Who killed who in Rwanda?

Twenty years after the genocide in Rwanda in which up to a million people were murdered in 100 days, the Rwandan government wants to prosecute the BBC over a television programme which challenges the accepted view of what happened.

The conventional wisdom is that Hutu extremists massacred mainly Tutsis as well as some Hutu moderates. The programme, Rwanda: the Untold Story, includes contributions from an academic who argues that there were only about 500,000 Tutsis in the country, and that 300,000 survived, so most of the victims must have been Hutus.

Prof Allan Stam paints a picture of a general breakdown in law and order, and says most of the victims may have been Hutus. When he presented his findings, the government rejected them, and he was asked to leave the country.

The genocide was sparked by the mysterious shooting down of the president's private jet. The programme includes allegations that Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, was behind the attack, but he has always denied such allegations, and blamed Hutu extremists.

Genocide begets genocide?

The Rwandan government’s threat to withdraw its 3,400 personnel serving with the UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (see my blog of Sept 3) seems to have had the desired effect. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon quickly jetted into the Rwandan capital, Kigali, to tell President Paul Kagame that he was “disappointed” about the leaking of a UN report accusing Rwandan forces of murdering tens of thousands of Hutus in the Congo.

A team from the UN’s office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights has catalogued more than 600 incidents, and it claims that President Kagame’s Hutu forces were involved in more than 100 of them.

In 1996, for example, Rwandan troops are said to have gone to the Chimanga refugee camp. They told the refugees they would be going back home. Then, on an apparently pre-arranged signal, they opened fire, killing up to 800.

Back in 1994, it was President Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front that put an end to the mass murder of Tutsis by extremist Hutus in Rwanda. Many of the perpetrators fled to the Congo, where they hid among a million other Hutus who had fled fearing for their lives under the new regime. It was when the genocide organisers started re-grouping that President Kagame ordered the invasion.

France and Rwanda - an apology

President Sarkozy has apologised for the behaviour of France and other countries during the Rwanda genocide of 1994. It is the first official visit to the country by a French president since the killings.

France had been heavily criticised for appearing to side with the Hutu government, who were carrying out the killings, when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by the current president Paul Kagame, started to wrest control of the country from them.

In 2006, Rwanda and France broke off diplomatic relations when a French judge accused President Kagame of being involved in shooting down a plane carrying the Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana – the incident that sparked off the genocide. Kagame argues that the aircraft was shot down by Hutu extremists, who had certainly been enraged at what they regarded as Habyarimana’s over-conciliatory policy to Tutsis, and extremist Hutu media had been predicting the president’s death.

The Rwandan genocide was the fastest mass murder in history, with about 800,000 people killed in just 100 days. See also my blogs of 23 Jan, 1 and 4 March, 9 April, 16 July, 23 Sept, 8 and 30 Oct, 15 Dec - all 2009.

Rwanda - active anniversary

It was 15 years ago this week that the Rwandan genocide began, during which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus would be slaughtered in just 100 days. Yesterday, a court in London refused to extradite four men to face trial in Rwanda for their alleged part in the massacres because of fears that they would not get a fair trial, though anti-genocide organisations decried the decision.

Three of the men were said to be local mayors who had organised killings, while the fourth was accused of being a militia organiser, and a close associate of the Hutu Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana. It was the death of President Habyarimana, when his aircraft was shot down on April 6, 1994, that sparked the violence.

Who targeted the Mystere Falcon – a gift from President Mitterand of France – remains a mystery. At first, extremist Hutus blamed Tusti rebels, led by Paul Kagame, and it was used as an excuse to begin the killing. Others though, including senior UN officials, believed that the culprits were more likely to be extremist Hutus who wanted to prevent President Habyarimana making a deal with the rebels, and, indeed, three days before the attack, an extremist radio station that would go on to help orchestrate the genocide, announced that “a little something” was about to happen.

Three years ago, though, a French investigative judge accused Mr Kagame, now the president of Rwanda, of being responsible. He was furious, and broke off diplomatic relations with France, and many other observers were highly sceptical about the claims, pointing out that the French were strong supporters of the old Hutu regime. President Kagame launched his own inquiry which accused 33 French military and political officials of being involved in the genocide, including President Mitterand.

See also my blogs of March 1, 4, 23 and 25.