Citation
Trompe l’Oeuil in Genocide.
The False Message of Pacification in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
Ed van Hoven1
Introduction
After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda had ended researchers of Human Rights Watch found a
document entitled ‘Note Relative à la Propagande d’Expansion et de Recrutement’ in the
university city of Butare. It contained a detailed analysis of a book written by propaganda
expert Roger Mucchieli in 1970, called Psychologie de la publicité et de la propaganda. The
author of the Note claimed that lessons could be learned from this book and from Lenin and
Goebbels. He proposed the use of lies, exaggeration and ridicule to attack the opponent, in
both his public and his private life. It is not honest, the author admits, but it works well; a
propagandist can persuade the public that they are being attacked and are justified in taking
whatever measures are necessary ‘for legitimate [self-] defence.’2
Although it would be difficult to determine whether the officials and propagandists
who deliberately spread false information during the genocide in Rwanda were familiar with
this particular document, the techniques described in the Note were regularly used and,
according to historian and Human Rights Watch researcher Alison Des Forges, worked
‘extremely well’. Manipulating facts and spreading rumours to frighten citizens was a
strategy that was used on many occasions, even before April 1994. In each case similar
elements were involved: the spread of rumours, the creation of a fear, the violence directed
War crimes researcher at the National Public Prosecutors Office in the Netherlands.
Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story. Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999,
digital edition). For a discussion of the Note, see also Jean-Pierre Chretien, ‘RTLM propaganda; the democratic
Alibi’, in Allan Thompson (ed), The Media and the Rwandan Genocide (London: Pluto Press, 2007).
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against Tutsi civilians and the explanation by authorities that the violence had been
spontaneous and they simply had lacked the resources to control it.3
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda the scope of these propaganda tactics was
enlarged with a policy of the newly installed interim government known as ‘pacification’.
Similar to the ways in which local authorities responded to the pogroms and other instances
of orchestrated violence against Tutsi prior to the carnage of 1994, officials preaching
‘restoring security’ announced the end of the killings. Ministers and party leaders toured the
country repeating the new national motto of pacification. Directives were given and prefects
were ordered to hold ‘security meetings’.
But pacification was not what it seemed. Pacification in fact marked a period of
extreme violence, which was part of a nation-wide campaign of extermination that lasted 100
days and ended in July 1994. During this period it is estimated that 800,000 people, Tutsi and
moderate Hutu, were killed. The state-sponsored policies of pacification and restoring
security spearheaded the nationwide campaign of killing Tutsi and moderate Hutu in
Rwanda. Pacification shows how Rwandan elites appropriated propaganda techniques and
concepts from the West to influence the international community and to create an
environment of terror and extermination in Rwanda. Pacification in Rwanda marked a
phase wherein the interim government installed by the pro-MRND politicomilitary faction backed by the presidential family in April 1994, and which
bombastically referred to itself as the ‘government of saviours’ (abatabazi in
Kinyarwanda), succeeded, at last, in bringing the extermination of Tutsi under
state control.4
ICTR Trial Testimony Alison Des Forges in the case of Augustin Ndindiliyimana, 18 September 2006, p.53.
I draw extensively on the work Alison Des Forges, in particular Leave None to Tell the Story, which is a
landmark analysis of genocidal violence in Rwanda. I would also like to draw the reader’s attention to the lesser
known, but equally valuable contributions Des Forges made as an expert of the International Criminal Tribunal
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2
‘War’ propaganda in Rwanda
Prior to the 1994 genocide, Rwanda too had its ‘false flag’ operations. Just two weeks after
the rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) attacked Rwanda on October 1, 1990,
approximately 300 Tutsi civilians were killed in the commune of Kibilira (Gisenyi).
