The 1994 Rwandan Genocide

Podcast Transcript

In 1994, the nation of Rwanda endured a brutal 100-day spasm of violence that tore families apart and claimed the lives of over one million people.

Members of the ethnic minority Tutsi group were hunted down and murdered by members of the larger Hutu group. While this was the worst episode of violence between the two groups, it was not the first.

What added to the tragedy was that while the horrific events unfolded, the rest of the world stood by and did nothing.

Learn about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, why it happened, and how it unfolded on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The Rwandan Genocide didn’t occur in a vacuum, and the events that transpired weren’t random. To understand why it happened, we need to understand the history of the country and the events that led up to it.

Rwanda, like the rest of Africa, was subject to European colonization in the 19th century. Germany was the first country to colonize Rwanda in 1897. However, its tenure as a German colony was short-lived because of World War I.

Following the East African Campaign in 1916, Belgium seized and occupied Rwanda. After taking the land, Belgium held on to it and colonized it until Rwanda gained its independence in 1962.

Belgium’s rule as a colonial power fundamentally changed Rwanda’s societal structures, especially in terms of race. Believing in so-called ‘Race sciences,’ Belgium categorized Rwandans by ‘identity groups’ and issued identity cards labeling ethnicities.

The Belgians identified three main “racial” groups: the Tutsi, who made up 14% of the population; the Hutu, who made up 85%; and the Twa, who made up 1%. Although these groups were already present, Europeans placed significantly more importance on them.

The Belgians favored the Tutsis because they were perceived as being a “superior” race they believed that they had migrated from Northern Africa, making them more closely related to Europeans. The perception was that this justified their leadership over the Hutus, whom they regarded as an “inferior” race.

The final group, the Twa, was treated as insignificant by the Belgians. The group was perceived to be the region’s original inhabitants and mostly kept to themselves, living in the forests as hunter-gatherers. The Twa were excluded from the political process and were largely ignored.

Belgium approached colonial rule with laziness and favored an indirect approach. As long as the Tutsis were willing to convert to Christianity, they could hold power in Rwanda. This racial science also made it nearly impossible for the previously more fluid movement between societal classes.

In reality, there was no significant difference between Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa. They share the same language, culture, and history. These were social and economic groups, not racial groups. The Tutsi were traditionally associated with cattle ownership and political power, while Hutu were primarily agriculturalists.

Under colonial rule, these flexible social categories were hardened into fixed ethnic identities, reinforced by identity cards and unequal access to education and power.

As time went on, the Tutsi, like the Belgians, believed they were superior and began to implement colonial policies for Belgium. The native chiefs of the Hutu and Twa people were dismissed, and regulations on labor laws were also changed, allowing for severe corporal punishments like beating and whippings to be given should agricultural quotas not be met.

This fueled widespread resentment toward the Tutsi. Under Tutsi rule, the Hutus endured multiple famines, could not receive education, and suffered brutal suppression through harsh punishments.

The societal structure in Rwanda remained unchanged until 1959.

In 1959, Hutus launched a rebellion not against Belgium but against the ruling Tutsi. As a result, about 300,000 Tutsi fled Rwanda, overturning the existing societal structure.

In 1962, three years after the revolution against the Tutsi, Belgium granted Rwanda independence and left the government almost entirely under Hutu control.

Under Hutu control, those in power returned the discrimination once experienced at the hands of the Tutsi. Hutu leaders committed brutal acts of violence, forcing thousands more Tutsi to flee the country.

The Tutsi were blamed by Hutu extremists for being the cause of the economic, political, and social pressures the country was facing. This tension continued to brew until October of 1990, when a Civil War between the two ethnic groups broke out.

The war began when a group of Tutsi refugees living in Uganda crossed the border to try and reclaim Rwanda. Over a decade, Tutsi had fled Rwanda to Uganda and organized the Rwandan Patriotic Front in response to ongoing violence and discrimination.

Extremist Hutu leadership created lists of Tutsi and moderate Hutu leaders to assassinate during the war. They also trained and armed youth militias, who carried out a few smaller-scale massacres during the war.

The violence perpetrated by the Hutu was well documented by both local and international human rights organizations, including the UN Commission on Human Rights, but no action was taken against the Hutu.

Internationally, authorities classified the massacres and violence as internal conflict. The Rwandan government called the killings spontaneous, uncontrolled actions, and never brought anyone to justice.

The Civil War was brought to a brief end in August of 1993 with the signing of the Arusha Accords. This agreement said that, in exchange for peace, the two groups would create transitional, power-sharing governments.

Hutu extremists were furious with the terms of the accords.

The Hutu extremists began to place messages in the media about how the Tutsis were going to go on a killing campaign against the Hutus. The most important media station which spread this message was ‘Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines,’ or RTLM.

The radio station used its platform to promote hatred towards the Tutsi. They began to expouse a racist ideology, claiming that because the Tutsi were “foreigners,” they were inferior to the Hutu. It was the argument the Belgians had originally used turned on its head.

Meanwhile, extremist Hutus condemned Tutsi supporters, painted Tutsis as subhuman and comparable to cockroaches, and imported large quantities of weapons, especially machetes, for local militias. They claimed these preparations were for self-defense.

Rwanda was a powder keg, just waiting to blow.

