Rwandan Genocide and Reparations - Essay Example

Rwandan Genocide and Reparations About twenty years after the Rwandan genocide, the event continues to elicit heated debates among various schools of thought. The major concerns have revolved around the scale of the violence, causes and the role of the international community. This paper gives an account of the Rwandan genocide and the subsequent reparations. It further evaluates the role that France played in the genocide from the perspective of its knowledge, capability ad involvement. Introduction The Rwandan genocide is ranked among the most severe mass murder cases in the period after World War II. This genocide began after President Habyarimana’s plane was fatally attacked on April 6 1994 at Kigali Airport. According to Kroslak (2007), this went on until the Rwandan Patriotic Front, RPF, dominated by the Tutsis defeated the genocidal regime made up of militia and government forces in July of the same year. The extremist Hutus killed a moderate number of Hutus and more than 800,000 Tutsis. Historical Background The Tutsis and the Hutus are two peoples sharing a common past. The initial inhabitants of Rwanda raised cattle. Soon, those who owned the most of these cattle came to be referred to as the Tutsi while the rest were called Hutu (Kroslak, 2007). Then, categories could easily be changed through cattle acquisition or marriage. However, when Europeans came to colonise Rwanda, Tutsi and Hutu took on a racial perspective. The first to colonise Rwanda were the Germans, who considered the Tutsis to have more European traits such as tallness and lighter skin therefore giving them positions of responsibilities. The departure of Germans after World War I saw Belgians taking over, further solidifying this categorisation by imposing a rule for everyone to acquire an identity card labelling them as Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, the latter being a minority group of Rwandese hunters and gatherers. Belgians allocated leadership posts to Tutsis despite them constituting only 10% of the population against Hutu’s 90%. This caused the Hutu to be upset. During the struggle for independence, the Belgians switched and put the Hutu majority in charge of the government. The Tutsis got upset (Rombouts, 2004). This animosity between the two groups persisted for decades. Early in the 1990s, the Hutu extremists drawn from Rwanda’s political elite attributed the increased political, social and economic pressures in the country to the entire Tutsi population. Furthermore, the Tutsi civilians were accused of sympathising with the RPF, a rebel group dominated by the Tutsis. According to United Human Rights Council, UHRC (2014), the then president, Habyarimana and his allies used political manoeuvres and propaganda to further divide the Tutsi and the Hutu by the end of 1992. With the memory of years of repression by the Tutsi minority, the Hutu feared and resented this minority group. The Genocide On April 6 1994, President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, sparking violence almost immediately. Under the pretext of war, the Hutu extremists set their plans in motion aimed at destroying the entire Tutsi population (Rombouts, 2004). Political leaders deemed to have the ability of taking charge of the situation and high profile opponents of these extremists were immediately eliminated. Tutsis and those suspected to be Tutsi were killed, a family at a time, on roadblocks set up during the genocide and in their homes. They were killed in schools, hospitals and churches, leaving corpses exposed to elements as the extremists did not allow them to be buried. Women were brutally and systematically raped. UHRC (2014) estimates 200,000 people to have participated in the genocide. In the subsequent weeks, 800,000 people, estimated to comprise about 75% of the Tutsi population and Hutu sympathisers were murdered. Due to the perceived cost of bullets, machetes, clubs and other hand weapons were used. A majority were first exposed to extreme torture before being murdered. Some 3 million people had been displaced as they sought refuge in other countries. UHCR (2014) attributes this genocide to a conscious choice by the elite seeking to propagate hatred and fearing to keep its power. This privileged but small group set up the majority against the minority so as to counter the rising political opposition in the country. From the success of RPF in the battlefield, these power holders transformed the ethnic division strategy into genocide. With this, they aimed at reinstating the Hutu solidarity under their leadership. The genocide ended when RPF defeated the Hutu extremist regime and took control of the country. The RPF was made up of trained military personnel who had been on exile, a majority in Uganda (Kroslak, 2007). All this time, the international community and the United Nations watched without taking any steps to end the killings (UHRC, 2014). When RPF had the full control of the country in mid-July of 1994, the 100-day genocide stopped with Paul Kagame taking over as the president. The Reparations Recognising that it had a duty to help its needy citizens, the Rwandan government launched a National Assistance Fund for Needy Victims of Genocide and Massacres Committed in Rwanda, FARG from October 1990 to December 1994. Having been established in 1998, the fund aimed at providing assistance in health and rehabilitation, income generating projections, housing and education. Whereas monetary compensation would not be sufficient to ever repair the harm inflicted on survivors, Rombouts (2004) observes