According to the local authorities, the people had risen up in fear because they believed the
Tutsi citizens were RPF agents or accomplices. What happened was that local leaders had
created an atmosphere of fear by spreading rumours that the RPF was on the next hill. It was
alleged that the RPF had killed a senior military officer from the region and that the RPF was
planning to attack the school and kill children. In 1993 witnesses told the International
Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda that local authorities
and state employees directed the attacks. More than 550 houses were burned down. Those
accused of the attack were detained only briefly.5
In January 1991, the RPF attacked the northern town of Ruhengeri. Authorities
accused the Bagogwe Tutsi of having helped the RPF stage the attack. Government soldiers
then staged a fake assault on the military camp in the region. The consequences were
devastating as Hutu civilians attacked en masse their Tutsi neighbours. In March 1992, Radio
Rwanda repeatedly announced that, according to a ‘human rights group in Nairobi’, Tutsi
planned the assassination of Hutu political leaders in Bugesera. Some Hutu believed this was
for Rwanda. The numerous expert opinions and trial testimonies of Des Forges show how her views on the
organization of the genocide developed ever since the publication of Leave None to Tell the Story. As far as the
intricacies of Rwandan politics are concerned, I am indebted to the work of André Guichaoua, in particular
Rwanda. De la guerre au génocide. La politique criminelles au Rwanda (1990-1994) (Paris : Éditions La
Découverte, 2010), and Rwanda 1994. Les politiques du génocide à Butaré (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2005). For
an overview of the scholarly literature on the Rwandan genocide, see Rene Lemarchand, ‘Rwanda. The State of
Research’, Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, 2013, available at: http://www.massviolence.org/rwanda-thestate-of-research,742, retrieved 16 June 2015.
5
International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990,
January 7-21, 1993, Final Report, March 1993.
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true and the following night, the slaughter of Tutsi in Bugesera began. In December 1992
local authorities in north-western Rwanda warned that killers were hiding in the Gishwati
forest and ordered the population to ‘clear the brush’, referring to the Tutsi who were thought
to provide cover to the RPF slipping into Rwanda without being noticed.6
War provided the context for genocidal violence in Rwanda. It triggered the use of
violence and led specialists in violence (hardliners within the army and militias) to enter the
domestic political arena.7 Those radicals who wished to defend the republic by ‘all possible
means’ had specific ‘ideas of war’, to use the words of Martin Shaw.8 They offered a ‘racial
reading’ of the war situation based on a deliberate conflation of two enemy figures, one
external (the RPF rebels) and the other internal (the Tutsi). Their message: the Hutu nation is
at war and every Hutu must be vigilant and protect himself against an enemy who is at his
doorstep.
By equating the Tutsi with the enemy, propagandists attempted to erase in the minds
of the people the distinction between combatant and non-combatant and, subsequently,
expose ordinary civilians to slaughter and rape. For example, the propagandists claimed that
the enemy was ‘not necessarily a combatant, was not necessarily wearing a uniform, was not
necessarily carrying an arm; the enemy could be anyone.’ People were told to be constantly
‘awake’, always alert and always looking for this enemy. In this context the appeal to self
defence and restoring security was very compelling for Rwanda’s society, which was mostly
illiterate in 1994.9 The claims of Hutu Power gained credibility in the context of war. As a
student interviewed in the Benaco refugee camp in Tanzania explained: ‘They hear over and
Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, p. 71.
Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide. Race, power, and war in Rwanda (New York, Cornell University Press,
2006).
8
Martin Shaw, War and genocide. A sociological approach, Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, 2007,
available at www.massviolence.org/war-and-genocide-a-sociological-approach, retrieved 28 june 2015
9
ICTR trial testimony of Alison Desforges in the case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko et al., 15 June 2004, p.39.
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over that the Tutsis are out to kill them, and that is the reality. So they act not out of hate as
fear. They think they have only the choice to kill or be killed’.10
Above all, this cultivated fear was deliberately fuelled by the propagandists of the
Hutu Power movement, who depicted ‘the’ Tutsi – men, women and children alike – as
necessarily being complicit with an enemy military force. Perhaps the aim was political, i.e.
to unite a fragmented Hutu population behind a clique of northern elites who had dominated
Rwanda politically and economically throughout the 70s and 80s.11 Yet the method used was
the extermination of a race. Hassan Ngeze, editor in chief of the extremist weekly Kangura,
wrote in January 1994: ‘Let’s hope the Inyenzi will have the courage to understand what is
going to happen and realize that if they make a small mistake, they will be exterminated; if
they make the mistake of attacking again, there will be none of them left in Rwanda, not even
a single accomplice. All the Hutus are united…’12 Propagandists turned mundane events into
evidence of an enemy plot. The ‘discovery’ of the plot, presented as proof of a Tutsi
subversion, generated paranoia. The propagandists aimed to spread an atmosphere of fear and
anxiety among the Hutu population. During the genocide, killing the ‘other’, the Tutsi,
became a way of eliminating this threat; it was believed to be an act of self-protection.
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) played its part in the attempt to
manipulate public opinion and generate unfounded hostility towards the Tutsi population.
RTLM broadcasted what it referred to as ‘well-known facts’, for instance that Tutsi in
Rwanda held a disproportionate share of the wealth because of their historical privilege.
