Habyarimana and the genocide project

Genocide doesn’t just happen, it is planned. Once there has been categorisation– Hutu, Tutsi and Twa in Rwanda – then polarisation follows. Polarisation is the process of separating something so far apart that it cannot be repaired or reunited. In the years leading up to the Genocide against the Tutsi, President Juvenal Habyarimana– like his predecessors– set himself and his allies on one side and those he called traitors on the other. On the right side were Hutu who shared both his political ideology as well as his hatred of Tutsi. The rest – the Tutsi and their sympathisers were labeled ‘traitors’. From traitor to enemy The word traitor was quickly equated with enemy. On September 22, 1992, an army document was issued explicitly authorising whoever wanted to kill Tutsi to do so without fear of consequence – since Tutsi were the enemy. This order was in line with the 8th Hutu commandment, published in the Kangura newspaper in October 1990, that said: “It is prohibited to have mercy on Tutsi.” At the time, many people asked themselves what the commandment meant. Did it mean you would ignore a Tutsi neighbour when they asked for sugar? Did it mean you would not intervene when a Tutsi needed medical help? Did it mean you could not speak up against the injustices Tutsi faced? But the 1992 document made it clear. Tutsi were an enemy deserving death and any Hutu – according to the 10th Commandment – who spoke out against this ideology or practice was a traitor, deserving the same fate as the Tutsi. President Juvenal Habyarimana through his various tools– the Hutu Ten Commandments, Kangura newspaper and later RTLM– clearly demarcated friend and foe. Their propaganda told of “incidents,” whereby Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) spies went into communities and killed Hutu; proving that the Tutsi would exterminate all Hutu given the chance. In reality, these were staged. It was brutal and callous politics, in which ordinary men and women were sacrificed to propagate a divisive ideology. Habyarimana announces genocide The plan to exterminate the Tutsi was unveiled by President Habyarimana during a speech at an extraordinary MRND Congress on April 28, 1991.The congress was to discuss the mechanisms of their newly “reformed” party, given a multiparty system would soon begin. Six months earlier, on November 13, 1990, Habyarimana had finally succumbed to growing pressure to open up Rwanda’s political space. He was explicit in his speech: Any new mechanism had to confirm the MRND was founded ‘on the majority’ which, to him, was the essence of democracy. In that meeting, he also unveiled measures to put an end to the wars and insurgent attacks Rwanda had “suffered” since 1959. He explicitly said: “Apart from decisions we will take to end this war internally and externally, there is also a permanent way to finish this problem so that even our great grandchildren never face it again”. Practically, the number of soldiers was increased and support promised to whoever was capable, starting with the youth living near borders, to stop the “enemy” from entering the country and prevent “conspirators” inside Rwanda from boosting enemy ranks. It is clear that ‘finding a permanent solution to the war’ excluded peace talks. Later, Habyarimana, in a political rally held in Ruhengeri in November 1992, called the Arusha peace talks which brought the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) to the negotiating table, the signing of ‘papers’. He proposed another way to finish what he called the country’s problem; he called it “gutsirika”. The word implies doing something so significant to eliminate the cause of the problem. To end the war, Tutsi had to die. An announcement of the impending genocide. Unity in evil To garner support for his genocide project, Habyarimana had to unite the many against the few. In his speech at the MRND congress, the word unity was repeated several times. Unity would help the majority fight the Inyenzi (cockroaches) who wished to erase the gains achieved since the 1959 “Revolution”. He said if the majority did not unite and fight, they would be “returned” to slavery and feudalism. The unity of the Hutu against the Tutsi would become the founding principle of the new MRND. He even encouraged all other parties to make “unity” (read unity of Hutus), a priority. With this, President Habyarimana was saying he was the Hutu president – exclusively. From this, the extremist CDR party was born, followed by the creation of the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militia groups. These would later implement the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Killing the Tutsi –young or old, man or woman – became the heroic acts of the majority; a united majority against a helpless minority. The writer is a genocide scholar. Read his work at umuvugizi.wordpress.com or friendsofevil.

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Habyarimana and the genocide project