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Rwanda: "Leave None to Tell the Story"
Rwanda: "Leave None to Tell the Story"
Date distributed (ymd): 990403
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Central Africa
Issue Areas: +security/peace+ +US policy focus+
Summary Contents:
This posting contains the press release and introduction for
the new study "Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in
Rwanda," released March 31 by Human Rights Watch and the International
Federation of Human Rights. It also includes a brief
introductory note with references to other sources.
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Writing in the Washington Post
(http://www.washingtonpost.com)
for April 3, 1999, columnist Colbert King quoted President
Clinton's Wednesday interview with Dan Rather of CBS. Replying
to a question comparing Kosovo and Rwanda, Clinton said, "I
think the rest of the world was caught flat-footed and did
not have the mechanism to deal with it [Rwanda]. We did do
some good and I think limited some killing there."
"I'll bet that's not how those who watched the dead pile up in
Rwanda remember it," replies King in his column. "Neither do
the human rights organizations and Canadian Maj. Gen. Romeo
Dallaire, the top U.N. military officer on the ground in
Rwanda. They were begging other nations and international
organizations to help end the nightmare in Rwanda (which
started exactly five years ago next Tuesday)[April 6]."
"It was genocide," continues the column. "The world
was not caught flat-footed as the president told Dan Rather.
It looked squarely in the face of evil and averted its gaze.
Warnings of the coming catastrophe and carnage were sent to
U.N. headquarters and to Western countries, including the
United States. But America, which today is spending millions
and putting scores of American lives on the line in Europe,
was not ready to spend more money or risk one life to ward off
atrocities in Africa. Read Human Rights Watch's just-released,
blow-by-blow account of the steady buildup toward the Rwandan
genocide and the cries for help that went ignored. Read it
during this season, when hearts and minds are lifted to a
higher spiritual plane and centered on the sanctity of life --
read it and weep.
No, Mr. President, say what you wish to the cameras, but your
administration was not caught flat-footed in Rwanda. Your
State Department and United Nations ambassador -- then
Madeleine Albright -- heard the terrifying words of warning.
Your White House just didn't want to get involved."
Additional on-line sources include:
International Response to Conflict and Genocide
http://www.jha.ac/aar.htm
The full 1996 report from the Joint Evaluation of Emergency
Assistance to Rwanda, the indispensable source on the
international reaction to the genocide and its aftermath.
UN Relief Web
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN
Detailed and frequent updates on the Great Lakes region
from a variety of sources.
InterMedia Tribunal Reports
http://www.inter-media.org
Regular coverage of the International Criminal Tribunal
Africa for Rwanda, in English and French.
INCORE Country Guide
http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/cds/countries/rwanda.htm
1998 guide to Internet Sources on conflict and ethnicity
in Rwanda.
Testimony by Holly Burkhalter of Physicians for Human Rights
on The Rwandan Genocide and U.S. Policy
http://www.africafocus.org/docs98/rwan9805.1.htm and
http://www.africafocus.org/docs98/rwan9805.2.htm
For yet more links see APIC's regional page:
http://www.africapolicy.org/featdocs/east.htm
Additional recent books include:
[To order the following books from Amazon.com through APIC's
Africa Web Bookshop, go to
http://www.africapolicy.org/books/asin.htm and enter the
ISBN number of the book you want to order. Or go to
http://www.africapolicy.org/books and look up other books on
Rwanda available at Amazon.com.]
Alain Destexhe, et al, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth
Century (1996; ISBN:
0814718736).
Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will
be Killed with Our Familes (1998; ISBN:
0374286973).
Fergal Keane, Seasons of Blood: A Rwandan Journey (1997; ISBN:
0140247602).
Hugh McCullum, The Angels Have Left Us: The Rwanda Crisis and
the Churches (1995; ISBN:
282541154X).
Catharine Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and
Ethnicity in Rwanda (1993; ISBN:
0231062575).
Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide
(1997; ISBN:
023110409X).
Human Rights Watch
Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droits de L'homme
Rwandan Genocide Could Have Been Stopped
Comprehensive Study Points Finger
at U.S., U.N., France,
Belgium
[The study is available on the Human Rights Watch website at
www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/.
To subscribe to the mailing list for news reports from HRW
Africa, you can send mail to majordomo@igc.org with the
following command in the body of your email message: subscribe
hrw-news-africa
For more information about the mailing list, write to
owner-hrw-news-africa@igc.org.]
