Hutu Blame? The Search for the Truth

¶ … HUTU Blame?

The Search for the Truth in Rwanda, an argumentative essay

There are those who claim that Belgium is the perpetrator in the extermination methods used in Rwanda however, there are those who claim that the Rwandan government itself may be to blame with ties to a loan from the IMF World Bank. Among all the arguments leveled the most likely perpetrator of these crimes can be traced back to the Roman Catholic Church, who was the entity to first set a seal upon the Hutus and Tutsi people. This paper will explore the many arguments set forth in the Rwandan genocide event as to who is to blame for the atrocities that occurred.

A Brief History of the HUTU & TUTSI of Rwanda:

The genocide, which occurred in Rwanda, has been and still is a hotly debated issue. Over 100 years ago Catholic missionaries created a bogus "pedigree" that created a division between the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda. Bitter is a word used to describe the split and this division is blamed on the Roman Catholic Church and Belgian Colonizers. This served the Belgians well and they started on their path of creating an "institution based on this racism against Tutsi people.

The genocide began on approximately April 7, 1994 and went for about 90 days. Rwandans numbering over 1 million were killed and most of them Tutsi people including a few Hutus that held sympathy for the Tutsi. The first thing to look at is the who. Who was helping Rwanda and with what? According to the Work of Eric Toussaint:

"between 1990 and 1994, Rwanda's main arms suppliers were France, Belgium, South Africa, Egypt and China."

Eric Toussaint also tells us that the IMF bank was also helping the Rwandans "loaning them over 49 million dollars at a time when the IMF was preaching austerity to the rest of the world in the beginning of the 1980's" [paraphrased]

Over 100 years ago Catholic missionaries created a bogus "pedigree" that created a division between the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda. Bitter is a word used to describe the split and this division is blamed on the Roman Catholic Church and Belgian Colonizers. This served the Belgians well and they started on their path of creating an "institution based on this racism against Tutsi people. There are those who claim that the United States that was involved as is shown in the following excerpt from Rwanda: The Great Genocide Debate.

"while the British and Americans sought to increase their influence in the region by supporting the RPF. which acted as an Anglo-American proxy."

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However others state that the U.S. was firmly planted on the side against France, Belgium and the Hutu government:

On one side was the Rwandan government, its National guard (boosted with weapons from South Africa and Egypt) and the militia (including the infamous Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi). On the other side stood the RPF, Uganda, Britain, the U.S.A., Belgium, the United Nations, the World Bank and most of the Western media.

II. Who is to Blame?

It has become a well-known fact however, that the Hutu and Tutsi people had warred against each other for many years and that the racial hatred was deep:

From the early 1960's the country was a "racist Hutu dictatorship."

For those claiming that it was the government of Rwandan and the French the consideration should be given to this argument with the information that would cause one to reconsider as stated here:

"By 1990 the RPF was preparing to invade Rwanda with the full knowledge and approval of British intelligence. Belgium then terminated its support for Habyarimana and shifted towards the RPF, allowing it to set up office in Brussels. This left France as Habyarimana's sole Western supporter."

Incorrectly assumed was that France was supporting the Hutu government in light of the statement revealing that:

"In Operation Turquoise, the French forces created a safe haven in the south-west of the country, which provided sanctuary not only to fortunate Tutsi but also to many leading Rwandan government and military officials as well as large numbers of soldiers and militia- -- the very Hutu Power militants, in other words, who had organized and carried out the genocide. Not one single person was arrested or handed over for crimes against humanity. All were allowed to escape across the border into then-Zaire, often still armed. Wholly unrepentant, these genocidaires were soon launching murderous excursions back into Rwanda, beginning a cycle that led, quite foreseeably, to the subsequent bloody conflict that still destabilizes Central Africa."

It has been argued that France pulled out of Rwanda leaving the Hutus to defend themselves.

"The French forces departed Rwanda in December -- signalling the Habyarimana government's complete isolation. A 1000-strong UN force arrived the same month. These troops escorted an RPF battalion into UN premises in Kigali. Rwandan society was completely polarised between government and RPF supporters"

Some individuals blame the annihilation of these people on only the Hutus with the reasoning based on things both historical and as to the facts that surround the genocide. The 'structural adjustments' of the IMF World Bank was the very reason that the Rwandan people, The Hutu and The Tutsi with 85% of their people living well below the line of poverty with over 1/3 of all the children in Rwanda pitifully malnourished.

There are some that argue that this had propelled the people of Rwanda headlong and irrationally to seek a remedy, in fact to do whatever they had to do to survive and keep their families alive but opposing views state that the Hutu group was afraid of losing their power particularly when receving messages that time was limited it is stated that therefore:

Concerned that the Arusha Accords would lead to true power sharing, 'Hutu Power' groups continued to massacre Tutsi civilians. Arusha had the opposite consequences from those intended. In their quest for democracy and ethnic equity, the negotiations persuaded the Akazu that unless it took decisive action, its days in power were numbered. Certain Hutu Power factions found any loss of power unacceptable. The conclusion the Akazu reached led to the planning of all-out extermination of Tutsi and other opponents."