RTLM journalist Kantano Habimana claimed in December of 1993 that ‘they are the ones
who have all the money’. The Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for
Mahmood Mamdani, When victims become killers. Colonialism, nativism, and the genocide in Rwanda
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 191
11
Chrétien, RTLM propaganda.
12
Cited in ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Ferdinand Nahimana et al., December 3,
2003, para 215.
10
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Rwanda (ICTR) in so-called media trial observed that false statements like these can be
considered inflammatory; at the very least they convey something beyond information, and
can be presented, for example, with the purpose of promoting ethnic hatred.13 As early as
1992 Rwandan radio was instrumental in spreading false information and orchestrating
massacres of Tutsis in the region of Bugesera. Ferdinand Nahimana, chief of the Rwandan
Office of Information (ORINFOR), sacked afterwards but in 1993 he co-founded a private
radio station called RTLM. Felicien Kabuga, shareholder and president of RTLM, was to sign
the Agreement for Establishment and Use of Radio and Television, which stipulated that
RTLM ‘shall not broadcast any programs of a nature to incite hatred, violence or any form of
division’ and that the ‘broadcaster must refrain from telling lies or giving out information that
may mislead the public’. This was not of much help. RTLM played a key role in the
dissemination of false information to the public.14
Intellectuals and the power of the imaginary
In the years preceding the genocide, Rwanda suffered from a disastrous economic situation,
huge social inequalities, political tensions, and overpopulation largely caused by the fact that
people were fleeing the warzones in the north. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that these
circumstances in themselves, unavoidably led to the massacres of Tutsi. Nor was the antiTutsi propaganda RTLM poured over Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 solely responsible. Political
scientist Scott Straus as reminded us of the fact that in some places in Rwanda, large-scale
massacres of Tutsi did not take place at all.15 The killings in the prefecture of Butare only
started two weeks after the death of President Habyarimana, when the Tutsi prefect was
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Ferdinand Nahimana et al., 3 December 2003,
para 470.
14
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Ferdinand Nahimana et al., para 569.
15
Straus, The Order of Genocide.
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replaced by a pro-government official. In general, local administrators, politicians,
businessmen and clergy were tremendously important in the kick-off of the slaughtering.
Large-scale massacres require opinion leaders, officials and politicians to suggest a certain
interpretation, that is, a type of discourse that can set the stage for mass violence and
accompany it.16
Hutu power leaders in Rwanda were afraid that the collapse of the Rwandan state may
deprive the ruling elite of any security it once had.17 The invasion of the RPF rebel forces in
October 1990 failed because France and Zaire sent in forces to protect their ally. But it was a
terrifying thought for the Hutu elite that the Rwandan government forces were unable to
resist the attacks and that the regime’s survival was now in the hands of the foreigners, and
France in particular. This created a condition of paranoia among the ruling elite.
In Rwanda, northern intellectuals with a political agenda assumed the task of
explaining the ‘nature of the war’. Against the backdrop of frustrated attempts to unite the
Hutu population since the introduction of a multi-party system in 1991, they claimed that
Rwanda faced both external and internal attacks and that ordinary citizens within the country
(i.e. the Tutsi) are the ‘enemies within’, accomplices of the RPF rebels. Most outspoken was
MRND-party ideologue Léon Mugesera. In a speech he delivered at an MRND party meeting
in November 1992, he prophesied the extermination of the Tutsis. Intellectuals who
advocated ideas about race and the war against the RPF were usually educated in the West.18
The extremist weekly Kangura called upon intellectuals to spread the word: ‘Rwandan
Jacques Semelin, Purity and destroy. The political uses of massacre and violence (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2007), pp.13-21.
17
Cited in Ben Kiernan, ‘Twentieth-century genocides. Underlying ideological themes from Armenia to East
Timor, in Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan (eds), The Specter of Genocide. Mass murder in historical
perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 37.
18
Claudine Vidal, ‘Le génocide des Rwandais Tutsi; trois questions d’histoire’, Afrique Contemporaine, no 174,
1995. An example of intellectuals who took fierce stances against the ‘enemy’ was the Cercle des Republicains
(CRP), a discussion group of primarily people from the north and who met on occasional basis to debate
political issues. CRP members, of whom Ferdinand Nahimana is the best known, strived for the creations of a
pan-Hutu movement that goes beyond any single-party line, a philosophy that resembled the political
programme of the extremist Hutu party CDR formed in February 1992. ICTR Trial Testimony of Alison Des
Forges, 21 May 2002.
