Rwanda discontinued relations with France last week in the latest in a series of events that arose from the holocaust of 1994. Yet, to understand the import of their decision it helps to have a little background on Rwandan history. So, here goes.
For centuries, Rwanda's inhabitants have consisted of two entities, the Hutu and Tutsi. Their differences, more cultural than ethnic, were exacerbated in the mid eighteenth century with the institution of a Tutsi monarch who advanced the social imbalance by establishing a Tutsi hierarchy. That rift was further encouraged by European colonists, both German and Belgian, who romanced the Tutsi's "racial superiority" and sanctioned their minority control over the Hutu.
With Germany's defeat in World War I, Belgium took control of the region and continued their policy of extracting Rwandan riches by dividing its people (with the complicity of the Catholic Church whose bishops argued to continue the practice). Hutu were whipped and forced to pick coffee beans in the fields while Tutsi supervised. Tutsi children were educated in Catholic schools while their counterparts remained illiterate. The clergy, equal in number to whites, remained exclusively Tutsi. Not surprisingly, thousands of Hutu fled to Uganda.
In the 1950s, the U.N. forced Belgium to clean up its act. A democratically-elected High Council was established, presided over by the monarch. Cattle, long seen as a symbol of entitlement, were distributed evenly between the two groups. An equitable system of electoral representation was implemented. Land was more equally distributed. Yet despite these reforms, the High Council remained predominantly Tutsi. As such, it was seen by many Hutus as a continuation of the old guard and Hutu moderates were regarded as traitors.
In 1957, an important document surfaced. Penned by a small group of Hutu intellectuals, the "Hutu Manifesto" decried the political monopoly and social injustices foisted on the Hutu majority. "[Given] the de facto selection in schools, the political, economic, and social monopolies turn into a cultural monopoly which condemn the desperate [Hutu] to be forever subaltern workers...even after independence [they] will have contributed to gain without even realizing what is in store for them." The document demanded an end to the Tutsi monopoly and resisted a High Council edict to remove race designations from official documents, arguing that the statistics would serve as a monitor for democratization. Sensing a change in the air, the Catholic Church reassessed its policy and issued a letter condemning "all abuses of power."
Two years later, following a Tutsi attempt on the life of Dominique Mbonyumutwa, a revered Hutu chief, the wrath of the Hutu reached a boiling point. In the Revolution Sociale de 1959, thousands of Tutsi were killed and nearly 160,000 fled to Uganda, Burundi, Congo, and Tanzania. Grgoire Kayibanda, one of the main authors of the Hutu Manifesto, rode his party to power--the Party for the Emancipation of the Hutu (PARMEHUTU)--in an overwhelming victory. The reign of the Tutsi had finally come to an end.
But the Hutu, arguably in a position to temper the hatred wrought by colonial rule, proved no better at equitable government than their predecessors. In fact, they were worse. When a constitution was ratified in 1961, leading to Rwandan independence, the rights of the Tutsi were blatantly abridged despite lofty rhetoric to the contrary. In response, the exiled Tutsis led raids on the country that spanned the next ten years. But their skirmishes did little but sanction the Hutu's rage against those Tutsis still living in Rwanda and relations with neighboring countries suffered.
In 1973, the Army Chief of Staff and Defense Minister, General Juvnal Habyarimana, came to power in a coup d'tat. On taking the helm, he dissolved the National Assembly and banned the formation of all political parties except his own, the Hutu-dominated Mouvement Democratique Republicain (MRND). To ameliorate the minority, he issued an appeal to "end the bloodletting," yet stripped the Tutsis of wealth and status, and refused to allow the estimated 1 million Tutsis in exile to return. Casting further doubt on his sincerity, was the fact that the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) began buying military equipment and arms at an alarming rate, much of it from France. Payback time was in the offing.
By 1983, Ugandan president Milton Obote had become exasperated at the antics of Rwanda's exiles and expelled 40,000 Tutsi refugees for complicity in attempts to topple his regime. In the fighting that ensued, 10,000 Tutsi were killed. Infuriated by the carnage, Paul Kagame--who would later become Rwanda's president--left his post at Makere University and joined the National Resistance Army to dethrone him. In a stunning victory, Obote was ousted and Paul Kagame was promoted to Chief of Military Intelligence.
But Kagame wasn't interested in Uganda. He wanted to reorganize his fellow Tutsis and return to Rwanda. To that end, he established the Rwandan Patriotic Front, of RPF as it's known today, and embarked on a plan to retake his country.
The first RPF invasion of Rwanda in 1990 was a failure. Kagame was in the States being trained by the U.S. military (always there to lend a hand) and was unable to lead his troops. But his return brought a series of victories that spanned the next few years. He captured the north then captured the east in a string of guerrilla attacks. The French, who supported Habyarimana and were surprised by Kagame's persistence, sent several hundred troops to protect the capitol (Kigali). But they weren't enough. Facing imminent defeat, Habyarimana accepted an international peace agreement in 1993 that granted the RPF a share of political power and a military presence. The Tutsis were back with a vengeance.
But many Hutus, especially those in the radical interahamwe and impuzamugambi militias, saw this move as capitulation and fled to the Congo to conduct guerrilla operations and (what else?) recruit other Hutus. Those who remained readied themselves for the final solution.
In 1994, the powder keg that precipitated the Rwandan genocide was sparked. President Juvnal Habyarimana's plane was shot down as he returned from peace talks in Arusha. The moment had finally come for Hutus to take revenge. Using arms from Egypt flown in by British aircraft, they went on a bloody rampage, killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus at a rate unprecedented in modern history. In a span of a hundred days, more than a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered unmercifully. Yet throughout the bloodbath the U.S. refused to intervene, preferring to jockey with France for the upper hand, intermittently supporting the RPF and Hutu militias. Belgium, too, refused to help. A recent inquiry into their culpability revealed that Belgian authorities knew as early as 1992 that preparations were underway to exterminate the Tutsi.
Likewise the United Nations. According to the Mail Guardian, a South African newspaper, the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations was warned by its own military unit in Rwanda that plans and training for the murder of Tutsis at the rate of 1,000 every 20 seconds were in place. Yet they did nothing.
As for France, Le Monde and Le Figaro have both reported that the country supplied arms to the Rwandan government for at least a month after the killing began. French support for the Hutus and President Habyarimana is additionally demonstrated by their evacuation plan at the time--Operation Amaryllis--which called for the evacuation of French citizens and Hutu extremists to France while refusing to evacuate Tutsi employees at its embassy in Kigali. And, as if these allegations aren't damning enough, two Tutsi women gave testimony this week that they were repeatedly gang raped by French troops as they fled "machete-wielding Hutus" during the massacre.
These revelations fly in the face of the perception, proffered by films like Hotel Rwanda, that we're all somehow guilty of this genocide. Colonial imperialism is the root cause for the underlying hatred in Rwanda and neo-colonialism has continued that legacy. It should be no wonder that the Rwandans have severed their relations with France. The only wonder should be how and why they waited so long.
Andrea Hackett is an freelance journalist, founder of the Las Vegas Dancers Alliance in Nevada, and editor of the Populist Review. She may be contacted at andreahackett@cox.net
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