Opponents of that view state that perhaps the Hutu didn't know what was going on, perhaps someone else with a motive had tricked them into doing the killing. In a report on the events in Rwanda it was related that "propaganda" was used as a method of conditioning the Hutus toward accepting and further participating in acts of violence against the Tutsi. Television and radio alike was used for this purpose. In Television was Libre des Mille Collines, a radio television statsion.

"Radio Mille Collines was used to incite hatred, give instructions and justify the killings. More than twenty papers and journals incited hatred toward the Tuttsi. Kangura, one of the leading propaganda papers, suggested that Hutu needed to prepare themselves as the Tutsi were preparing a war that would 'leave no survivors'.

And yet, there is evidence to believe that perhaps the Hutu were involved in the extermination of the Tutsi people. Kangura, a Hutu leader published what he called the "Hutu Ten Commandments. The earliest publishing appears to have been sometime in December 1990. These so-called Hutu Ten Commandments gave as one of the commandments that:

"any Hutu interacting with Tutsi neighbours and friends was a traitor."

The inciting of propaganda went on for quite some time and the violence culminated. The genocide began on the night of April 6, 1994, after the shooting down of a plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, who both died in the crash near Kigali.

Interestingly, April 11th, exactly five days following the death of Habyarimana, in just Kigali there had been Tutsi and Hutu killed approximating 20,000.

" By 11 April, five days after Habyarimana's death, 20,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu had already been killed in Kigali alone. From 12 April the focus of killing was on the Tutsi. Large-scale massacres took place in churches, hospitals, schools and village streets. Tutsi were made to dig large graves and were buried alive."

However, considering the percentages and facts quoted by Jeff Maton, 1982:

Tthe wealthiest 10% of the population took in 20% of rural revenues; in 1992, they took in 41%; in 1993, 45%; and by the beginning of 1994, 51% (Maton, Jeff 1994).

The catastrophic social impact of policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank, and the fall in coffee prices on the global market (a fall linked to the policies of the Bretton Woods institutions and the U.S.A.), played a central role in the Rwandan crisis. The massive social discontent was channelled by the Habyarimana regime into implementing its plan for genocide.

"From the early 1960's the country was a "racist Hutu dictatorship." Caplan 1999

"For several years before 1994, the hostility between the Hutu-run government and the Tutsi exiles in the RPF was shaped by foreign powers. The French and Belgian governments backed the old regime to protect their interests," (Caplan, 2004)

The war against the Tutsis was actually a war against the RPF and perceived RPF supporters, in the face of its Western-supported invasion. That civilians were largely the object of attack does not contradict the political rationale behind the fighting.

While import prices soared, in response to IMF insistence, the price at which coffee was bought from local producers was frozen. As a result, hundreds of thousands of small coffee farmers were ruined (Maton, 1994). Alongside the poorest sectors of the urban population, these destitute farmers became a permanent reservoir of recruits for the Interahamwe militia and the army.

The measures imposed by the World Bank and the IMF as part of the SAP included: increased taxes on consumption and lower business taxes; increased direct taxes on low-income households through a reduction in tax allowances for large families; and cuts in lending programmes for small farmers.

Differing opinions hold that it was not the Hutu alone but the Hutu and the IMF World Bank. The World Bank and IMF, inclusive with SAP:

"increased taxes on consumption and lower business taxes; increased direct taxes on low-income households through a reduction in tax allowances for large families; and cuts in lending programmes for small farmers. . The World Bank and the IMF sent several delegations of experts during this period; they highlighted the positive features of Habyarimana's austerity policies but nonetheless threatened to suspend credit unless military spending stopped increasing. The Rwandan authorities manoeuvered their way around these restrictions in order to hide rising military spending..

However, there is another possible reason stated by Reverend Peter Hammond:

The Tutsi were Christians, and the Hutus are primarily anti-Christians; Hammond said there were three operative anti-Christian forces: 1) voodooists / animists 2) Marxists, who worked up the resentment against the Tutsis, who, as a result of their habits of clean-living, saving, investment, and so on, built up more material and financial success than the Hutus and 3) Islamists.

Melvern who doesn't hold back gave detail to a list of external actors:

France's support of the Habyarimana regime;

Uganda's role as a source of combat training and experience for the Tutsi army-in-exile,

the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF);

Egypt's channeling of armaments to Rwandan government forces through one of its diplomats, Boutros-Ghali -- the man who would later serve as the UN Secretary General during the genocide;

American stonewalling on the issue of armed intervention; even Britain's inattention to the crisis comes under scrutiny.

As the Tutsi were being decimated in Rwanda, Tutsi exiles living in Uganda felt the time for action was at hand. Calling themselves the "Rwandan Patriotic Front," the rebels entered the country from the north and advanced swiftly toward the capital. They had had a running battle with the Hutu ever since the country gained independence in 1962 and democratic elections had put the more numerous Hutu in power. Now, pushing with the ferocity of the dispossessed, the exiled Tutsi overran the country and by July 18 had taken over the capital and declared victory.

