Remediation in Rwanda. Kristin Conner Doughty
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these newly established Hutu revolutionaries. The ensuing revolution was “powerfully assisted if not engineered by the Belgian authorities” (Lemarchand 2009:31). In 1959, the reigning king (Umwami Rudahigwa) died. In September 1959, Hutu parties won an overwhelming majority in legislative elections and decisively rejected the monarchy via referendum. On July 1, 1962, Rwanda regained formal independence from European rule.
The Hutu Revolution (1959–1962) was directed not against the Belgian colonial administration but against Tutsi, who faced intimidation and communal violence (Codere 1962; Lemarchand 1970; C. Newbury 1988:195; Reyntjens 1985:267–269). In November 1959, in response to a nonfatal Tutsi attack on a Hutu subchief, a group of Hutu attacked and killed four Tutsi notables. Widespread violent incidents against Tutsi spread across the country in a matter of days, sparing only three districts, though the attacks were initially limited mainly to burning and looting (C. Newbury 1988:194–195). Anti-Tutsi violence flared periodically and became more deliberate and marked with more bloodshed between November 1959 and the September 1961 elections (Lemarchand 1970).
The First Republic, from 1962 to 1973, was led by President Gregoire Kayibanda and his coalition of Hutu from the south. In 1963, exiled Tutsis invaded unsuccessfully from Burundi. In 1973, Juvénal Habyarimana seized the presidency in a popularly backed military coup, and he led the Second Republic from 1973 to 1994, with a northern Hutu power base. Scholars agree that after the transition in power at independence, Hutu leaders in the First and Second Republics did not reverse the oppressive leadership style of Rwabugiri and colonial authorities but continued to rule authoritatively, to centralize power in a small ethnic and regionally determined elite, to be intolerant of opposition, and to discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, now against Tutsi (Jefremovas 2002:124–125; Lemarchand 1970, 2009; Reyntjens 1985:521). Hutu revolutionaries in 1959–1962 and the Hutu-power government in the 1990s operated by similar logics, especially in terms of the marginalization of moderates, dynamics of fear, and winner-take-all politics (C. Newbury 1998).
The First and Second Republics created a political situation that excluded Tutsi from power and periodically victimized innocent Tutsi. In addition to the attacks between 1959 and 1961, after the failed Tutsi armed incursion in 1963 from Burundi, Tutsi political leaders were eliminated and between ten thousand and fourteen thousand Tutsi were killed, while thousands more were forced into exile (De Lame 2005:59; Reyntjens 1985:460–467). Beginning in 1973, there was another wave of violence when Habyarimana targeted Tutsi students and school staff in pogroms. Over time, this discrimination and violence created an extensive Tutsi diaspora community who became stateless but had legitimate claims to live in Rwanda. Between 1959 and 1963, two hundred thousand Tutsi were forced into exile: seventy thousand to Uganda, twenty-five thousand to the DRC (formerly Zaire), and fifty thousand to Burundi (Lemarchand 2009:31). By the 1980s, between four hundred thousand and six hundred thousand refugees were estimated to be living in neighboring countries, many the children of Tutsi who had fled earlier waves of violence (C. Newbury 1995:13). These refugees suffered as second-class citizens, unable to integrate into their host country, while the Habyarimana government claimed that due to demographic pressures, they could not return to Rwanda (C. Newbury 1995:13; Prunier 2009:13–16). For example, in 1982, thousands of Rwandan refugees in Uganda were forced to leave by President Milton Obote, but upon their arrival in Rwanda, they were refused the right to repatriate and were kept again in refugee camps until they were eventually returned to Uganda.
In 1990, a group of armed exiles, mostly Tutsi, successfully organized and invaded Rwanda as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), fighting to overthrow Habyarimana’s government. Civil war ensued for the next three years. Anti-Tutsi violence intensified after the RPF invasion in 1990, when there were frequent retaliatory killings against Tutsi, as the Hutu government identified all Tutsi as RPF accomplices, who they feared were attempting to reestablish Tutsi hegemony. These massacres have been seen as “practice” for genocide (Lemarchand 2009:84; D. Newbury 1998:78).
