The Rwandan Genocide: 25 years later

Beginning on April 7, 1994, 25 years ago this Sunday, and continuing over the next 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda were slaughtered by members of Rwanda’s Hutu majority during an orchestrated campaign of widespread and unprecedented violence. Jewish World Watch stands in solidarity with the Rwandan people, and the memory of this horrific genocide remains emblazoned in all of our collective memory as one of the worst chapters of ethnically charged violence throughout history. 

The spark for the genocide came from the shooting down of a plane over Kigali that was carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Hayarimana.  This was the catalyst for a coordinated effort by Hutu political and military extremists to annihilate Rwanda’s ethnic Tutsis.  They were nearly successful in their goal of total extermination — three-quarters of the Tutsi population were murdered. 

In mid-July of that year, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a predominantly Tutsi rebel group based in Uganda aimed at overthrowing the Rwandan government, took control of Rwanda and ended the genocide, leaving thousands of ethnic Hutus dead in their wake.  This triggered a mass exodus of more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, to neighboring countries, most of them to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then called Zaire).

After its victory, the RPF established a coalition government with Pastuer Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president and defense minister.  Habyarimana’s NRMD party, whose officials were the masterminds of the genocide, was outlawed, and a new constitution adopted in 2003 eliminated reference to ethnicity. 

Equally as shocking as the sheer magnitude and brutality of the massacres — perpetrated primarily by machete and relying heavily on radio as a means of spreading propaganda and fomenting hatred — was how the international community turned a blind eye to the atrocities.  The world’s obliviousness and failure to act in the face of such bloodshed will forever haunt human history. 

As former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the PBS program Frontline, “The failure of Rwanda is 10 times greater than the failure of Yugoslavia.  Because in Yugoslavia the international community was interested, was involved.  In Rwanda nobody was interested.”

The realization that the international community must not stand idly by while mass atrocities occur within a sovereign country became the genesis for the “responsibility to protect” — a global political commitment to prevent future genocides, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  And the memory of what happened in Rwanda became the cornerstone of Jewish World Watch (JWW), founded in 2004 by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis and Janice Kamenir-Reznik as the Darfuri genocide erupted in the news. Since JWW’s inception, we have been devoted to emphasizing the critical importance of active grass-roots advocacy, engagement and prevention in the face of mass atrocities worldwide. 

The paramount needs of prevention and accountability emerged as the two greatest lessons of the Rwandan genocide.  25 years on, a significant number of those responsible for orchestrating the genocide, including some very high in the chain of command, have been brought to justice.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was created by the United Nations Security Council in 1994.  A total of 93 people were indicted, and after lengthy and expensive trials, 61 were convicted and sentenced, and 14 were acquitted.  However, the ICTR only covered a small fraction of cases and was unwilling to prosecute crimes committed by the RPF.  The tribunal formally closed on December 31, 2015. 

Within Rwanda, the justice system also tried a large number of genocide suspects, both in conventional domestic courts, and in local community courts, known as gacaca.  The gacaca were created to expedite the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of genocide suspects rather than having them go through traditional criminals proceedings. For a decade, until 2012, 12,000 gacaca courts met once a week in villages across the country, often outdoors in a marketplace or under a tree, trying more than 1.2 million cases.  Their aim was to achieve truth, justice and reconciliation among Rwandans as “gacaca” means to sit down and discuss an issue. 

Beyond Rwanda, a number of countries have exercised the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows prosecutors to pursue foreigners for certain grave breaches of international law regardless of the locus of the crime, to investigate and prosecute Rwandan genocide suspects found within their borders. 

Impunity drives future cycles of violence, sending a message to the masterminds and orchestrators of mass atrocities that they can continue their genocidal tactics without consequence.  Countering impunity is, therefore,  an essential strategy for preventing genocide, placing a higher price on perpetrating such violations and, hopefully, deterring future iterations of violence.  The rehabilitative and healing aspects of countering impunity cannot be minimized, either.  Rwanda has taught us that no matter the passage of time or the cost, survivors deserve to see those responsible for genocide held to account. 

Today, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has been hailed for transforming the tiny, devastated country through policies encouraging rapid economic growth.  However, discussing ethnic differences within the country remains off-limits.  While the government says this is to prevent hate speech and more bloodshed, others say it chills freedoms and prevents true reconciliation.  Kagame won a third term in the most recent 2017 election with 98.63% of the vote.

Jewish World Watch was honored to have Patrick Safari, a member of the Rwandan diaspora, speak as a panelist at our Walk to End Genocide last weekend.  He sees the trajectory of his homeland, from which he fled seeking refuge many years ago, as a success story.  He emphasized how important the gacaca system was for healing communal wounds.  “You have to understand that this situation was brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor.  The genocidaires knew the victims very well; they saw them every day.  Big trials weren’t going to bring the loved ones back, but it was important for people to tell their story and have the chance to heal.”  Nevertheless, the process of recovering from the darkness of genocide in Rwanda remains far from over, Patrick acknowledged.  Today, he said, he is as vigilant as ever in his commitment to teaching the world about what happened in Rwanda to ensure that it never happens again there or elsewhere. 

In this vigilance, Jewish World Watch is right there beside him.   

Today, while we’re in the midst of ongoing genocide against the Rohingya, and as other mass atrocity situations pepper the globe, with new episodes rocking civilian populations on an all-too-frequent basis, we all must remember the vital importance of genocide prevention as well as the need for accountability in the aftermath of such atrocities.