The Genocide was the product of order, authoritarianism, indoctrination and meticulous administration. The Highest ranking génocidaire was Froduald Karamira. One of most extensive massacre was in Butare by Théodore Sindikubwabo on the 19^th April 1994.

Thousands of children were abandoned along the route of flight by their own parents. The birds that boiled over massacre sites marked a national map against the sky, flagging the ‘no-go’ zones for people who were fleeing. As the RPF advanced through the country (and so UNAMIR) they would shoot all the dogs because they were eating the dead.

During the genocide the Church leadership was divided. Father Wenceslav for example, provided the killers with a list of Tutsi refugees at his Church, attended massacres without interfering and even sabotaged UNAMIR’s efforts to evacuate refugees and coerced refugee girls to have sex with him. A message from the 15^th May apparition of the Virgin Mary broadcast on the radio reported the Virgin saying that President Habyarimana was with her in heaven thus giving a message of support for the killing.

RPF declared that it would form a new national government guided by the power-sharing principles of the Arusha Accords. Thereafter, Rwanda’s national army would be the Rwandese Patriotic Army.

At the end of June 1993, the Security Council established UNOMUR (UN Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda) to monitor movements across the borders of Rwanda and Uganda and verify transit of arms. UN troops, however, were particularly stretched (in Somalia, Bosnia etc). According to MacQueen (see References), "about 70,000 military personnel from seventy countries were engaged in seventeen operations world-wide".

The UN mission led by Boutros-Ghali (Secretary General) at the Arusha accords was merely in the capacity of observer, had no input although the accords assigned a significant role to the UN. The UN were expected to provide observation and peacekeeping presence to maintain public order and safeguard the distribution of humanitarian aid, be responsible for the disarmament and monitoring the peace process.

The accords (4^th August 1993) aimed to establish a Broad-Based Transitional Government; disarmament of opposing military forces; and the elections of a new Government organised by the BBTG before the end of 1995. It was an over-ambitious plan that took in no consideration the financial and military constraints of the UN.

On the 5^th October 1993 the Security Council approves UNAMIR (UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda). This came two days after the death of 18 American soldiers in the UN operation in Somalia. The force comprised troops from Belgium, Ghana and Bangladesh and was very under-equipped. Dallaire sought agreement to use force to prevent violence against civilians but received no response. UNAMIR developed a good intelligence network that resulted in the fax of January 1994 alerting to the danger of violence.

On the 20^th April 1994, after a period of consultation between the DPKO (Department of Peace Keeping Operations), Jacques-Roger Booh Booh (UN Special Representative) and General Dallaire, the Secretary General presented the Security Council with 3 options:

1. UNAMIR could be massively reinforced and given enforcement mandate under Chapter VII
2. Reduce to small mission of 270 under Dallaire to act as mediator
3. End operation and withdraw completely.

Council chose option No.2. However, this option included the possibility of reviewing the force level and mandate of the operation depending on developments. It was this that allowed Boutros-Ghali, a week later, to write to the Security Council and point to the fact that there was now a full-scale conventional conflict between the RPF and the Hutu army and that the Council should reconsider its position.

On the 11^th May Boutros-Ghali presents a non-paper (not official document) asking for a 5500-force to provide protection, ensure aid deliveries and secure borders. It followed a formal report. The US tried to stop the initiative by imposing the PDD (see below).

The Council ended accepting Boutros-Ghali’s recommendations and agreed UNAMIR II.

Most governments were not ready to commit their forces, so more than 2 months later only 550 troops were found.

The US played an important part in letting the genocide happen, however the American position was supported by the other permanent members of the Security Council. According to Boutros-Ghali, "the behaviour of the Security Council was shocking: it meekly followed the United States’ lead in denying the reality of the genocide."

Central to the US’ strategy were two elements: the word genocide, and the DPP.

On the 11^th of December 1946, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared genocide a crime under international law. On the 9^th December 1948, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 260A(III), the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which obliged "Contracting Parties" to "undertake to prevent and to punish…acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

The US had signed the Genocide Convention in 1989. They avoided using the word genocide so to be under obligation to intervene. They even gave a new reading according to which the Convention merely ‘enabled’ preventive action. The Security Council avoided passing a resolution containing the word genocide. The US tried to delay intervention as much as possible and, as mentioned, tried to impose a ridiculously expensive lease on armour to the coalition of African nations willing to intervene.

The US administration also adopted the PDD (Presidential Decision Directive) on the 3^rd May 1994, establishing that any American participation and support was dependent on a list of criteria including national interests of the United States.

The American unwillingness to intervene was adequately matched by the rest of the Security Council members. A week after UNAMIR was slashed, other countries such as Czechoslovakia, New Zealand and Spain began pushing for the return of UN troops whilst the US demanded control of the mission.

