Feature Article
IN AFRICA ONLY THE INNOCENT ARE
WEEPING¹
By Lila Schow
In 1994 the
world came together to organize a massive humanitarian effort for the
refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It failed quite spectacularly
resulting in the withdrawal of most agencies.² As aid became the newest
resource for the country it quickly fell into the hands of local soldiers
who traded it on the black market for weapons. With no other options
available, children prostituted themselves for food and medicine. The
refugee camps were terrorized by rebel soldiers who forcibly conscripted
civilians into their cause. Those that refused to join fled, only to be
hunted down in the jungles and slaughtered.
To
understand why the efforts of hundreds of nations failed, you must first be
familiar with the events that led to the creation of the refugee camps.
Genocide. In just one hundred days, over one million people in neighboring
Rwanda were exterminated.³ Doctors butchered patients, teachers dismembered
students, people were burned alive or forced to kill their children,
families and friends.
This first article in a series on the Great
African War will focus on the genocide in Rwanda.
Rwanda
Churches represent the idea of sanctuary. As a place of refuge, the
inhabitants are protected from the dangers of the world around them. Ngoma
church in Rwanda was such a place until April 30, 1994. The local Tutsi
minority had been under attack by their Hutu countrymen for twenty-four
days. At the church, 476 Tutsis gathered, assured by the local army that
the country had entered an era of “pacification.”4
That the killings had stopped.
Early that
April morning, twenty-two soldiers surrounded the church. The commander,
Lieutenant Ildephonse Hategekimana repeatedly assured the Tutsis that they
were safe and encouraged them to leave the sanctuary. When they refused, he
called on the local townspeople to butcher every last one, children
included.4
The
civilians who participated in the massacre were desperately poor. So poor
that most were armed only with masus, “bulky clubs with nails”
protruding through one end.7
Some of the wealthier ones
carried machetes. The Tutsis in the church fought back with the stones at
their feet.
One
survivor reported hearing “dull blows, followed by small cries.”4
The
cries came from the children who were being
clubbed to death by the townspeople, their former neighbors, teachers and
friends. Of the 476 people in the church, 302 were children.
Some of
the Tutsis managed to flee, others were removed by force. They were led to
the nearby woods to be killed, the women raped first, their breasts cut off
as trophies, their vaginas punctured by knives.
4
As night
fell, the civilians left their gruesome work and headed home to typical
family filled evenings. They promised the few Tutsis who had managed to
survive that they would be back the next day, to finish the job.
Rain kept
the townspeople away until late the following morning, but the killers
stayed true to their vows, returning to “finish off the wounded children who
were still alive, lying on the grass.”
4 Even when several Ministry of
Health officials arrived to survey the scene, the civilians continued
clubbing the helpless children to death while at the same time casually
chatting with the officials.
Think this
was an isolated incident? Churches, schools and hospitals became the
preferred target of the Hutu militia (the Interahamwe) and the
Rwandan Armed Forces (the Hutu Power) during the genoicde.4
In the town
of Matyazo, a health center was leveled by grenades, nearly three thousand
people had sought refuge there. “Children and infants who survived the
Matyazo massacre were left alone among the bodies for three days. Then some
women came to take the little girls home, probably to raise them as
servants” 4 or prostitutes.
One year
after the genocide, the Human Rights Watch/FIDH team visited a church in
nearby Kaduha. Recent rains had exhumed three shallow graves. The body
count was estimated at one thousand. Fourteen other mass graves were
discovered around the school and across the road from both buildings.
Clothing and bones were still strewn about
the site. Some school children played next to scattered rib-bones of other
small children. The church buildings showed signs of forcible entry and
desperate struggle. The kitchen area had been blown apart, probably by a
grenade. Some of the doors had been pried open. Bloody finger streaks were
on the walls, as were marks of machetes.
