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Name: A People Betrayed
Rating: 4.5 (60 reviews)
Author: Linda Melvern

Linda Melvern

The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide

4.5 (60 Bewertungen)

27 Min.

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African History Global Politics Wars

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A People Betrayed
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What’s in it for me? Get a shocking look at how the UN aided and abetted a genocide.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda was one of the worst humanitarian atrocities since the Holocaust, ultimately resulting in one million deaths. Roving death squads affiliated with the far-right ethnonationalist Rwandan government – and, some say, trained by the French – executed entire communities in the most gruesome ways imaginable.

But even more chilling is that it was entirely preventable. European countries, the United States, and the United Nations had been warned for years that ethnic cleansing was in the works. These blinks review the reasons and mysteries behind why they did nothing to prevent this apocalyptic calamity.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how the seeds for ethnic division in Rwanda were sown by European colonialists;
how radio propaganda incited Rwandans into a state of violent frenzy; and
why the peculiar obsession of a French president led his government to protect the perpetrators of genocide.

The racial classification of Hutu and Tutsi was calcified by European colonial practices.

In 1894, exactly 100 years before the Rwandan genocide, King Rwabugiri of Rwanda received German Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen. Unbeknownst to Rwabugiri, his domain had been “given” to Germany ten years earlier at the Berlin Conference, which carved up Africa for colonization by European powers.

At the time, the mountainous, lush, and beautiful land of Rwanda was known in Europe as the “Switzerland of Africa.” It was a complex society with an intricate social order, rich oral history, and highly cultured court featuring poets, magicians, wine-stewards, and cattle-namers.

King Rwabugiri was a military genius. Military conquest was a priority to the state, and Rwabugiri’s armies traveled widely with vast cattle herds. It was in his armies that the designation between Hutu and Tutsi first emerged. The elites in charge of the cattle were tall and thin, with angular features; they started to be known as Tutsi. Their servants, who were generally shorter with rounder faces, were called Hutu.

Visiting Europeans, searching for justification as to why Rwandan culture should be so advanced, developed the theory that the Tutsi, a so-called “superior race,” had migrated from the Horn of Africa and had come to dominate the “inferior” Hutu. It was impossible for Europeans to imagine black Africans developing so refined a society without outside influence.

In the early twentieth century, as Germany became mired in World War I, the Belgians came to dominate the region. In 1933, the Belgian administration ordered a census to classify the population by ethnicity. Each individual was carefully measured and assigned an identity. This census introduced the idea that ethnicity could be determined based on physical appearance. And ethnicity guaranteed certain rights – under the Belgians, only Tutsi had access to education, administrative training, and government jobs.

Belgian rule was harsh, involving forced labor, beatings, and exploitation of the peasant population, which it designated as Hutu. Many of these peasants were conscripted for labor in the diamond mines in the neighboring Congo River Basin. It was these oppressive conditions that brought about the cohesion of the Hutu group – and, for the first time, the idea of a pure Hutu nation.

A manifesto in 1957, written with the help of a Belgian priest working in Rwanda, called for Hutu emancipation and the rule of the majority. Widespread rural anger encouraged an emerging Hutu nationalism.

The overwhelming popularity of the manifesto laid bare an alarming fact: the Hutu majority now believed the European narrative that the Tutsi were foreign invaders who had enslaved and exploited them.

The end of the monarchy deepened social mistrust and division, setting the stage for the impending catastrophe.

In 1959, 46-year-old King Rudahigwa of Rwanda – a Tutsi – went to the hospital for a routine procedure. After being given an antibiotic injection by Belgian doctors, he inexplicably died.

The Tutsi elite believed the Belgian doctors, with the support of Hutu extremists, had killed him. Violence erupted throughout the country, ultimately resulting in the abolishment of the monarchy, establishment of political parties, and, in 1961, a declaration of Rwandan independence.

Civil war devastated Rwanda while providing cover for Hutu leadership to equip its paramilitary killing squads.

On October 1, 1990, several thousand Ugandan soldiers abandoned their posts and crossed over into Rwanda. The RPF’s long-awaited ground invasion had begun.

But the Rwandan army was ready for them. Alongside French special forces, the army counterattacked, sending the RPF back into Uganda or into the inhospitable Virunga mountains, where many froze or starved to death.

The civil war officially ended with the 1993 Arusha Accords, but the government had no intention of implementing them.

After 13 months of deliberation, the international corps of delegates was ecstatic. Collectively, representatives from five African countries, the United States, France, and Belgium had cajoled the RPF and the Rwandan government into ending their civil war. They signed a landmark agreement in Arusha, Tanzania in August 1993.