Alongside Habyarimana’s Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) were French Paratroopers although expressly forbidden by a 1975 agreement. Mitterand and his son Jean-Christophe, an arm dealer and commissar of African affairs in the French Foreign Ministry profited by the illegal drug trade developed in Rwanda. France funnelled huge shipments of armaments to Rwanda right through the killings in 1994; French officers and troops served as Rwandan auxiliaries. France’s own ex-President, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, accused the French command of ‘protecting some of those who had carried out the massacres". They would look for opportunities to show their ‘humanitarian’ mission in front of the TV cameras.

From the moment they arrived and wherever they went, the French supported and preserved the same local political leaders who had presided over the genocide and regarded the RPF as the enemy. (Gourevitch)

At the end of June 1994, France proposed to lead its own multinational force and sought authorisation under the terms of Chapter VII. France would bear most of its costs. However, France had always been close to the Hutu regime. Its intervention was thus seen with great suspicion by the RPF who were making great progress and were coming close to winning.

It was also creating a situation where there were two separate military missions, and where the UN mission had no powers under Chapter VII whilst the French one did. It also meant that the French troops part of UNAMIR withdrew.

Operation Turquoise consisted of 2,500 troops to create and control a ‘humanitarian protection zone’. By the time of its deployment, the RPF were winning (the RPF declared a cease-fire on the 18^th July 1994).

Most Hutus moved to Burundi and Congo establishing a presence wherever the UN set up a refugee camp. The camps were extremely politicised and militarised. The leaders of the ex-FAR created an assortment of new political front organisations, the Rassemblement Democratique pour la Retour (RDR). RDR agents micromanaged the camps, extorting monthly taxes (cash or food rations) from every refugee family in Congo and intimidating refugees who wanted to go home.

The birth rate in the camps was close to the limit of human possibility, breeding more Hutus was Hutu Power policy coercing the impregnation of any female of reproductive age. The profits from refugee commerce went in many directions, large part through the political rackets into the purchase of arms and ammunitions. The ex-FAR and interahamwe maintained a regime of terror in the camps, used women and children as human shield during battle.

The Hutu génocidaires formed a power-base in the refugee camps and were obviously not willing to let go. International relief agencies, on the other hand, were finally seen as doing something although in practise they were protecting génocidaires. The international community kept on pouring money into Congo to run the camps, but did nothing to hold accountable Hutu génocidaires and their backers, such as Congo’s President Mobutu Sese Seko.

On the other hand the RPA (ex-RPF), eager to get the refugees back to Rwanda and try those responsible for genocide, would use force to move people out of the camps. They also exceeded in horrific episodes of violence against unarmed people.

In April 1995 the RPF sought to shut the Kibeho camp by force to speed the return of the refugees and arrest génocidaires. The RPF opened fire on the refugees, 4,000 people shot.

Partly as a result of this, at the beginning of June 1995, Boutros-Ghali proposed that UNAMIR should be engaged in confidence building efforts to safeguard the return of refugees. March 1996 UN peacekeeping mission was completed.

Thousands of Rwandans from the camps returned to Rwanda during the first few weeks of fighting in Congo, but by early November the great mass of them (three quarters of a million people) were assembled around the Mugunga camp, ten miles west of Goma. They had been forced there by the ex-FAR and the interahamwe. After capturing Goma, Kabila (RPF) declared a cease-fire and called the international community to get the refugees out of his way so that he could continue his advance westward.

Mugunga was inaccessible. What was needed was not a relief mission but a rescue mission, because the non-combatants at Mugunga were held hostages as a human shield. Nobody knew what condition the people gathered there were in. Relief agency press officers assured reporters that the refugees had to be suffering from mass starvation and cholera, although they were there for only few weeks. The Security Council started to draw up a plan to deploy a humanitarian, military intervention force but it was proscribed by its mandate to use force to confront, disarm or overwhelm Hutu Power militias. When the Interahamwe fled, aid workers found refugees with at least few days’ rations and in strength. In four days, 600,000 Rwandans marched back across the border from Goma.

In 1996 more than 70% of the Tutsis in Kigali and Butare and in some rural areas of eastern Rwanda, were said to be newcomers. Only those returning from outside would get homes. Those who had not left Rwanda were accused of having collaborated. Hutus opposed to Hutu Power were targeted. The army has taken control of the government.

Hutus are 80% of the population but they are excluded from any role in the public administration of the state. Their candidate, Fuastin Twagiramungu, who was standing against Kagame in the August 2003 elections, had no possibility of giving any speeches or having any rallies.

Rwanda has occupied eastern Congo for four years and is taking action against the League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (Liprodhor). Rwanda claims that Liprodhor "supports genocidal ideas". In reality, since well before the 1994 genocide, Liprodhor defended the rights of all Rwandans and sought international action to avert the impending genocide. In the past decade, it has monitored genocide trials, pressing for justice to be both swift and fair (Observer, 25^th July 2004).

Gourevitch, Philip We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. Stories from Rwanda.

MacQueen, Norrie (2002) UN Peacekeeping in Africa since 1960

©2004 Francesca E S Montemaggi