(Paris, March 31, 1999)-The Rwandan genocide could have been
stopped with tougher action from outside powers, according to
a comprehensive study released today by Human Rights Watch and
the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues. Next
week will mark the fifth anniversary of the genocide, in which
more than half a million Tutsi and thousands of Hutu
associated with them were killed. An
internationally-recognized team of historians, political
scientists, and lawyers spent four years conducting research
and analysis of the genocide. The team was the first to have
access to documents of the genocidal government, as well as to
previously unpublished diplomatic and judicial records.
Researchers also conducted hundreds of interviews with
Rwandans-both local organizers of the genocide and those they
targeted for extermination. The 800 page history contains
dozens of maps and primary sources. "The world has been
saying for five years now that the Rwandan genocide was a
terrible thing," said Alison Des Forges, author of the study.
"But that's not enough. We need to know how such killing
campaigns work, if we hope ever to prevent them."
Many people outside Rwanda called the genocide a spontaneous
outburst of ethnic violence on a massive scale. But this study
makes clear how a relatively small group of determined killers
planned the mass murder for months in advance and then enticed
and intimidated others into following them. Other observers
blamed the "failed state." But this history shows how
organizers took over a highly centralized government and used
its efficient machinery to carry the killing campaign into
every part of the country. The study recounts security
meetings in which specific people were chosen for slaughter,
the disposal of bodies was arranged, and the property of
victims was divided. "Our extraordinarily rich sources, both
written and spoken, bring alive both the suffering of the
victims and the motives of the killers," said Des Forges, a
consultant for Human Rights Watch and a historian specializing
in the study of central Africa. The research team also
interviewed foreign decision-makers and had access to
confidential diplomatic accounts. It establishes that U.S.,
French, and Belgian authorities, as well as those at the
United Nations, received dozens of warnings in the months
before the genocide but failed to act effectively. Even
worse, foreign leaders reacted timidly and tardily once the
killing began. "The Americans were interested in saving
money, the Belgians were interested in saving face, and the
French were interested in saving their ally, the genocidal
government," said Des Forges. "All of that took priority over
saving lives."
Unwilling to call genocide by its name, foreign leaders
treated the outlaw government as legitimate and even allowed
it to remain a member of the U.N. Security Council. The
killers used their "legitimacy" abroad to buttress their
authority at home and sought to cover the genocide with a
cloak of legality. In a similar way, officials and ordinary
people used the pretext of "orders" from a supposedly
legitimate government to hide from themselves and others the
evil they were doing. The study shows that even people at
local meetings, in areas far from the capital, discussed
foreign reactions to the genocide. Protests from abroad, as
hesitant and conditional as they were, did produce changes in
tactics. "If such small efforts could get results, imagine
what a firmer stand, taken earlier, might have produced," said
Des Forges. "International interventions must be prompt,
strong, and smart. We hope this history will make us all
smarter about how genocide works-and how to disrupt it more
effectively."
Introduction
"When I came out, there were no birds," said one survivor who
had hidden throughout the genocide. "There was sunshine and
the stench of death."
The sweetly sickening odor of decomposing bodies hung over
many parts of Rwanda in July 1994: on Nyanza ridge,
overlooking the capital, Kigali, where skulls and bones, torn
clothing, and scraps of paper were scattered among the bushes;
at Nyamata, where bodies lay twisted and heaped on benches and
the floor of a church; at Nyarubuye in eastern Rwanda, where
the cadaver of a little girl, otherwise intact, had been
flattened by passing vehicles to the thinness of cardboard in
front of the church steps; on the shores of idyllic Lake Kivu
in western Rwanda, where pieces of human bodies had been
thrown down the steep hillside; and at Nyakizu in southern
Rwanda, where the sun bleached fragments of bone in the sand
of the schoolyard and, on a nearby hill, a small red sweater
held together the ribcage of a decapitated child.
In the thirteen weeks after April 6, 1994, at least half a
million people perished in the Rwandan genocide, perhaps as
many as three quarters of the Tutsi population. At the same
time, thousands of Hutu were slain because they opposed the
killing campaign and the forces directing it.
The killers struck with a speed and devastation that suggested
an aberrant force of nature, "a people gone mad," said some
observers. "Another cycle of tribal violence," said others.
