Genocide
- Date:
- April 1994 - July 1994
- Location:
- Rwanda
On the evening of April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundian Pres. Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali, Rwanda’s capital; the ensuing crash killed everyone on board. Although the identity of the person or group who fired upon the plane has never been conclusively determined, Hutu extremists were originally thought to be responsible. Later there were allegations that RPF leaders were responsible. The organized killing of Tutsi and moderate Hutu began that night, led by Hutu extremists. Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a moderate Hutu, was assassinated the next day, as were 10 Belgian soldiers (part of a United Nations peacekeeping force already in the country) who were guarding her. Her murder was part of a campaign to eliminate moderate Hutu or Tutsi politicians, with the goal of creating a political vacuum and thus allowing for the formation of an interim government of Hutu extremists assembled by Col. Théoneste Bagosora, who later would be identified as having played a significant role in organizing the genocide. The speaker of the National Development Council (Rwanda’s legislative body at the time), Theodore Sindikubwabo, became interim president on April 8, and the interim government was inaugurated on April 9.
The next few months saw a wave of anarchy and mass killings, in which the army and Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe (“Those Who Attack Together”) and Impuzamugambi (“Those Who Have the Same Goal”) played a central role. Radio broadcasts further fueled the genocide by encouraging Hutu civilians to kill their Tutsi neighbors, who were referred to as “cockroaches” who needed to be exterminated. It is estimated that some 200,000 Hutu participated in the genocide, although some were unwilling and consequently were forced to do so by the army and Hutu militia groups. The methods for killing were typically quite brutal, with crude instruments often employed to pummel or hack away at victims. Machetes were commonly used. Rape was also used as a weapon and included the deliberate use of perpetrators infected with HIV/AIDS to carry out sexual assaults; as a result, many Tutsi women were intentionally infected with HIV/AIDS.
The United Nations (UN), which already had peacekeeping troops in the country for a monitoring mission (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda; UNAMIR), made unsuccessful attempts to mediate a cease-fire. On April 21, as the crisis deepened, the UN voted to reduce UNAMIR’s presence in the country from 2,500 troops to 270. That seemingly incomprehensible troop reduction at a time when assistance was sorely needed was rooted in such factors as the mission’s mandate, which required an effective cease-fire to be in place, and the inability of the UN to find more troops to bolster the mission, which it felt had already been stretched too thin to have a significant impact on the situation. On May 17, however, the UN reversed its decision and voted to establish a force of 5,500, composed of soldiers mainly from African countries, but those additional troops could not be immediately deployed. On June 22 the UN backed the deployment of a French-led military force, known as Operation Turquoise, into Rwanda to establish a safe zone; the operation was opposed by the RPF, which claimed that France had always supported the government and policies of President Habyarimana.
The RPF had rejected the legitimacy of the Hutu extremist interim government inaugurated in April and resumed fighting then; by April 12, RPF troops had invaded the outskirts of Kigali. The RPF were successful in securing most of the country by early July, taking Kigali on July 4. Extremist Hutu leaders, including those of the interim government, fled the country. A transitional government of national unity was established on July 19, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and RPF leader Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president. The genocide had come to an end.
The duration of the 1994 genocide is usually described as 100 days, beginning on April 6 and ending in mid-July. (July 18 is one date often cited as the end of the genocide. July 19 is another. Both dates were slightly more than 100 days from the start of the genocide.) During the genocide more than 800,000 civilians, primarily Tutsi, were killed. Some estimates, including that of the Rwandan government, are higher. As many as 2,000,000 Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi, fled, most of them into eastern Zaire (after 1997 called the Democratic Republic of the Congo); the great majority returned to Rwanda in late 1996 and early 1997.
Aftermath
Once the genocide was over, the country faced years of reconciliation and recovery. Trying those who were thought responsible for genocidal acts was a primary focus, as was promoting national unity and rebuilding the country’s economy.
Prosecuting the perpetrators
Those accused of participating in the genocide were primarily tried in one of three types of court systems: the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Rwandan national courts, or local gacaca courts. Some suspects who had fled Rwanda were tried in the countries in which they were found.
ICTR
In November 1994 the UN responded to charges of genocide in Rwanda by creating the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR; formally known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in the Territory of Neighbouring States between 1 January and 31 December 1994).
The ICTR was international in composition and was located in Arusha, Tanzania. The tribunal was not empowered to impose capital punishment; it could impose only terms of imprisonment. The governing statute of the ICTR defined war crimes broadly. Murder, torture, deportation, and enslavement were subject to prosecution, but the ICTR also stated that genocide included “subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement.” In addition, it ruled that “rape and sexual violence constitute genocide…as long as they were committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular group, targeted as such”—as was the case in the Rwandan conflict, where the Hutu-dominated interim government organized the mass rape of Tutsi women by HIV-infected men. The tribunal thus was among the first international bodies to formally recognize sexual violence as a war crime. (See also rape: Rape as a weapon of war.)
The statute of the ICTR limited the jurisdiction of the tribunal to Rwandan leaders, while lower-level defendants were to be tried in domestic courts. The ICTR statute did not consider the official position of an individual, including his position as head of state, to be a sufficient basis for avoiding or evading criminal culpability. Military and civilian leaders who had known or should have known that their subordinates were committing war crimes were subject to prosecution under the doctrine of command or superior responsibility. Individuals who had committed war crimes pursuant to government or military orders were not thereby relieved of criminal liability, though the existence of the orders could be used as a mitigating factor.
After extensive administrative and logistic delays, the ICTR completed its first cases in 1998. In May former Rwandan prime minister Jean Kambanda pleaded guilty to six charges of genocide and was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 4. In October 2000 Kambanda tried to revoke his guilty plea, but his motion was rejected by the ICTR.