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intellectuals, summon courage, get your act together and go on the air. Grab your pens and
help president Habyarimana to get rid of the accomplices inside the country and defend our
motherland’.19
An apocalyptic depiction of a ‘monstrous enemy’ accompanied the racial portrayal of
the enemy. In December 1990, just two months after the RPF attacked Rwanda, Kangura
alleged that the Tutsi had prepared a war that ‘would leave no survivors.’ In February 1991,
Léon Mugesera claimed that the RPF wanted to restore the dictatorship by ‘a genocide, the
extermination of the Hutu majority’. MDR-Power leader Shingiro Mbonyumutwa, son of the
president of the first Rwandan Republic, told the listeners of Radio Rwanda that the Tutsi
intended to carry out a genocide of the Hutu: ‘They are going to exterminate you until they
are the only ones left in this country, so that the power which their fathers kept for four
hundred years, they can keep for a thousand years!’.20 The Hutu party Coalition pour la
Défense de la République (CDR), another mouthpiece of the Hutu Power tendency, claimed
that RPF atrocities were directed solely against the Hutu populations. In a tract entitled ‘La
démocratie ne survivre pas aux Accords d’Arusha’, Jean-Bosco Barayagwize, Director of
Political Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and founding member of the CDR, alleged
that in the regions the RPF controlled the Hutu were segregated in ‘concentration camps’ and
were subjected to ‘forced labor’. These allegations were never proven. Nor was
Barayagwiza’s claim that ‘hundreds of thousands of Hutu’ were killed in the regions
controlled by the RPF: ‘What happened to the two million Hutus who disappeared? Where
are the 700,000 Hutu inhabitants of Byumba? Who massacred the 300,000 Hutu surrounded
by the FPR in the prefecture of Kibungo in the month of May? What happened to the
inhabitants of Bugesera, Gitarama, Butera and Gikongore… are we to believe that the blood
19
20
Excerpts from Kangura 5, available at www.rwandafile.com. Retrieved 24 April 2015.
Cited in Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, p. 178.
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of Hutu isn’t red?’21 In a similar vein, Ferdinand Nahimana, a university lecturer and MRNDparty propagandist who strongly condemned ‘the Tutsi league’ with its plan for a ‘Hima
empire’, insisted that the elite must not remain ‘unconcerned’ but rather work with local
administrators to alert the population to the danger of war.
The research carried out by the French sociologist Claudine Vidal prior to start of the
civil war contains strong evidence that contradicts the claims that racism is firmly rooted in
the minds of the Rwandans. Claudine Vidal observed that ‘ethnic hate’ as such was virtually
non-existent. Certainly, the older Rwandan farmers remembered that under colonial rule they
had suffered from the exactions of Tutsi chiefs, but these memories of hardship per se did not
generate anti-Tutsi sentiments. However, these views were not commonly shared in all strata
of the population. Some of the European-styled intellectuals Claudine Vidal met in Kigali
emphasized that in the past the Tutsi had invaded Rwanda and subjugated its (Hutu)
population. These intellectuals had outspoken racist ideas – Tutsi were ‘profiteers’ who
cunningly divided the Hutu – and used history to explain why.22
On 14 May 1994, at the height of the genocide, Prime Minister Jean Kambanda
visited the University of Butare, the country’s intellectual capital. At a meeting arranged by
the vice-rector of the university, Kambanda thanked the intellectuals of the university for the
ideas and other support they had provided in the past. For example, these intellectuals had
informed him of the importance of a rapid media response to RPF charges against the
government, the political usefulness of the claim that foreign nations were supporting the
RPF, and the need for civilians to help the army fight the war. These ideas appeared in the
government’s press releases. Moreover, the university administration did not hesitate to
contribute to a special fund for ‘civilian self-defence’. Runyinya Barabwizira, a former
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, Le sang Hutu est-il rouge. Vérités cachées sur les massacres. (Yaoundé, 1995)
pp.32-33.
22
Claudine Vidal, Sociologie des passions. Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire (Paris: Karthala, 1991).
21
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botanist and university lecturer and Habyirimana’s aide, claimed that the civilian self-defence
programme, which in 1994 formed the institutional framework for the extermination
campaign, was his brainchild.