The Accords, as they came to be known, were supposed to bring radical constitutional reform to Rwanda. Refugees would be allowed to return home. The RPF and Rwandan armies would merge. As a first step, a UN peacekeeping force would be sent to observe proceedings.

The UN, distracted by other crises, didn’t heed Dallaire’s increasingly dire warnings that genocide was imminent.

The same month that Dallaire landed in Kigali, 19 American Special Forces were killed in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, while under the official aegis of the UN.

US President Bill Clinton blamed the UN. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, now the UN Secretary General, blamed the US. The Battle of Mogadishu highlighted a disorganized UN that lacked the power to control a combat operation. It also contributed to a UN Security Council whose members were determined to block peacekeeping efforts that could be politically risky.

President Habyarimana’s assassination sparked a widespread and brutal genocide.

President Habyarimana didn’t normally travel at night. But, after being delayed at a regional summit in Dar es Salaam, he was anxious to get home. On April 6, 1994, as Habyarimana flew over the dark city of Kigali, his plane was shot down by a missile.

It was the signal Hutu Power had been waiting for. RTLM announced that Habyarimana had been assassinated by the Belgians in cahoots with the RPF – and they should be made to pay the price. The targets were Tutsi and Hutu Power’s opponents, as well as UN peacekeepers from Belgium.

As genocidal violence engulfed the country, the UN abandoned the Rwandan people.

Amid the stampede to get out of Kigali, the International Committee of the Red Cross – or ICRC – stayed on, headed by the heroic Swiss Philippe Gaillard along with 26 staff members. On a Kigali hillside, they created an emergency field hospital in a former girls’ convent school.

The ICRC team developed a routine. Every morning, ambulances left the hospital to look for people who had been attacked and abandoned on the streets. Medical staff had to choose which wounded they could take to the hospital, prioritizing those who would die without medical attention. Children were also a priority. It was pointless to rescue Tutsi men because they would just be killed at checkpoints. They had to be back at the hospital by 01:00 p.m., before the militia members at checkpoints were too drunk to negotiate.

After weeks of killing, media attention finally precipitated a toothless international response.

When the UN pulled out its peacekeepers on April 21, thousands of Rwandans were being hacked to death every day based on their perceived ethnic identity. At this point, the US State Department had undeniable proof of the planned ethnic cleansing. But the UN Security Council was unprepared to face the reality of the genocide – along with the legal liability they would assume if they acknowledged it.

Others were less wary of calling the genocide by its name. On April 25, after estimating that 500,000 people had been killed in the previous 18 days, a British Oxfam officer working in Rwanda phoned headquarters to report that genocide was taking place. On April 30, Dallaire told Reuters that unless the international community acted, it would be unable to defend itself against the accusation that it did nothing to stop genocide.

As the RPF gained the upper hand, France swooped in to protect its allies: the génocidaires of the Rwandan government.

As April turned to May, Rwanda was totally consumed by violence. RPF General Paul Kagame stopped investigating massacre sites; he’d seen enough, and feared that the accumulated trauma would impact his decisions in battle. The time for UN intervention, he realized, had passed. The genocide was almost complete. It was up to the RPF alone to stop it.

Kagame’s RPF was the superior fighting force compared to the bloated, undisciplined Rwandan army. By early June, it controlled almost every major city in Rwanda. The interim government was on the run.

Blame for the genocide lies not only with the génocidaires, but with the international community.

With the Rwandan capital now firmly in RPF hands, the war was over. But the country was starting again from zero. Government buildings had been looted down to their door frames. There was no food, water, livestock, or crops. Only one-sixth of Kigali’s pre-war population remained. Rotting bodies lay in piles on the streets.

Rwandans outside Rwanda may have had it even worse. The RPF advance, in concert with RTLM fear-mongering, had triggered an exodus. One million refugees crossed into Zaire over the course of two days – the largest and fastest movement of people in history. Refugees lived in terrible conditions in camps. Thousands died from dysentery, cholera, and starvation.

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Worum geht es in A People Betrayed?

A People Betrayed (2000) is a masterful, in-depth look at the international community’s failure to intervene in one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes since the Holocaust. Through selfish and racist policies, the UN and its Security Council dithered and denied its way through three months of genocidal slaughter. As a direct result of their inaction, an estimated one million civilians were brutally murdered.

Wer A People Betrayed lesen sollte

Anyone interested in how policy translates from boardroom to battlefield
History buffs interested in the chilling after-effects of colonialism in Africa
People who suspect there’s a dark side to the new world order

Über den Autor

Linda Melvern is a British investigative journalist who has covered the Rwandan genocide for 25 years. Previously, she worked as a journalist on the Sunday Times’s award-winning investigative Insight Team. She also consulted for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, lending her personal archive as documentary evidence for the prosecution.

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