Within Rwanda during the Second Republic, while elites consolidated power and there were advancements in public works, urban development, public health, and enrichment of a middle class, at the same time, poverty and inequality grew for rural Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi, often in relation to land access (Ansoms and Marysse 2005; De Lame 2005:63–64, 246; C. Newbury 1995; D. Newbury 1998; Reyntjens 1985:523). By the late 1980s, in the lead-up to genocide, tensions were exacerbated by the dynamics of the global political economy. Global coffee prices collapsed in 1989, and the International Monetary Fund implemented structural adjustment programs, including devaluing Rwanda’s currency in 1990 and requiring Rwandans to “cost-share,” which included paying higher fees for public services such as primary school, health care, and water. These factors both resulted in sharply deteriorating economic conditions and increased poverty for the vast majority of Rwandans (C. Newbury 1995; D. Newbury 1998:89). These economic constraints, combined with the disconnect between rural people and elites, which meant rural people were not meaningfully connected to the changing political situation, contributed to social tension and fear, especially among male youth, who were particularly vulnerable to recruitment by militias (C. Newbury and D. Newbury 1999: 91–92; D. Newbury 1998).
During this period, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, outside powers that controlled the flow of economic resources to Rwanda pushed the democratization process and legitimization of multipartyism (De Lame 2005:65). This reorganized structures of power and forced Habyarimana to open political space to others, which angered powerful members of his own regime and contributed to elites trying to eliminate challengers and reassert their hold on social, economic, and political dominance (Longman 1995; C. Newbury and D. Newbury 1999; D. Newbury 1998:80, 89). In 1991, Rwanda legitimized a multiparty system, which intensified the contest for political power. In 1993, with the support of the major Western powers, Tanzania brokered peace talks between the Rwandan government and the RPF that resulted in a power-sharing agreement known as the Arusha Accords.
Scholars have shown that during the early 1990s the organizational planning and conditions for genocide were put in place, countering interpretations dominant in the Western media that the violence was the unfortunate escalation of a civil war or a spontaneous eruption of hatred among people who were inherently violent (Des Forges 1999; Lemarchand 1995; Longman 1995; Mamdani 2001; C. Newbury 1995; D. Newbury 1995; Prunier 1995). They have shown that the genocide resulted not from a failed state but rather, from an unduly strong one, where state apparatuses—political organizations, military, and the administration—were used to commit genocide (Des Forges 1995; Lemarchand 2009:85). Organization involved distinct sets of actors, including Habyarimana’s core group, the Presidential Guard, rural organizers at the commune level, and civilian militias called Interahamwe, “those who stand together.” The genocide ideology of hatred targeting Tutsi was key to these efforts and was well established by 1992 (Des Forges 1995). Planning intensified after the signing of the Arusha Accords in 1993, when hardline elements within the Rwandan government and other Hutu extremists exploited ethnically based ideologies to mobilize the population as a strategy for maintaining power and simultaneously stepped up efforts to organize, indoctrinate, and arm segments of their supporters. Consistent with the dominant narrative, scholars have pointed to the role of the media and schools in fomenting ethnic division in the lead up to the genocide, particularly by propagating racist anti-Tutsi writings, cartoons, and songs, often based on the Hamitic ideology (Chrétien 1995; Des Forges 1995; King 2014; Lemarchand 2009). The international development aid system supported the processes that underlay the genocide by, for example, financing the processes of social exclusion, perpetuating humiliating practices, and ignoring growing racialization (Uvin 1998:224–238). The international arms trade in the wake of the end of the Cold War made it possible for the government to provide weapons for the newly developed militias (D. Newbury 1998:90). International actors knew about, but did not try to stop, growing anti-Tutsi massacres in the 1990s, and France even assisted the Habyarimana regime’s military efforts against the RPF (Kroslak 2007; Lemarchand 2009:84).
On April 6, 1994, as President Habyarimana was flying home from finalizing details of the Arusha Accords, his plane was shot down above the Kigali airport. This plane crash, blamed by the Hutu government on Tutsi rebels, triggered a coordinated attempt by Hutu extremists to eliminate the Tutsi population. Within hours, a campaign of violence ignited in the capital and began to spread through the country. The Tutsi-led RPF broke the