The Butare university premises were important killing fields during the 1994
genocide. Butare’s population had the highest percentage of Tutsi in the country and JeanBaptiste Habyalimana, the Butare préfet, was Rwanda’s only Tutsi préfet until he was
replaced by Nsabimana, a Hutu, around 19 April 1994. Many people sought refuge in the
Butare University hospital where the Red Cross and MSF provided healthcare to wounded
persons, mainly Tutsi, during the genocide. In April and May 1994 Arsène Ntahobali, son of
Maurice Ntahobaly, rector of the University of Butare and Pauline Nyiramasuhoko, minister
of Family and Women’s Development under the interim government, went to Butare’s
university hospital with a view to select, kidnap and kill Tutsis who had sought treatment or
refuge there. A witness related that she saw Doctor Gatera and Ntahobali removing blankets
from patients to check their identity. Other witnesses testified that patients disappeared
during the night abductions conducted by Interahamwe and that Tutsis were removed from
the hospital. Those who had been expelled were killed elsewhere.23 Arsène Ntahobaly was
also in charge of a roadblock situated in front of his father’s house in Butare where Tutsis
were abducted and killed.24 Human Rights Watch estimated that in 1994 no less than 75
percent of the Tutsi population in the Butare prefecture were killed.25
Misrepresentation and deceit: pacification campaign
ICTR Trial Chamber, Judgement and sentence in the case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko et al., 24 June 24 2011,
para 2104-2147.
24
ICTR Trial Chamber Judgement and sentence in the case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko et al., 24 June 2011, para
3128.
25
Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, p. 17.
23
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A chilling example of misrepresentation and deceit is what had been announced by the new
authorities as the ‘pacification campaign’. This crucial episode of the Rwandan genocide was
decided upon at a meeting of political leaders and members of the interim government held
on or about 10 April 1994 at the Hotel des Diplomates in Kigali. The same day, a
communiqué broadcasted on Radio Rwanda stated that the political parties had called on
administrative bodies to make every possible effort to immediately end the ‘disturbances’,
massacres and looting throughout the country.
Théoneste Bagosora, Chef de Cabinet at the Ministry of Defence, was possibly the
official who gave the order to start the ‘pacification operation’. On 7 April, the day after the
downing of Habyarimana’s plane, Bagosora, Habiyarimana’s former protégé, met with the
MRND leadership to appoint a new president and arranged a meeting of political officials to
form a new government. They reached an agreement to establish an interim government with
representatives of the Hutu Power factions of their parties. These representatives were
opposed to the Arusha Peace Accord. Tutsis were excluded from the new government. Jean
Kambanda, an MDR politician from Butare, was appointed Prime Minister and Theodore
Sindikubwabo, also hailing from Butare, was appointed as President. The same day Bagosora
presented the new government to the Military Crisis Committee.26 On 7 April 1994, Prime
Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana had already been killed, as well as the Belgian soldiers of
UNAMIR who tried to protect her. Other opposition members, accused of ‘selling out’ the
northern territories to the RPF during negotiations in Arusha, were hunted down and
eliminated by elements of the elite units of the Rwandan army Bagosora controlled. Western
embassies decided to evacuate their nationals.27
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Théoneste Bagosora et al., 18 December 2008,
para 1286 – 1314.
27
Guichaoua, De la guerre au génocide, p.422.
26
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Sensitive to international journalists’ reports on the widespread killings, the Rwandan
ambassador in Brussels released a statement detailing the ‘pacifying’ efforts of the interim
government. The interim government suspected Belgium to be behind the call on all nations
to provide no further arms or military aid. Receiving concrete military assistance would
depend on improving the Rwandan image abroad.28
On April 7, Bagosora issued a press release saying that the military was ‘to stabilize
the situation in the country rapidly.’ While the soldiers of the elite units of the Rwandan army
were engaged in large-scale slaughter in Kigali, Bagosora called upon the armed forces to
‘restore order in the country’. Knowing that the presidential guards had already assassinated
Prime Minister Agathe Uwingiyimana and other officials not belonging to Habiyarimana’s
clique, he asked the government in power to do its job.29
At a meeting at the Hotel des Diplomates in Kigali, the new authorities asked the
Interahamwe leaders to control their men and to conduct a pacification tour of the roadblocks
to persuade the militias and others manning the roadblocks to organize the removal of corpses
from the streets. Ephrem Nkezabera, head of the Commercial Banque of Rwanda and parttime treasurer for the Interahamwe national committee, was one of the leaders who toured the
roadblocks. Caught in Belgium after being indicted by the ICTR, he admitted to having
encouraged and congratulated militia erecting the roadblocks and of having delivered arms to
them on 11 and 12 April. He confessed that people were killed in front of him by militias and
by individuals from his immediate circle.
The pacification tour itself was a flop. The killings in Kigali did not stop, militiamen
were not disarmed (they were not asked to) and the roadblocks were not dismantled. While
the Interahamwe leaders asked their men to restrain themselves, elsewhere in Kigali
Interahamwe militias and government soldiers took the lead in the slaughter campaign. For
28
29
Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, pp.187-224.
Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story, pp. 150-1.
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example, an estimated 2,000 refugees, mainly Tutsi, sheltering at the École Technique
Officiele (ETO) in Kigali were savagely killed during a joint operation of elements of the
Para Commando Battalion and Interahamwe at Nyanza Hill on 11 April 1994.30 Army
soldiers of Habyarimana’s native soil, in particular, were totally committed to the killings.
Some of them even refused to fight against the RPF, for their sole objective was the
extermination of Tutsi.31 Military officers who did not support the killing of Tutsi were
removed.
Faced with ‘resistance’ in their neighbourhoods, the militias asked for weapons to
defend themselves, which they received. In so doing, Joseph Nzirorera and Théoneste
Bagosora, the Akazu protégés who determined the course of the events during the 100-days of
genocide, ‘authorized’ the continuation and even intensification of the massacres and
pillaging. In the streets, power was now in the hands of the militias, maître d’oeuvre of the
genocide, backed by Hutu Power leaders and their allies in the elite units of the national
army.
Although the campaign was officially announced as one of pacification, the interim
government did not seriously try to end the killings. Instead, messages announcing an end to
the slaughter were meant to lure Tutsi out of hiding or to give them a false sense of security
before the militias launched a new attack.32 Chief of Staff Augustin Bizimungu’s ‘call for
peace’, broadcasted on hate radio RTLM on April 17, is telling in this respect: ‘They
[authorities] have to organize meetings of the people and encourage them to live in peace
with one another, to protect themselves more and look for the enemy wherever he may be and
defeat him once and for all.’33 Eliézer Niyitegeka’s pacification speech given on 30 April
ICTR Trial Chamber, judgement and sentence in the case of Théoneste Bagosora, para 1340.
Guichaoua, De la guerre au génocide.
32
Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, p. 219.
33
Transcription of RTLM broadcast of 17 April 1994, available at http://migs.concordia.ca. Retrieved 16 April
2015.
30
31
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1994 in Butare also shows how the interim government tried to take control of the genocide:
‘We are sincerely asking you to make peace. We are asking you to safeguard peace and
security… We know that the enemy is present here in the country. We know that there are
accomplices even here in Butare. If you see an accomplice or someone who resembles an
accomplice, or if you suspect that someone is an accomplice, tell the authorities’.34
With pacification at the heart of government policy, informal power structures that
always existed under the old regime in Rwanda could finally come to the fore. Perhaps the
clearest sign of this was the efforts to gain control over Interahamwe militias and, by so
doing, bypass the competent authorities (police and gendarmerie) charged with law and order.
The Interahamwe movement had never been formally affiliated with the MRND, though the
militias received orders from MRND leaders and especially from members of the National
Committee.35 During the genocide, the new authorities gave unconditional support to the
Interahamwe and others who were to mobilise for ‘unmasking the enemy and its
accomplices’.36 In the commune of Taba (Gitarama), the Interahamwe leader was officially in
charge of pacification.37 During his trial at the ICTR, former Taba bourgmestre Jean-Paul
Akayesu claimed that he could not prevent the killings of Tutsi in his commune. With only
10 policemen at his disposal he was outnumbered and overpowered by the Interahamwe in
his commune.38
Just as the conservative wing of the MRND, the new government considered the
Interahamwe as the lifeline to mobilize popular support for the genocide. Civil Defence, the
Transcription of Radio Rwanda broadcast of 30 April 1994. Available at:
(http://www.concordia.ca/research/migs/links/documents/RR_30Apr94_eng_K023-8739-K023-8758.pdf.
Retrieved on 27 April 2015.
35
Francois-Xavier Nsanzuwera, Expert Report for Testimony in Georges Rutaganda Case, 21 June 1997; ICTR
Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Édouard Karemera and Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2 February
2012, para 259.
36
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Édouard Karemera and Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2
February 2012, para 1081.
37
ICTR Trial Testimony Alison Des Forges in the case of Casimir Bizimungu, 2 June 2005, p 66.
38
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement in the Jean-Paul Akayesu 2 September 1998 para 30.
34
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operational side of pacification which turned ordinary men in militias, established the de jure
recognition of the Interahamwe movement. Calling on them to continue combating the
enemy was nothing less than inciting the audience to physically attack and destroy Tutsi as a
group.39
Other venues maintained authority as well: the elite units of the national army, the
local party structures most of the time controlled by wealthy individuals linked to the
entourage of presidential family and who paid for the much-needed ‘refreshments’ for the
militiamen. Major decisions were made in Gisenyi where the almighty presidential family
resided that determined to a large extent the events during the genocide.40 However, the
sometimes fierce competition between those still acting in the political arena was no help for
the victims for they shared a common ambition: eliminating the enemy.