On April 6, 1994, someone shot down the Rwandan President’s plane, killing him and the President of Burundi, both of whom were Hutu. RTLM announced their deaths on the radio and urged the Hutu to ‘go to work.’

This was the call triggered the start of the genocide.

The first day saw key Tutsi and moderate Hutu political and military leaders executed. In addition, checkpoints were created along roads. At the roadblocks, they had people checking identity cards that listed the person’s ethnicity.

Organizers meticulously planned the genocide. The government distributed lists of enemies and their families to local militias, using information gathered at roadblock checkpoints. By checking identity cards, officials compiled lists to systematically identify and call for the murder of different Tutsis.

Hutu citizens were recruited or pressured into arming themselves with machetes or other weapons and were encouraged by the government to destroy or steal their neighbors’ property and maim, rape, and kill them.

The government incentivized the killings by promising rewards to people who traveled house to house and murdered anyone sheltering Tutsi refugees. Militias corralled victims into large open areas like stadiums and schools for mass executions.

Most of the violence was committed with hand weapons, specifically machetes.

Machetes were chosen because they could be easily imported under the guise of agricultural use, facilitating stockpiling and distribution.

Additionally, because the killings were carried out under the perception of “self-defense,” the murders were considered to be personal and not centrally organized. Using weapons like machetes helped maintain that perception.

The agony and terror inflicted upon the Tutsi defy comprehension.

Hutu husbands, in fear of the violent mob, murdered their Tutsi wives as they slept. Friends and neighbors turned into killers overnight. Those who desperately sought sanctuary in churches found betrayal and death at the hands of priests and nuns they trusted.

A haunting legacy of the genocide was the tidal wave of sexual violence: up to half a million Tutsi women, who already lived in terror, suffered the additional trauma of rape.

Hutu leaders orchestrated the use of rape as a systematic weapon during the genocide. They forced men who had tested positive for HIV or who were hospitalized with the disease into ‘rape squads’ whose goal was to inflict slow, painful deaths on Tutsi women.

In addition to this, women of reproductive age were often mutilated by machetes, knives, and other weapons to prevent the possibility of future pregnancies.

Men were also victims of the rape squads and were often mutilated.

An often forgotten victim of the genocide was the Twa. Though not direct targets, they were accused of aiding in hiding the Tutsi. This led to an estimated ten to thirty thousand of them being killed during the genocide.

The genocide led the Rwandan Patriotic Front in Uganda to quickly reform and begin an offensive against the government, desperate to end the mass killings.

The Civil War restarted as the RPF quickly made inroads into the country, eventually capturing the Rwandan Capital, Kigali, after 100 days.

After taking the capital, two million Hutus quickly fled the country, fearing Tutsi vengeance. There are reports that thousands of Hutus were killed and more were hunted down in the neighboring DRC following the Tutsi return to power, though they deny this.

As a response to the genocide, the Tutsi opted to go into battle with the Hutu militia groups and the Congolese army, which had backed the Hutu government. This eventually led them to overthrow and install a new government in the DRC.

The genocide took place over just 100 days. The number of Tutsi murdered during that time frame is estimated to be around 800,000, which was 77% of the total Tutsi population. The total number of victims from the genocide sits closer to 1.1 million.

In many ways, the Rwandan genocide is an international failure. Both Belgium and the UN had forces located inside Rwanda, but were never given a mandate to step in and try to prevent the killings.

In fact, the UN actively avoided using the word genocide due to pressures from countries like the United States, which were unwilling to get involved in another African conflict.

France did attempt to get involved, but were allies of the Hutu government in power. Though they attempted to set up safe zones and evacuate at-risk citizens, they did little to stop the massacres occurring.

An important question to ask is whether anyone was ever punished for the genocide. This is a complicated answer as the International Criminal Court wasn’t even established until 2002, nearly a decade after the events occurred.

There was an International Criminal Tribunal established in Rwanda that was used to prosecute the ringleaders of the genocide. Ultimately, 93 people, all Hutu, were convicted of genocide. These trials were often lengthy and expensive.

10,000 more people are believed to have died in prison before coming to trial.

Additionally, community-based courts, known as Gacaca Courts, were established. These courts used community-level justice to try the massive number of genocide cases with the goal of reconciling the country. These courts encouraged confession and allowed the community to determine the punishment for convicted. These lasted from 2002 to 2012.

Currently, Rwanda is doing fairly well. The country is growing economically and is in a period of relative political stability. The genocide still weighs heavily on people’s minds, and mentioning ethnicity at all is completely illegal.

Yet, much of the conflict in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo today can be traced back to the events of the early 1990s. In some respects, while Rwanda itself has stabilized, much of the trouble has simply been exported to its neighbors.

The events of 1994 in Rwanda are one of the greatest losses of life since the end of the Second World War, especially so if you consider how quickly it all transpired.

The events of 1994 show us that even relatively peaceful countries can erupt into violence if divisions within the country are left unchecked.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Research and writing for this episode were provided by THE Olivia Ashe.

Today’s review comes from listener slr2422 on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They Write:

Family friendly

This is a great podcast to throw on in the car if you have kids in the car and you’re on your way to/from somewhere. Our kids (10/13) don’t find all topics interesting, but they generally like about one of every three or four. We were always searching for something we could put on that is generally clean.

Thanks, SLR! If your kids aren’t interested in every episode, make them listen to it anyhow. Think of it as eating your vegetables, and you never know when the information will come in handy.

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