Journal of International Criminal Justice Advance Access originally published online on August 19, 2005
Journal of International Criminal Justice 2005 3(4):801-822; doi:10.1093/jicj/mqi059
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I. How Could it Happen? |
The Background and Causes of the Genocide in Rwanda
* Ph.D., J.D.; Director of Peace Studies at Warren Wilson College, USA. [pmagnarella{at}warren-wilson.edu]
This article begins with an account of significant events and socio-political relationships in the history of Rwanda, leading to mass murder and genocide in 1994. An explanation is then offered of these crimes, based on an analysis of certain ecological, economic, cultural and political factors specific to Rwanda, but shared to an important extent by much of East Africa.
1 Economist Intelligence Unit, Rwanda Country Report, no. 4 (1983), at 18.
2 Economist Intelligence Unit, Rwanda Country Report, Annual Supplement (1983), at 28.
3 According to Maquet, ‘Tutsi came into Ruanda as conquerors ... . They wanted to settle in the country and they built a permanent system of economic and political relations with the Hutu whereby they established themselves definitely as masters and exploiters ... [A] caste society evolved from their will to stabilize the conquest’, J.J. Maquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), at 170.
4 A number of Hutu principalities in the north, northwest and southwest remained independent until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, G. Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis (London: Hurst and Co., 1997), 19. See generally C. Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
5 Maquet, supra note 3, at 124. Lemarchand explains: ‘The king was the incarnation of the deity (Imana), ... [T]he theme of kingship was inextricably tied up with the theme of Tutsi supremacy. To rebel against the established order was no less sacrilegious than to rebel against the Mwami himself’, R. Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi (London: Pall Mall, 1970), at 33–34.
6 Maquet, supra note 3, at 89–91.
7 Ibid., at 103–105, ‘The dominance of cattle as a form of disposable wealth meant that cattle chiefs, all of them by definition Tutsi, were able to dominate most of Rwanda. To mobilize an army required capital, which came only in the form of livestock, and the Tutsi controlled the cattle’. See African Rights, Rwanda: Death, Despair, and Defiance (London: African Rights, 1995), at 4.
8 L. Mbanda, Committed to Conflict (London: SPCK, 1997), at 4.
9 Maquet, supra note 3, at 150.
10 Prunier, supra note 4, at 39.
11 Maquet, supra note 3, at 118.
12 J. Pottier, ‘Representations of Ethnicity in Post-Genocide Writings on Rwanda’, in O. Igwara (ed.), Ethnic Hatred: Genocide in Rwanda (London: ASEN, 1995), 35–58, at 45.
14 Ibid., at 42. ‘It was through uburetwa that social relations took on a strong ethnic character before the European colonialists arrived’, ibid., at 13.
15 For example, the American anthropologist Helen Codere writes: ‘Occupational specialization, cultural differences and endogamy justify the use of the term "caste" for each of these three groups. The Hutu agriculturists also did all manner of menial services for the Tutsi; the Tutsi monopolized all administrative positions and were warriors as well as being pastoralists. The Twa were hunters or potters but in addition they performed a number of special services for the Tutsi: royal dancers and choreographers, musicians, torturers and executioners, pimps, commando raiders, messengers and jesters. Marriages between members of each caste were extremely rare’, H. Codere, ‘Power in Rwanda’, 4 Anthropologica (1962) 45–85, at 48.
17 Lemarchand, supra note 5, at 18. See also A.-F. Mecklenburg-Schwerin, In the Heart of Africa, translated by G.E. Maberley-Oppler (London: Cassel, 1910), at 47–48. Adolf-Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin travelled through Central Africa in 1907–1908 (offering physical descriptions and measurements of Tutsi and stating that ‘their bronze-brown skin reminds one of the inhabitants of the more hilly parts of northern Africa’).
18 Maquet, supra note 3, at 77–78. National statistics on intermarriage rates are unavailable. In July 1995, when Mamdani visited Ntarama, a secteur in Rwanda near the Burundi border, a local resident told him that prior to the genocide, about one-third of Tutsi women had been married to Hutu, whereas only about 1 per cent of Hutu women had been married to Tutsi. The local explained that because of the discrimination against Tutsi, Hutu (in this community of 3,500 Hutu and 1,500 Tutsi) were very reluctant to give their daughters to Tutsi in marriage, while many Tutsi parents believed their daughters would have better opportunities if they married Hutu. However, he said that once genocide began, the administration ‘forced Hutu men to kill their Tutsi wives’, M. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), at 4.
19 Maquet, supra note 3, at 66.
20 J.J. Maquet, ‘The Kingdom of Ruanda’, in D. Forde (ed.), African Worlds (London: Oxford University Press, 1954) 164–189, at 185.
22 Pottier, supra note 12, at 39. E.S. Grogan and A.H. Sharp, From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa South to North (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1900), at 19.
23 Lemarchand, supra note 5, at 34.
24 Maquet, supra note 20, at 185. See also C.C. Taylor, Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 (Oxford, New York: Berg, 1999), at 75.
25 Maquet, supra note 20, at 185.
28 Prunier, supra note 4, at 25.
29 Louis explains that ‘When a chief refused to submit to German rule, ... a German officer would set out to destroy systematically the villages and agriculture of the "rebel" and would appropriate his cattle. In the most serious cases ... the main offenders were hanged’, W.R. Louis, Ruanda–Urundi, 1884–1919 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), at 203.