The nation of some seven million people encompassed three
ethnic groups. The Twa, were so few as to play no political
role, leaving only Hutu and Tutsi to face each other without
intermediaries. The Hutu, vastly superior in number,
remembered past years of oppressive Tutsi rule, and many of
them not only resented but feared the minority. The
government, run by Hutu, was at war with the Rwandan Patriotic
Front (RPF), rebels who were predominantly Tutsi. In addition,
Rwanda was one of the poorest nations in the world and growing
poorer, with too little land for its many people and falling
prices for its products on the world market. Food production
had diminished because of drought and the disruptions of war:
it was estimated that 800,000 people would need food aid to
survive in 1994.
But this genocide was not an uncontrollable outburst of rage
by a people consumed by "ancient tribal hatreds." Nor was it
the preordained result of the impersonal forces of poverty and
over-population.
This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern
elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power. This
small, privileged group first set the majority against the
minority to counter a growing political opposition within
Rwanda. Then, faced with RPF success on the battlefield and at
the negotiatingtable, these few powerholders transformed the
strategy of ethnic division into genocide. They believed that
the extermination campaign would restore the solidarity of the
Hutu under their leadership and help them win the war, or at
least improve their chances of negotiating a favorable
peace.They seized control of the state and used its machinery
and itsauthority to carry out the slaughter.
Like the organizers, the killers who executed the genocide
were not demons nor automatons responding to ineluctable
forces. They were people who chose to do evil. Tens of
thousands, swayed by fear, hatred, or hope of profit, made the
choice quickly and easily. They were the first to kill, rape,
rob and destroy. They attacked Tutsi frequently and until the
very end, without doubt or remorse. Many made their victims
suffer horribly and enjoyed doing so.
Hundreds of thousands of others chose to participate in the
genocide reluctantly, some only under duress or in fear of
their own lives. Unlike the zealots who never questioned their
original choice, these people had to decide repeatedly whether
or not to participate, each time weighing the kind of action
planned, the identity of the proposed victim, the rewards of
participating and the likely costs of not participating.
Because attacks were incited or ordered by supposedly
legitimate authorities, those with misgivings found it easier
to commit crimes and to believe or pretend to believe they had
done no wrong.
Policymakers in France, Belgium, and the United States and at
the United Nations all knew of the preparations for massive
slaughter and failed to take the steps needed to prevent it.
Aware from the start that Tutsi were being targeted for
elimination, the leading foreign actors refused to acknowledge
the genocide. To have stopped the leaders and the zealots
would have required military force; in the early stages, a
relatively small force. Not only did international leaders
reject this course, but they also declined for weeks to use
their political and moral authority to challenge the
legitimacy of the genocidal government. They refused to
declare that a government guilty of exterminating its citizens
would never receive international assistance. They did nothing
to silence the radio that broadcast calls for slaughter. Such
simple measures would have sapped the strength of the
authorities bent on mass murder and encouraged Rwandan
opposition to the extermination campaign.
When international leaders did finally voice disapproval, the
genocidal authorities listened well enough to change their
tactics although not their ultimate goal. Far from cause for
satisfaction, this small success only underscores the tragedy:
if timid protests produced this result in late April, what
might have been the result in mid-April had all the world
cried "Never again."
This study, summarized in the introduction, describes in
detail how the killing campaign was executed, linking oral
testimony with extensive written documentation. It draws upon
interviews with those who were marked for extinction but
managed to survive, those who killed or directed killings,
those who saved or sought to save others, and those who
watched and tried not to see. It presents minutes of local
meetings where operations against Tutsi were planned and
correspondence in which administrators congratulated their
subordinates for successfully destroying "the enemy." It
analyzes the layers of language and the silences that made up
the deceptive discourse of genocide, broadcast on the radio
and delivered at public meetings. It places the genocide in
the immediate political context, showing how local and
national political rivalries among Hutu influenced the course
of the campaign to eliminate Tutsi. It traces changes in the
tactics and organization of the campaign as well as its
collapse as the RPF defeated the genocidal government.
Drawing on many sources, including previously unpublished
testimony and documents from diplomats and United Nations
staff, the study shows how international actors failed to
avert or stop the genocide. It ties the expansion of the
killing campaign to early international inertia and it shows
that international protests against the slaughter, when they
finally came, were discussed even at local meetings on the
distant hills of Rwanda. Thus the study establishes that the
international community, so anxious to absent itself from the
scene, was in fact present at the genocide.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant
information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups and
individuals.
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