A roadblock occurred in 1999, when Rwanda severed its relationship with the ICTR after the tribunal ordered the release, on procedural grounds, of Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, a prominent genocide suspect. He had been charged with orchestrating a media campaign that urged the Hutu to kill their Tutsi neighbors. The order to release him was suspended, though, and in February 2000 the Rwandan government announced that it would resume cooperation with the UN court. Barayagwiza stood trial later that year and was found guilty in 2003.
In April 2002 four senior military officers—including former colonel Bagosora, who was considered the main architect of the genocide—were brought to trial at the ICTR. The ICTR alleged that Bagosora had begun planning the genocide as early as 1992, and it charged that all four had trained the militias that killed Tutsi and moderate Hutu. The four were also considered responsible for the murders of 10 UN peacekeepers from Belgium and the murder of Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana in 1994. The other three defendants were former military commanders Anatole Nsengiyumva and Aloys Ntabakuze and the former chief of military operations, Gratien Kabiligi. On December 18, 2008, Bagosora was sentenced to life imprisonment for having masterminded the killings, and Nsengiyumva and Ntabakuze also received life sentences. Those were the first convictions for the organization of the genocide that were issued by the ICTR. Kabiligi was cleared of all charges. In December 2011 the ICTR Appeals Chamber reduced Bagosora’s life sentence to 35 years, and Nsengiyumva’s sentence was reduced to 15 years. Based on the time Nsengiyumva had already served, he was released immediately. The Appeals Chamber reduced Ntabakuze’s life sentence to 35 years in May 2012.
Several key perpetrators were sentenced to life imprisonment or other lengthy sentences in the following years, including former Kigali prefect Tharcisse Renzaho, who received a life sentence in 2009. The next year, convictions included those of Ildéphonse Hategekimana, the former commander of a military camp, who received a life sentence, and Ephrem Setako, a military officer and the former director of the legal affairs division of the Ministry of Defense, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 2011, notable convictions and sentences were those of the chief of staff of Rwanda Armed Forces at the time of the genocide, Augustin Bizimungu, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the former minister of women’s development, who was sentenced to life in prison; in December 2015, however, the Appeals Chamber reduced her life sentence to 47 years. Nyiramasuhuko was the first woman to be convicted of genocide by an international court. High-profile convictions and sentences in 2012 included those of Callixte Nzabonimana, the former minister of youth and associate movements, who received a life sentence, and Ildéphonse Nizeyimana, a former officer at a military academy, who also was sentenced to life imprisonment, though in 2014 the Appeals Chamber reduced his sentence to 35 years. One of the murders that Nizeyimana was convicted of being responsible for was that of Rosalie Gicanda, a Tutsi and the former queen of Rwanda.
The ICTR completed its last trial on December 20, 2012, and closed on December 31, 2015. By that time, it had indicted 93 suspects, 62 of whom were found guilty. The ICTR’s remaining business, such as appeals and outstanding warrants, was transferred to the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals. At the time the ICTR closed, there were three high-profile fugitives remaining: Augustin Bizimana, Rwanda’s defense minister at the time of the genocide; Félicien Kabuga, a wealthy media businessman accused of being one of the masterminds behind the genocide and having financed genocidal activities; and Protais Mpiranya, head of the Presidential Guard at the time of the genocide. Bizimana was confirmed dead in 2020; he is believed to have died in 2000. Kabuga was apprehended in 2020, but in 2023 the 88-year-old was declared mentally unfit for trial. In 2022 Mpiranya was confirmed dead; he had apparently fallen ill and died in 2006.
National courts
National courts were charged with trying lower-level genocide suspects. Unlike the ICTR, Rwandan courts were initially able to sentence those found guilty to capital punishment. The first death sentences were carried out on April 24, 1998, when 22 people convicted of genocide were publicly executed by police firing squads, despite serious procedural inadequacies in the hearings: war crimes trials often suffered from procedural deficiencies indicative of ethnic biases.
In 2007 Rwanda’s parliament abolished the death penalty (effective from the end of July), an important step in the country’s efforts to extradite genocide suspects from European countries that had hitherto refused such requests because they objected to capital punishment. Former justice minister Agnes Ntamabyariro, the only high-level official to be tried in Rwanda’s courts, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009.
Gacaca courts
The number of suspects to be tried in connection with the genocide was immense, and cases moved slowly through the ICTR and national courts. In 2001, in an attempt to clear the backlog of some 115,000 genocide cases awaiting trial, the Rwandan government announced plans to establish gacaca (grass) courts according to the traditional justice system. In precolonial days gacaca courts were used to resolve conflicts between families. The courts were held outside, and the heads of households served as judges. The government’s decision to employ that method of justice would create thousands of local courts to handle some genocide suspects accused of minor crimes, such as arson, as well as capital crimes, though suspects accused of more serious crimes would continue to be tried in higher courts. In addition to clearing the backlog of cases, it was hoped that the gacaca courts would bring to light some of the unknown details of the genocide, provide a sense of closure, and foster reconciliation between Rwandans.
The courts were convened in January 2002 and began operating in several phases over the next several years, with the first trials beginning in March 2005. The success of the courts, often a matter of opinion, varied from trial to trial. Although some courts were found to be fair and objective, others were accused of having followed a political agenda and of having delivered harsh sentences that were not commensurate with the evidence provided.
The gacaca courts were intended to operate for a limited amount of time, but closure of the courts was repeatedly postponed. By the time the gacaca courts officially closed on June 18, 2012, they had prosecuted more than 1.9 million cases.