Restoring security: genocide legalized by the State
With the aim of enlarging the pacification policy to a national scale, Prime Minister Jean
Kambanda issued the Instructions to Restore Security in the Country on 27 April 1994. It
contained a number of instructions to be followed by all levels in charge of security to ensure
that calm would return quickly. The préfets were requested to organise so-called
security meetings and to tackle the security problem. Kambanda insisted that
the population ‘must remain watchful in order to unmask the enemy and his
accomplices and hand them over to the authorities.’ The préfets were requested
ICTR/Trial Chamber judgement and sentence Édouard Karemera &Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2 February 2012,
para 992.
40
Guichaoua, De la guerre au génocide.
39
15
to sensitize the population to give their full support to their government and to
collaborate with the Rwandan Armed Forces.41
A pacification campaign schedule was drawn up, according to which members of the
interim government, who in fact had very little political weight and were eager to assert their
authority, would meet préfets, bourgmestres, conseillers and various stakeholders on
specific days. Ministers were given responsibility for pacification in specified prefectures
under government control. At her trial in Arusha, former minister Pauline Nyiramasuhuko
explained that wherever the ministers went they made observations regarding Kambanda’s
instructions, noting potential difficulties and suggestions for better implementation. It was
deemed necessary to repeat the message contained in the instructions day after day. Hence
the message was read out loud so that people could understand. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko
stated that she attended pacification meetings held on 4 May 1994 in Kigali-rural and on 6
May 1994 in Ruhengeri.42 Human Rights Watch documented pacification meetings in
Gitarama, in Kigali Rural, in Butare, in Gikongoro and in Kibuye. Pacification was clearly a
way of getting the administration of the territories under government control.
Kambanda’s Instructions, a confirmation of the original decision to restore security
made by the Council of Ministers on 23 April 1994,43 read as a call to stop the violence and to
restore calm. But ‘restoring security’ also meant eliminating the threat, i.e. the Tutsi enemy.44
In the instructions, not a single word is uttered about the killings of Tutsi, which was already
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence Édouard Karemera & Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2 February 2012,
para 1026-1029.
42
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko et al., 24 June 2011, para
492-493.
43
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement in the case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko et al., 24 June 2011, para 1940.
44
In her expert opinion and trial testimony Des Forges pointed at the importance of semantics of the term
pacification. The literal translation of the Kinyarwanda term commonly translated as “pacification” was in fact
“restoring security”, which could mean ending violence but
could also encompass eliminating the enemy who is a threat to security, i.e. the Tutsi. In Des Forges’ view the
surface message was apparently to restore calm, but there is a distinction between restoring peace and restoring
security – restoring security means eliminating the threat, i.e. the enemy who is the Tutsi. ICTR Trial Chamber
judgement and sentence in the case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko et al., 24 June 2011 para 487-488.
41
16
three weeks underway and extended to all corners of Rwanda. The judges in the Karemera
trial took this ‘omission’ very seriously: ‘… any individual or organisation, which opposed
the killings and wished to restore peace to the country, would have stated in much more
obvious and emphatic terms that the mass slaughter of innocent civilians of mostly Tutsi
ethnicity must end immediately. Instead, the letter employs incomprehensibly distant
language in all passages that purport to urge the population to restore peace in the country.’45
With an estimated 200,000 Tutsi already killed by the time Kambanda issued his
directive, the distant language and the persistent use of the term ‘security’ is hair-raising. The
judges concluded that Kambanda’s instructions were ‘...a thinly-veiled attempt to deliver a
false message of pacification for the purpose of hiding, at the very least, the interim
government’s implicit approval of the genocide from the world and from posterity.’46
Echoes of Kambanda’s call for the restoration of peace could be heard elsewhere in
Rwanda. In Bwakira the burgomaster ordered the people to stop the killings. He appeared to
be mindful of the fact that ‘all the ammunition used against the RPF is imported’ but the
problem was that the Belgian government wanted to impose an arms embargo on Rwanda.
The burgomaster explained his concerns as follows: ‘You must enforce security. Some
people imagine that what happens on their hills is not known because they do not know that
there are satellites in the sky which take pictures. Killings must stop for good. The
councillors must transmit these orders in meetings with the population’. While telling the
people to stop the killing, the burgomaster also related that an RPF soldier had been caught in
the neighbouring commune of Gitesi. And when he was searched they found he was carrying
an unidentified white power’. When he was forced to eat it, he died immediately, so rumour
had it. Des Forges commented on this incident as follows: ‘This supposed incident replicated
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Édouard Karemera & Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2
February 2012, para 1039.