that a majority of survivors still consider it as a critical component of reparation, hence the need for the government to act in this line. It has been noted that without concrete material solutions, commitment to unity and integration of the victims back to the societies could remain elusive. Another important aspect of Rwanda’s reparation has been effective and equal access to justice. Acknowledging that victims ranked social needs among their priority needs, the government of Rwanda has been keen to provide social justice to victims. Even with this, there has been a delicate balance to ensure that in search for justice, national reconciliation is also achieved. According to Rombouts (2004), these victims’ demands for justice enable them to reconcile with the perpetrators. They do not show confidence in the Gacaca as this to them favours amnesty for truth-telling and not justice. Gacaca are traditional dispute-resolution mechanisms that help ease the congestion in prisons and courts. Justice using other means would promote individual reconciliation as opposed to the wholesome social reconciliation, the former being more critical to victims. Even so, social reconciliation through approaches such as the Gacaca also plays a critical role because when combined with the individual reconciliation, it causes a long lasting reconciliation in the country. France’s Role France’s role has been evaluated through its knowledge, capability and involvement in the Rwandan genocide. On their role through knowledge, the French are said to have ignored early signs of the genocide. They instead chose to align themselves with the argument of the violence having been a result of civil war triggered by the 1990 invasion of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, RPF (Kroslak, 2007). Evidence for this includes cables collected from French diplomats that showed ethnic relations deteriorating. The cables hinted that the diplomats were aware of the widespread use of anti-Tutsi propaganda by the Kigali regime so as to portray the civil war from an ethnic perspective to help them conceal the actual political power struggle that was on-going. Other cables from the French military evidenced the knowledge of the Tutsi death lists. There was first-hand information on systematic massacres of the Tutsis early in the genocide. Neither did the representatives of France in the UN Security Council share this knowledge nor did the government of France react to the increasing genocide evidence. On involvement, attention would be drawn to the closeness of France and Rwanda leading to the indifference on massacres before the 1994 genocide. France became a strong military ally of Rwanda. Whereas France appeared non-partisan in the diplomatic and political sphere, its military arm fully backed the Habyarimana regime. Kroslak (2007) gives evidence of the French cooperation with the Rwandan government, including training of its police, army and presidential guards, forming anti-terrorism units and supplying weapons. They had stronger ties with extremist parties such as Defence of the Republic, CDR more than with those seeking to promote democracy. The French troops participated in patrolling war zones, watching over the airport, organising ammunition supply and artillery positioning and taking care of army helicopters. Evidence indicates that the involvement of the French was more than just logistical support. Capability involves the possibility of France to have intervened to suppress or prevent the genocide. Considering the military capability, the French could make use of their influence on the Rwandan regime to provide assistance. They could collaborate with United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, UNAMIR during the period towards the end of 1993 to uncover the cache of arms with civilians and protect the exposed citizens. Even so, the political and diplomatic capability of the French would have been so significant in averting the Rwandan genocide. The French would have utilised the opportunity of the closeness with the regime to prevent the genocide, especially since Rwanda was heavily dependent militarily, financially and economically on France. They should have made their aid to the country conditional, based on them putting an end to massacres and repression. The French also failed to make Habyarimana’s participation in the Arusha peace process conditional to see him reconcile with the opposing parties. In fact, he did not participate in any of the peace initiatives in Arusha (Kroslak, 2007). Thus, the French failed to use their influence to avert the Rwandan genocide. Conclusion The 1994 Rwandan genocide that lasted 100 days has its history back to the pre-colonial period where the Hutu majority resisted to be led by the Tutsi minority, the latter being favoured by various regimes for leadership roles. It was an ethnic conflict that saw the Hutu extremists kill over 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu sympathisers. The international community has been criticised for not preventing and stopping the genocide with some like France going to an extent of being involved. Having risen from the dark moments, reparation efforts have been adopted to reintegrate the Rwandan society back together and forge forward. References Kroslak, D. (2007). The role of France in the Rwandan genocide. London: Hurst and Company. Rombouts, H. (2004). Victim organisations and the politics of reparation: A case-study on Rwanda. Mortsel, Belgium: Intersentia nv. United Human Rights Council. (2014). Genocide in Rwanda. 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