4
The Hutu
and Tutsi people of Rwanda have been at conflict since Belgium colonization
pitted the two groups against each other. When the Belgians withdrew in
1962 the Hutus claimed power, subjecting the Tutsi minority to the same
discrimination that they had suffered under the Belgians.6
Tutsi extremists in Rwanda and neighboring
Uganda attacked sporadically during this time, increasing the strength and
size of the attacks in the 1990’s. Finally, in October of 1993, the United
Nations stepped in. They established the Broad Based Transitional
Government, a ruling entity that allowed both sides to share power.² The
government was overseen by a group of peacekeepers called UNAMIR, Untied
Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda. These men were led by the Canadian
commander, General Romeo Dallaire.
From the start the UNAMIR mission was a
disaster. They were given the most basic of resources and told that as
Rwanda was not a strategic interest to any country, the operation was to be
conducted “on the cheap.” ² Promised battalions of peacekeepers were never
sent. Funding was slashed. Food and water rations were grossly
insufficient. Equipment arrived minus spare parts, repair manuals or
instructions. Medical supplies ran out one month before the genocide and
there was no money to purchase more.7
On January 11, 1994, a Hutu informant who
had been a former security guard to the president of Rwanda, approached
Dallaire. The informant disclosed that he had been instructed by President
Habyarimana to register all Tutsis in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. Register
them for extermination. 7
Dallaire quickly told the UN about the
planned genocide. No action was taken despite repeated warnings from
Dallaire about the arming of Hutu civilians, increased propaganda against
Tutsis and grenade attacks on civilians and Tutsi politicians.²
On April 6, 1994, Dallaire’s worst fears
came true. The president’s plane was shot down, killing everyone on board.
One hour later, the genocide began. “The daily killing rate was five times
that of the Nazi death camps” but the UN, US and the international community
stood by, “impotent.” ²
Leaders exploited existing problems,
attempted to transform them into crises and drove their countries
deliberately to destruction for their own political ends. Violence was
chosen, it was not inevitable. ²
Contrary to media and political leader’s
reports at the time, the mass killings were not simply an outbreak of
tribal warfare7,
a description that elicits an image of a bunch of naked savages stabbing
each other with spears in the jungle. It was deliberate slaughter of a race
and those who were sympathetic to the Tutsis.
Masterminded by Colonel
Theoneste Bagosora who claimed power after the plane crash, other
contributors of the genocide included,
General Bizimungu, named chief of staff and
Minister of Defense Augustin Bizimana. Officers in charge of the elite
units, Majors Protais Mpiranya, François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, and Aloys
Ntabakuze, along with others such as Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho, Lieutenant
Colonels Léonard Nkundiye and Anatole Nsengiyumva, Captain Gaspard
Hategekimana, and Major Bernard Ntuyahaga carried out the killings of Tutsi
and Hutu civilians.4 All are currently awaiting trial in
Tanzania.
In order to gain control
of the government, these masterminds had two goals. To orchestrate the
removal of the UN Peacekeeping forces and to exterminate anyone, Tutsi or
Hutu, who stood in their way.
The first goal was
obscenely easy to accomplish. The target of the Hutu Power became ten
Belgian soldiers who had been sent by Dallaire to protect the Prime
Minister, a Hutu, and her five children from the slaughter.7
The Belgian soldiers had
been set up by months of hate propaganda directed their way from the local
radio stations and the Rwandan military. At one point they were even
accused of shooting down the president’s plane. On April 7, one day after
the genocide began, the Belgians were disarmed at the Prime Minister’s house
and driven to a military compound. They were brutally beat, tortured and
hacked to death by soldiers and civilians wielding machetes.7
Coming only six months
after the US
losses in Somalia, the Hutu Power reasoned the act would be enough to force
the withdrawal of the Belgian peacekeepers. They were correct. UNAMIR
begged the Belgians to stay, or at least leave their heavy artillery for the
remaining peacekeepers protection. Belgium refused. 2
The second goal, to
exterminate anyone (Tutsi or Hutu) who stood in their way, took more time
and would have ultimately been successful if not for
France’s
eventual support of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the Tutsi army.
