Twa
people" - were the original settlers of Rwanda. From as early as 2000
BC, the diminutive, wide-faced people who today make up less than 1%
of the population are said to have moved into the mountainous country
around the Central African lakes.
As hunters and gatherers the forests provided a natural habitat for a
naturally reticent and retiring people. Until 1000 AD it remained their
domain, then a fresh migration began to displace them. The newcomers,
it is said, were stocky, industrious farmers, the Hutu, and they had other
plans. The volcanic earth was dark and rich and they set about clearing it
for cultivation.
For 500 years the Hutu came, wave after wave, bringing with them a
clan-based society of monarchies. They dominated the Twa but would in
turn be dominated, by a taller, willowy race of people, the Tutsi, who
arrived from the Horn of Africa with lyre-horned cattle.
From the 16th century, a Tutsi elite ran Rwanda with a Tutsi monarch
and a feudal caste system which tied Hutu "clients" to Tutsi "patrons."
The 1894 Berlin Congress carved up the continent and gave Rwanda and
Urundi (present-day Burundi) to German East Africa. They and the
Belgians, who inherited the territory under a League of Nations mandate
following World War One, only increased Tutsi influence in a policy of
indirect administration. The Belgians banned Hutus from positions of
authority, Catholic missionaries endorsed the notion of Tutsi superiority.
Ethnic division deepened and patronage became exploitation and repression.
The 1950s, though, brought an abrupt about face. After World War Two
Europeans were shy of ethnic elitism, and independence loomed. Church
and colonialists abandoned the Tutsi and sought reforms as patrons of the
Hutu.
Hutus demanded widespread change, an end to caste prejudice. Tutsis
resisted, and in 1959 after the mysterious death of the reform-minded
Tutsi king events spiralled out of control. Rwanda's communal violence
had begun. Thousands of Tutsi homes burned, Hutu leaders died in
reprisals, bloodletting and butchery spread.
Figures vary from 10,000 to 100,000 on how many Tutsi died before the
Hutu were confirmed in power and Rwandan independence was granted
on 1 July 1962. Others estimate between 120,000 and half a million fled.
Throughout the 1960s ethnic hatred simmered dangerously, for Tutsi
fighters called Inyenzi (cockroaches) struck at the new state from bases
in neighbouring Uganda and what was now the Tutsi-controlled Kingdom of
Burundi. Nor did Hutu-Tutsi tension ease as guerrilla warfare gradually
ceased. Ethnic repression and murder of Hutus in Burundi inspired
reprisals in Rwanda.
Unrest grew with internal political disputes between north and south of
the country, and northern paranoia over supposed Tutsi influence. In
July 1973 a coup d'etat brought a northerner, army chief of staff Juvenal
Habyarimana, to power. He sought, he said, national unity and made
Rwanda a one-party state.
Habyarimana achieved much through the 1970s and 1980s. Infrastructure
and housing underwent great improvement, the civil service was
modernised and a clean water supply provided for most of the nation. His
government's policies brought aid money flowing, although much was spent
upon ill-advised, insecure and short-sighted projects, sometimes imposed
upon Rwanda by donors.
Possibly the most notorious was the pyrethrum fiasco, in which massive
northern deforestation made way for fields of the daisy-like flower which
can be processed into weed killer. Backed by the European Development
Fund, the project was in trouble almost immediately because of
competition from tougher but less environmentally-friendly synthetics.
A pyrethrum comeback in this greener age cannot compensate for the
treeless reaches of the north which never produced the hard currency
Rwanda desperately needed.
The country was unprepared for the plethora of problems soon to be
poured upon it. Basic to many was the sheer size of the population. In
1940 Rwanda had two million people and predictions of 10 million by
2002. It is small, at 26,000 square kilometres about the size of Belgium,
but in 1991 Rwanda was Africa's most densely populated country, with
a population of 7.15 million people growing by 3.1% annually. With half
the Rwandans under 15 it seemed the birth rate could only go on rising.
Food production was slowing as dramatically as the population was
increasing. A man's land shrank, for as sons inherited they divided the
plots into ever smaller patches. Soil was exhausted; there was no time to
leave it fallow. There was plant disease, an erratic climate and primitive
farming methods.
In the late 1980s Rwanda's foreign residents were speculating on a
catastrophe before the end of the century. Would it be famine, which
struck the Rwandan southwest in 1989, or AIDS with a 33% infection
rate in urban areas in 1990? Bloody conflict arrived first.
A political and economic crisis was overwhelming President Habyarimana.
The international market price of coffee collapsed in 1989, devastating
the Rwandan economy because the high-quality beans grown on volcanic
soil produced 79% of export earnings.
Faced with mounting debts and a growing dependence on foreign finance,
Habyarimana saw no alternative but to accept an International Monetary
Fund (IMF) structural adjustment programme, which would freeze
government salaries and devalue the Rwandan franc by 67%.
With internal dissent over corruption, pressure to deal with Rwandan
refugees in surrounding countries wishing to return home, demands for
economic and political reform, Habyarimana loosened his grip on power by
conceding to multi-party politics and separating his party, the National
Republican Movement for Development, from the state.
For the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), chafing for Tutsi outside Rwanda
to be allowed home, it was insufficient. For so long the government had
declined to allow refugees to return en masse and, distrustful, they
interpreted the President's move as a diversionary tactic. There was no
point talking. On 1 October 1990, the RPF's military forces invaded
Rwanda from Uganda.
