Is reconciliation between Hutus and Tutsis possible?

• Author: Umutesi, Marie Beatrice
• Position: THE DIFFICULT ROAD TO RECONCILIATION

April 1994: Rwanda, a little country in Central Africa, is propelled to the forefront of the international stage. It is the site of the greatest genocide in African history, the genocide of the Rwandans--essentially the Tutsis--who in three months suffered between 500,000 and 800,000 deaths. Hutu militias were principally responsible for the massacres. This explosion of violence began the morning of 7 April 1994, following the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a movement of Tutsi exiles fighting against the authority of Habyarimana since 1 October 1990, was accused of the murder. This assassination occurred in a context of extreme tension between the two principal ethnic groups of the country, the Hutu and the Tutsi, which made the tragedy of the genocide possible. Despite the appalling images appearing on television, the international community did little to stop the horror; the 2,500 UN peacekeepers stationed in the country since 1993 stood by and watched without lifting a finger to stop the massacres.

On 7 April, while the massacres of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were beginning, the RPF took advantage of the chaos to resume the civil war which had been ostensibly halted by the Arusha Peace Agreement signed in August 1993. In its wake, the RPF left thousands of dead Hutu men, women and children. No journalist spoke of this because the RPF prohibited access to the places where the massacres were being committed. In July 1994, the RPF took power in Kigali and intensified the massacre of the Hutus who remained in Rwanda. In a statement made public in December 1995 after his defection, former RPF intelligence chief Sixbert Musangamfura alleged that 312,726 people were murdered in a selective and deliberate fashion between July 1994 and July 1995. (1) A November 1995 statement by ex-Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu corroborated reports of massacres by the RPF above and beyond those reported by the international media, citing "irrefutable proof" that 200,000 people were killed.

When the RPF took power, several million Hutus took refuge in neighboring countries. More than a million of them gathered in camps around the cities of Goma, Bukavu and Uvira in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In October 1996, the RPF invaded THE DRC and destroyed refugee camps. Thousands of Hutus were killed during these attacks; others had to re-enter Rwanda, while still others found refuge in the mountains and forests of the Congo. The RPF and its allies followed this last group all the way to Mbandaka, a town 2,000 kilometers from Bukavu. Approximately 200,000 Hutu refugees were killed in this pursuit. (2) The massacres of the Hutu refugees in the DRC were described by independent and UN committees of inquiry as "acts of genocide." (3)

Since the end of the war in July 1994, reconciliation has become a priority for many Rwandans and some international organizations. Some initiatives to prepare the Hutu and Tutsi populations for reconciliation have been taken, including the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the creation of the Gacaca tribunals, the removal of ethnic designation from identity cards, the construction of a statement of the case on genocide and the institution of an indemnity fund for victims of the genocide. Until now these initiatives have been concerned only with crimes committed by Hutus and only with Tutsi victims. The crimes committed by the RPF are being largely ignored, and the Hutu victims of the genocide and its aftermath have been nearly forgotten. (4) Faced with this situation, opponents of the Kagame regime, as well as certain experts, think that such initiatives not only fail to contribute to reconciliation, but also create frustrations among Hutus and consequently enlarge the gap that exists between the two ethnic groups. What the Hutu-Tutsi conflict is really about and what initiatives taken for ethnic group reconciliation have really achieved is what we will see in the following pages.

THE HUTU-TUTSI CONFLICT THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF RWANDA

Rwanda has been populated since the 8th century B.C. by the Batwa, a pygmy population who lived principally by hunting and gathering. Bahutu farmers and Batutsi herders moved in progressively between the 10th and 15th centuries. Starting in the 16th century, the region became organized into kingdoms. The Bami (kings) were both Bahutu and Batutsi. One of the Tutsi rulers, scion of the dynasty of the Banyiginyas, finally unified the country under one rule. To reinforce its power, the Banyiginya dynasty put in place a socio-economic and political system based on the exploitation of the peasant masses, mainly Hutus. In 1895, Rwanda officially became a German protectorate, which lasted until 1916 when the Germans were expelled by the Belgians. The Germans and the Belgians administered Rwanda through a policy of indirect administration, using customary Tutsi authority to manage the territory. In order to maintain good alliances with the Tutsi chiefs, the colonialists did not alter any of their privileges; rather, they reinforced these privileges by creating schools for the chiefs and integrating them into the colonial administration.

Starting in the 1950s, Hutu intellectuals began to question Tutsi domination and demand basic reforms. The King's refusal to consider the claims of the Hutu leaders ended in the social revolution of 1959, which involved the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic in which the Hutu dominated government institutions. In 1960, the former government of King Kigeli V Ndahindurwa, along with more than 200,000 Tutsis, left the country for Uganda and other neighboring countries. Starting in 1962, the Tutsi exiles organized themselves and began to attack Rwanda in an attempt to retake power. These attacks were followed by a massacre of Tutsis, perpetrated in the interior of the country by Hutus. The new democracy, gained with the sacrifice of so many human lives, would not last long: The power of President Gregoire Kayibanda was reinforced by slowly excluding and marginalizing politicians from other regions of the country and those who did not speak the same language he did. In 1973, soldiers from the north under the command of General Juvenal Habyarimana carried out a coup d'etat and deposed Kayibanda. He and his closest collaborators were thrown into prison where they were subsequently assassinated. The Habyarimana military regime did not reestablish democracy; it simply replaced the Hutu dictatorship from Gitarama with a Hutu dictatorship from the north.

On 1 October 1990, Tutsi refugees who had organized under the name of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) during the 1980s attacked Rwanda from Uganda. This attack was accompanied by massacres of people living in communities along the border with Uganda, the majority of the victims being Hutus. Although Human Rights Watch reports that there is currently no credible evidence implicating the RPF in large-scale massacres, many former residents of Byumba and Ruhengeri-including this author--report villages being attacked and having had friends and family members killed, often in brutal fashion. (5) Lieutenant Abdul Ruzibiza, an RPF dissident, has described the manner in which these people were killed: "The people were tied up, arms attached to legs. Then they broke their heads with an old hoe and stuck knives in their ribs until they were dead." (6) Chased off their land by the civil war with the RPF, farmers found refuge in the displaced persons camps where they lived under inhumane conditions.

Despite the war, under pressure from the international community, President Habyarimana accepted multiparty rule in 1991. The main parties, which were organized around ethnic and regional lines, included Habyarimana's National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRNDD), composed mostly of Hutus from the North; the Democratic Republican Movement (MDR), led by former president Kayibanda and composed mostly of Hutus from Gitarama and Kibuye; the Social Democratic Party (PSD), composed mostly of Hutus from Butare and Gikongoro; and the Liberal Party (PL), composed mostly of Tutsis. The PSD, MDR and LP constituted the democratic opposition to the Habyarimana regime. Employing confrontational strategies, these different parties formed militias comprised mainly of disaffected youth. The militia of the MRNDD was called the Interahamwe, which would later become the principal participant in the genocide.

During 1992 there were essentially two political camps: Habyarimana and his mostly northern Hutu allies, and the RPF and its primarily southern Hutu allies. In February 1993, the RPF broke a ceasefire agreement and pushed deeper into Rwanda; parallel to the guerilla war, it also carried out several targeted assassinations of Hutu leaders. (7) This new RPF offensive led certain Hutu members of the opposition to denounce the alliance of...