However there are those who claim that the Western powers are the ones responsible according to Reuters news Report

KIGALI (Reuters) - Western powers bear criminal responsibility for Rwanda's 1994 genocide because they did not care enough to stop it, the Canadian commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force at the time said Tuesday.

"The international community didn't give one damn for Rwandans because Rwanda was a country of no strategic importance," Romeo Dallaire told a conference in Kigali marking the 10th anniversary of the slaughter of some 800,000 Rwandans. "It's up to Rwanda not to let others forget they are criminally responsible for the genocide," said the retired general, singling out France, Britain and the United States.

However other sources state that:

On 26 September 1990, while Habyarimana and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda were attending the World Summit on Children in America, Rwandan NRA officers and ordinary soldiers began leaving their posts. A large troop movement towards the Rwandan border raised no alarm. The soldiers openly bade farewell to their families and friends. They traveled with their weapons for two days and assembled in Kabale soccer stadium, just north of the Rwandan border, about 200 miles from Kampala. Their weaponry included land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, 60 millimetre mortars, recoilless canons and Katyusha rocket-launchers. According to Western diplomats, international military observers,

"The months of the genocide happened to coincide with Rwanda's turn to fill one of the temporary seats on the Security Council. Throughout those 3 months, the representative of the government executing the genocide continued to take that seat, including during discussions on Rwanda." (Presentation to the Stockholm International Forum on Truth, Justice and Reconciliation, 23 April 2002 By Gerald Caplan

By the time of the genocide in 1994, media in the West often portrayed Rwanda as consisting of warring tribes. But this was not so. (Source Rwanda 10)

It is the contention of DeSouza that it is very true that the Hutu and Tutsi were warring tribes and had been for many years. According to DeSouza the in 1959 the situation became very tense and the Tutsi started killing any Hutu that they thought would stand against the Tutsi rule. Francois Karera, a senior politician with the former Hutu Government who is now in exile in the eastern Congo, was teaching in 1959 when the first Hutu rising took place. He tells DeSouza that at one time he was being hunted down by the Tutsi for attempting to achieve a higher education instead of being a farmer. More than 20,000 were displaced of the Tutsi group and Rwanda held elections in 1962 after having become independent. During the years from 1961 to 1966, the Inyenzi also known as the cockroaches or the Tutsi military launched 10 attacked from the countries of Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Zaire. Accroding to DeSouza the reusults were those of "severe relation from the Hutu in power. During 1963 the Inyenzi attacked killing 10,000 Tutsi. The same old story repeats in 1973 when on suspicion of a coup involvement many more Tutsif were killed.

Conclusion:

It is quite apparent that the U.S., France, Belgium, Uganda, as well as the Hutu, RPF and many other entities were involved in the Rwandan genocide atrocities. It was somewhat late breaking news that poor little nuns had been implicated. It leaves one to wonder what these two little nuns could have done against all of the countries and powers involved in the genocide. It will be a long time coming in the years of history before the complete truth is known.

The landmark trial of two Benedictine nuns, a university professor and a presidential aide will focus on the killing of hundreds of Tutsis hiding at a Roman Catholic convent and health centre near the southern city of Butare. The trial is due to begin on Tuesday in Belgium -- Rwanda's former colonial power -- under a 1993 Belgium law empowering Belgian criminal courts to hear cases of alleged human rights violations regardless of where the acts were committed.

Bibliography:

DeSouza, Leo J. (1997) Washington Monthly: Assigning blame in Rwanda: how to break the cycle of revenge in ethnic conflict Washington Monthly [Online] located at: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n9_v29/ai_19757663/pg_2

Toussaint, Eric (2004) "Rwanda: The Financiers of the Genocide" [Online] available at: http://www.cadtm.org/article.php3?id_article=611

TOUSSAINT, Eric. 1996. -- Nouvelles revelations sur les ventes d'armes --, 2

p., CADTM 19, Bruxelles, 1996

TOUSSAINT, Eric. 1997. -- Rwanda: Les creanciers du genocide --, 5 p., in Politique, La Revue, Paris, avril 1997.

WOODWARD, David. 1996. The IMF, the World Bank and Economic Policy in Rwanda: Economic, Social and Political Implications, Oxfam, Oxford, 1996,

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Mukagasana, Yolande (2004) "Rebuilding Rwanda" Rwanda 10 [Online] located at: http://www.rwanda10.org/genocide/

Caplan, Gerald "Why we must never forget the Rwandan Genocide" [Online] avaliable at:

http://www.peace.ca/afwhy_we_must_never_forget_the_rwa.htm

RWANDA: 1994: chronicle of a genocide foretold.

Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire: June 22, 2003; Martin, Guy

Commentary: not a just war, just a war - NATO's humanitarian bombing mission.(Human Rights, Gender Politics & Postmodern Discourses)