The invasion of 1990 soon became a guerrilla war. With French, Belgian
and Zairian support, the government army stood firm against a force of
maybe 7,000 rebels, many of them tough troops with years of experience
in Uganda's National Resistance Army.
As the conflict wore on into 1992, Human Rights Watch/Africa alleges
that the Rwandan authorities began to distribute firearms to Habyarimana
supporters and newly-formed militias, the now infamous Interahamwe
("those who attack together") and the Impuzamugambi ("those with a
single purpose"). Although a cease-fire did emerge from talks in Arusha,
Tanzania in July 1992, the conflict erupted once more in early 1993 after
Hutu extremists excluded from government vented their frustration in the
killing of opponents and Tutsis in northern Ruhengeri and Gisenyi.
An RPF assault displaced hundreds of thousands of people and advanced
to within 32 kilometres of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. A peace accord in
March 1993 left observers sceptical. Meanwhile, the number of displaced
Rwandans had reached 900,000.
In a muddy hillside camp on the outskirts of Kigali where Rwanda Red
Cross workers sought to help 70,000 people living in grim huts fashioned
from branches, leaves and plastic, a Hutu woman described how she had
fled for the third time in as many years. As she had run from a
displaced persons' camp with her five children, a bullet had killed the
baby on her back. "This place is worse than the last one," she said.
"They stop shooting for a while but they always begin again."
The world had seen nothing yet. Come August 1993 the media would be
covering the Arusha accords, the peace agreement which should have led
to a broad-based transitional government, including the RPF, and
democratic elections 22 months later. But Burundi exploded first.
Meanwhile, says Human Rights Watch, the Rwandan Presidential Guard and
other elements of the Rwandan army were teaching the militias "how to
kill more efficiently." In late 1993 and early 1994, it alleges, groups
of 300 men at a time were being sent for intensive military training to
a camp in the north-eastern region of Mutara, and more and more weapons
were being distributed.
In Kigali a private radio station owned by Habyarimana associates began
to broadcast a hate campaign against Tutsis and the Hutu opposition. By
year's end this Radio Television Libre des Milles Collines was targeting
individuals, saying they were traitors and enemies who deserved to die.
The UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was seriously
concerned. The first contingent of UN troops reached Rwanda in October
1993 after he persuaded the Security Council that their presence could
greatly aid the implementation of the Arusha Accords. By December the
United Nations Assistance Mission For Rwanda (UNAMIR) had a
1,200-man force from 19 countries.
By March 1994, with the force more than doubled, Boutros-Ghali could
only report the security situation deteriorating.
Rwanda's massacres were planned well in advance. On 6 April 1994, a
plane carrying President Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamina
of Burundi was shot down over Kigali on the eve of more talks with the
RPF. The Hutu military blamed the RPF, everything was ready, the
slaughter began. "Within an hour of the plane crash," insists Human
Rights Watch, "the Presidential Guard had set up roadblocks around
Kigali and had begun liquidating key members of the moderate
opposition." Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana was an early victim.
Up to a million people, mostly Tutsis, were slaughtered by extremists
with Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militiamen well to the fore. The
UN response had been to reduce its peace-keeping force to less than 450
men; there was nothing to stem the carnage. Even recognised sanctuaries
were no protection. Human Rights Watch reports that in Kibungo in the
south-east the Interahamwe took four hours to slaughter 2,800 people in
a church centre using grenades, machine guns, machetes and rockets.
Rwandan Red Cross volunteers died too. In an attack on an orphanage in
the southern town of Butare 21 Tutsi children were slain, along with 13
Red Cross volunteers who tried to protect them. Another 30 Rwanda Red
Cross volunteers were murdered in Kigali in the largest single loss of
life in the history of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent
Movement.
The violence put an end to the Federation's relief operation for
Burundian refugees in Rwanda. With the Rwandan Red Cross, it had been
responsible for the distribution of food and relief to the entire
refugee population. It remained on stand-by in Burundi, Tanzania and
Zaire.
It was soon facing the largest and fastest exodus anyone had ever seen,
anywhere. The RPF was on the offensive, and heavy fighting sent a wave
of humanity scurrying for safety. Between 28 and 29 April, 250,000
Rwandans flooded into Tanzania over a corpse-filled Kagera river.
In the coming months as the victorious RPF advanced and took Kigali,
and the government forces fled, scenes of distraught and exhausted
Hutus leaving their homeland would be repeated over and over, and with
ever greater numbers. Close to a quarter of a million went south to
Burundi, regardless of a worsening situation there. A massive westward
movement of people also occurred.
The French military established a security zone in south-western Rwanda
where 800,000 people would eventually find shelter but by July 19 up to
one million Rwandans had crossed the Zairian border into Goma, and
250,000 had made it to Bukavu.
From Goma, Robert Denny, a Federation information delegate, informed
Geneva headquarters: "We are not talking about some refugees but a
nation moving, leaving behind districts completely empty."
Three months later most of them were still abroad. Indeed rather than
returning as relative peace was restored in Rwanda, more were trickling
outwards. Propaganda, rumour of retribution at home, killing of Hutus
by Tutsis, and the terror of Hutu militiamen in refugee camps whose
interests are best served by a "nation" in exile, seemed destined to
prolong the tragedy.
The world was familiar with massive and long-term refugee problems.
Said a UNHCR field officer in Tanzania: "Things can change rapidly but
these people could be here for one, two, three years. I can't help
comparing it to the Palestinian situation."
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