30 Prunier, supra note 4, at 9.
31 A. Destexhe, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1995), at 40.
32 D. Kamukama, Rwanda Conflict: Its Roots and Regional Implications (Kampala, Uganda: Fountain Press, 1997), at 21.
33 Prunier, supra note 4, at 31.
34 Lemarchand, supra note 5, at 123–124.
35 P. Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1998), at 57.
36 Prunier, supra note 4, at 35.
38 African Rights, supra note 7, at 9.
39 Newbury writes that during the time of Rwabugiri's reign, ‘lineages that were wealthy in cattle and had links to powerful chiefs were regarded as Tutsi; lineages lacking these characteristics were relegated to non-Tutsi status’, Newbury, supra note 4, at 79.
40 See J. Pottier, Re-Imagining Rwanda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), at 15, who argues that ‘it was Rwabugiri, and not the Europeans, who crafted ethnic labels on the basis of cattle ownership’. According to Mamdani, ‘the Belgians took an existing sociopolitical distinction and racialized it’; see Mamdani, supra note 18, at 99.
41 Prunier, supra note 4, at 45–46.
42 Lemarchand, supra note 5, at 149.
44 Prunier, supra note 4, at 51 and 55.
46 E.L. Nyankanzi, Genocide: Rwanda and Burundi (Rochester, VT: Schenkman, 1998), at 134.
47 Prunier, supra note 4, at 57.
49 Lemarchand, supra note 5, at 44.
50 Prunier, supra note 4, at 60–62.
54 Mbanda, supra note 8, at 74.
55 Mamdani, supra note 18, at 164.
57 O. Otunnu, ‘Rwandese Refugees and Immigrants in Uganda’, in H. Adelman and A. Suhrhe (eds), The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 1999) 31–49, at 33.
58 Mamdani, supra note 18, at 172–173.
59 V. Jefremovas, ‘Acts of Human Kindness: Tutsi, Hutu, and the Genocide’, 23 Issue (1995) 28–31, at 29–30; C. Newbury, ‘Background to Genocide in Rwanda’, ibid., 12–17, at 12–14.
60 Newbury, supra note 59, at 15.
61 J. Chrétien, Rwanda: Les Médias du Génocide (Paris: Karthala, 1995), at 39–40.
62 Gourevitch, supra note 35, at 88.
63 Prunier, supra note 4, at 192–193.
64 Mamdani, supra note 18, at 210.
66 R. Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), at 143.
67 Nyankanzi, supra note 46, at 46.
69 Lemarchand, supra note 66, at xv.
70 Nyankanzi, supra note 46, at 46.
71 Prunier, supra note 4, at 199.
72 O. Igwara, ‘Ethnicity, Nationalism and Genocide in Rwanda’, in Ignara, supra note 12, 1–18, at 11.
73 R. Lemarchand, ‘Rwanda: The Rationality of Genocide’, 23 Issue (1995) 2 and 8–11, at 10.
74 Gourevitch, supra note 35, at 109.
75 G. Vassall-Adams, Rwanda (Oxford: Oxfam, 1994), at 32.
76 Gourevitch, supra note 35, at 114–115.
77 African Rights, supra note 7, at 49.
80 Lemarchand, supra note 73, at 62.
81 Prunier, supra note 4, at 255.
82 Judgment, Akayesu (ICTR-96–4-T), Trial Chamber I, 2 September 1998, 
428.
83 Vassal-Adams, supra note 75, at 37.
84 Prunier, supra note 4, at 265.
85 R. Bonner, ‘Rwanda's Leaders Vow to Build a Multiparty State for both Hutu and Tutsi’, New York Times, 7 September 1994, at A10 (available in Lexis, News Library).
86 Pottier, supra note 42, at 11.
87 C. André and J. Platteau, ‘Land Relations under Unbearable Stress: Rwanda Caught in the Malthusian Trap’, 34 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (1998) 1–47, at 3.
89 R.E. Seavoy, Famine in East Africa: Food Production and Food Policies (New York: Greenwood, 1989), at 85–86.
90 Taylor, supra note 24, at 36.
91 Newbury, supra note 59, at 14–15.
92 André and Platteau, supra note 91, at 4.
93 Economist Intelligence Unit, supra note 1, at 18.
94 André and Platteau, supra note 87, at 4.
95 Pottier, supra note 40, at 21.
96 A. Des Forges, ‘The Ideology of Genocide’, 23 Issue (1995) 44–47, at 44.
97 Vassal-Adams, supra note 75, at 12.
99 Prunier, supra note 4, at 232.
100 André and Platteau, supra note 87, at 37, citing J. Maton, Développement économique et social au Rwanda entre 1980 et 1993. Le dixiéme décile en face de l'apocalypse (University of Ghent, Belgium: Department of Economics, 1994), at 27–28, available online at http://129.194.252.80/catfiles/0912.pdf (visited 8 March 2005).
101 André and Platteau, supra note 87, at 38–39, quoting G. Austin, The Effects of Government Policy on the Ethnic Distribution of Income and Wealth in Rwanda: A Review of Published Sources, Consultancy Report for the World Bank (Washington, DC, 1996), at 10.
102 André and Platteau, supra note 87, at 38.
103 Vassal-Adams, supra note 75, at 13 and 23.
104 Prunier, supra note 4, at 80.
106 André and Platteau, supra note 87, at 5.
107 Prunier, supra note 4, at 89.
108 André and Platteau, supra note 87, at 5.
109 The literature on regional genocide and mass murder includes: Lemarchand, supra note 70; J.-P. Chretien, ‘Burundi: The Obsession with Genocide’, 95 Current History (1996) 206–210; H. Adelman and A. Suhrke (eds), The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999); G. Nzongola-Ntalaja, ‘The Congo Holocaust and the Rwanda Genocide’, 2 CODESRIA Bulletin (1999) 66–70; C.P. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa: Conflict Roots, Mass Violence, and Regional War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).