Immediately following the
President’s plane crash,
Kigali, the capital city
of Rwanda, was transformed. Barricades were erected and telephone lines cut,
acts that trapped the unarmed Tutsi population. 2 The
Interahamwe marched through Kigali, door to door with lists of those to
be killed.7 All Tutsis were targeted, but the ones that topped
the list included journalists, leading politicians, civil servants, human
rights workers and the educated classes. 2 With encouragement
from radio broadcasts the genocide spread to other cities, and those leaders
of civil society who refused to comply with the Hutu Power mandate were
killed and replaced.4
From the start civilians
were encouraged to join the soldiers in the massacres. These volunteers
proved to be quite diligent, not content to stop once the names on the list
had been scratched out. Entire families were targeted and murdered with a
fanaticism never before seen. The wounded were often surrounded by dried
banana leaves and set on fire, their screams of agony carrying far into the
night. 4
Once the killings had
been accomplished, neighbors would look through the bodies. They would call
out, “Here is the body of the Treasure and his wife and daughter, but where
is the youngest child,” and “Here is Josue’s father, his wife and mother,
but where is he?”7 Those that escaped were pursued and cut down
when found.
Women checked the
laundry lines behind the houses so they could report the number of occupants
in each dwelling. In this way, the soldiers could track the number of
survivors. 4
At the sights of larger
massacres, teargas was often thrown in among the bodies. “They wanted to
make any survivors cough so they could locate them and finish them off.”
4
Looting the homes and
businesses of Tutsis became a profitable response alongside the killings,
and a huge black market opened up. 4
The Hutu Power received
most of their support from one unlikely source. Radio Millie Collines, or
RTLM, the official station of
Rwanda. As soon as word
of the president’s death reached the station, RTLM blamed the Tutsis for the
assassination in live broadcasts and called upon the public to kill all the
Tutsis. 4
“You cockroaches must
know you are made of flesh . . . we will kill you.”8 Valerie
Bemerki, an announcer with RTLM, invited interested listeners to call her to
receive more information on the specific names and addresses of Tutsis the
Interahamwe wanted to eliminate. 4
The non-stop broadcasts continued for
months, giving a veneer of acceptability to those involved in the genocide.
They incited the public to join in the atrocities and labeled the unwilling
“traitors.” 4
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, the Prime Minister
the Belgians unsuccessfully tried to protect, recognized early the threat of
the RTLM. After the crash she became the lawful head of state, but the Hutu
Power told Agathe that her authority was nullified because of her
sympathetic views toward the Tutsis. Undeterred, Agathe made plans to visit
RTLM so she could speak to the nation in an effort to calm the enraged
public. The Belgian soldiers had been ordered to escort her to the
station. She never left her property. When the Hutu Power found the Prime
Minister they shot her in the head, stripped her clothes from her body and
rammed a beer bottle into her vagina. The radio continued their broadcasts,
unobstructed.
Take your spears, clubs, guns, swords,
stones, everything. Sharpen them, hack them, those enemies, those
cockroaches . . . Hunt out the Tutsi. Who will fill up the half-empty
graves? There is no way the rebels should find alive any of the people
they claim as their own. 2
General Dallaire begged officials in the US
to jam these hateful transmissions with spy satellites.
7 The US politely declined,
claiming the cost would be too great and doubting that silence on the
airways would be effective in curbing the violence. Recently declassified
documents from Frank G. Wisner, the Under Secretary of Defense show the use
of the satellites would have run $8,500 an hour.
9 Divided by the number of
Rwandans that were slaughtered in the genocide, that figure breaks down to
less than twenty-five dollars a person. But the Rwandans were cursed with
black skin and a country lacking natural resources desired by wealthier
nations, so twenty-five dollars was considered too much for the price of
their lives. Africa had dropped from the map of moral concern.
2
In fact, not only did the US refuse to
help, we prolonged the genocide. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright,
along with other top ranking officials, claimed the killings were nothing
more than renewed warfare in the region. Because the genocide had spurred
the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to attack the Hutu Power and
Interahamwe, the Clinton administration easily shied away from the
conflict by simply labeling it “renewed war.”
2 To ensure that no one
upstaged the US’s policy, Madeleine Albright delayed several key votes in
the UN. Votes that called for sending more troops to assist General
Dallaire. 2
While the world debated the legal use of
the term “genocide”
7 and whether or not it applied
to Rwanda, the General was
standing knee deep in
mutilated bodies, surrounded by the guttural moans of dying people,
looking into the eyes of children bleeding to death with their wounds
burning in the sun and being invaded by maggots and flies. I found myself
walking through villages where the only sign of life was a goat, or a
chicken, or songbird, as all the people were dead, their bodies being
eaten by voracious packs of wild dogs.
7
Finally, in July 1994 relief to the
Rwandans came in the guise of Operation Turquoise when the French stepped in
to help the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) overthrow the Hutu Power. This
was a complete switch in policy for the French.
7 Rwandan President
Habyarimana, the man who had ordered the registration of Tutsis and had been
killed in the plane crash that touched off the genocide, had been close
friends with French President François Mitterrand.
2 The French supported the
Hutu regime, even providing them with weapons used in the genocide.
7
Their new involvement, on the side of the
Tutsi army, placed the UN in the uncomfortable position of supporting both
sides of the fighting. General Dallaire’s peacekeeping troops, which had
been sent to protect the Broad Based Transitional Government, and the French
backed Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) attacks on them.
2
That same month Dallaire and his remaining
peacekeeping forces were evacuated. By August the RPF had set up their
government in Kigali, ending the bloodshed to some degree.
7
You may wonder, why none of this sounds
familiar? Where was I during those awful months in 1994? Well, if the US
media was successful, you were glued to the TV. While one million innocent
people were murdered in Africa, the world’s attention was focused on two ice
skating Olympian hopefuls, involved in a pipe-to-the-knee-incident. You
probably remember their names.
10
So why should any of this be a concern now?
That was eight years ago, and sure it was awful, but so what, it’s over now,
right?
In January 1994, four months before the
genocide, Rwanda boasted a population of 7.8 million. At the end of that
same year, the number had been slashed to 4.8 million. One million had
perished at the hands of their countrymen. Another two million fled the
borders, the majority into neighboring Zaire.
5
This influx of refugees eventually resulted
in the toppling of the government in Zaire, now renamed the Democratic
Republic of Congo and the outbreak of the Great African War in 1998. And
yes, it does affect you.
6
April 6, 1994 marked the beginning of one
hundred days of genocide in Rwanda. During this time 1,074,017 people were
indiscriminately slaughtered ... innocent children, women and men.
1,074,017 people in one hundred days
10,740 people a day
447 people an hour
7 people a minute
1 person every 8 seconds
How many seconds would it take to have all your loved ones
taken from you?
Bibliography
- Clegg, Johnny (1996) A Johnny Clegg and Juluka
Collection song #2
- Shawcross, William (2000) Deliver Us From Evil
Simon & Shuster, New York N.Y. pgs. 124-45, 242-48, 287-93
- Rocky Mountain News, 02/15/02 1 Million Were
Killed in Rwanda pg 51A
- Human Rights Watch, (1999) Leave None to Tell the
Story, Genocide in Rwanda
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/Rwanda/
- for population of Rwanda see web pages
http://www.refugees.org/world/countryrpt/africa/rwanda.htm,
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-04.htm#P95_39230
- Lonely Planet, (1998) Africa on a Shoestring
pgs 198-204
- Power, Samantha (2002) A Problem From Hell
Perseus Books Group, New York N.Y. pgs 328-389
- Gourevitch, Philip (1996) We Wish to Inform you
that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families
- Wisner, Frank G. (May 5, 1994) Memorandum for
Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, National
Security Council
http://www.gwu.edu%7Ensarchive/NSAEBB53/press.html
- Media Entertainment Inc. (2002) The Genocide
Factor, The Human Tragedy