46
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Édouard Karemera & Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2
February 2012, para 1044.
45
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the features of the scare tactics used since October 1990: a soldier is purportedly found in the
vicinity—near enough to be threatening but not so near as to permit easy verification of the
story—in possession of the means to kill people and apparently on a mission to do so. The
burgomaster in the next breath said that people must do patrols conscientiously at night to
catch such infiltrators’.47 During the genocide, stories about Tutsi conspiracies were
relentlessly repeated.
The Janus-faced concept of pacification enabled the authorities to adopt a public
posture vis-à-vis the international community while simultaneously propagating a policy of
genocide among the population ‘not yet invaded’. Did it work? What we know for sure is
that, at least in the early days of the genocide, the U.N. Secretary-General and his staff
ignored the genocidal character of the slaughter. Notes from the briefings of U.N. council
members indicate that the role of the Rwandan government in the organization of the
violence was completely ignored. The large-scale massacres were rarely mentioned. Roger
Booh-Booh, the Secretary-General’s special representative, attributed the worsening of the
security situation to intensified fighting between the Rwandan army and the RPF. The U.N.
Secretary-General, in the first formal report on the situation in Rwanda on April 20, similarly
avoided a clear description of the genocide. By suggesting the killings stemmed from ‘chaos’
and the usual violence accompanying war, the U.N. Secretary-General seemed to reproduce
the language of the interim government.48
The atmosphère intellectual at the Élysée in Paris was not much different. The
archives of the Élysée analysed by Maison Rafaëlle indicate that French President Francois
Mitterand and his advisors, who firmly supported the Habyarimana regime, shared the
vocabulary and arguments Rwandan hardliners employed in denouncing the RPF rebels. For
example, the legitimate claim of the majority people (90%), the cleverness and manipulation
47
48
Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story, p.225.
Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story, p. 479.
18
of the Tutsi and their alleged control of the international media, and the Tutsis’ supposed
quest for a ‘tutsiland’ were all themes borrowed directly from the discourse of Hutu
hardliners and repeated over the airwaves by RTLM during the genocide.49
Minister Pauline Nyaramasuhuko’s notes on the cabinet meeting of 9 April contained
the phrase ‘[v]ery important media contact with diplomats’, followed by ‘Tanzania,
Zaire, France, Kenya, UNAMIR’.50 RTLM announcer Kantano Habimana stated: ‘Since
we have begun to restrain ourselves, the international community will certainly not fail to
notice and will say, “Those Hutu are really disciplined, we should understand them and help
them, hum!”’ Three days later, he announced that France had promised to begin aiding
Rwanda again.
The stench of pacification
Faced with those pockets which opposed the killings or were deemed ‘inactive’, the interim
government decided to tour the hills and to bring the message of ‘restoring security’ to the
people.51 A minister from each prefecture was appointed to be responsible for pacification.
The ministers were then dispatched to their prefectures of origin ‘to incite further killings’.52
These pacification tours were nothing less than an effort to mobilize as many people
as possible for genocide. National radio covered the events and broadcasted the speeches
delivered at the meetings. All residents were informed of the scheduled meetings. Whistles
and drums were used to summon the population ‘so that no one will be absent’.53 In Gisenyi,
Maison Rafaëlle, Que dissent les archives de l’Élysée », Esprit, 2010/5 Mai, pp.135-159.
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Pauline Nyiramasuhuko et al., 24 June 2011, para
510.
51
Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story, p.176.
52
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Édouard Karemera & Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2
February 2012, para 911.
53
Des Forges, Leave none to the story, p.182.
49
50
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all shops were to be closed and attendance was said to be compulsory.54 State-sponsored
genocide in Rwanda was meant to be everyone’s concern.
At the initiative of the interim government, an important government meeting was
held in the provincial town of Kibuye on 3 May 1994. Administrators, officials and
representatives of political parties, churches and civil society attended the meeting. The
meeting was called ostensibly for pacification purposes. In his speech, Eliézer Niyitegeka, the
minister of Information and a notorious anti-Tutsi extremist,55 made comments that
characterized Tutsi children as the enemy. Eduard Karemera, who spoke on behalf of the
MRND and who was later appointed as minister, thanked the Prime Minister and the
government for visiting Kibuye prefecture ‘with a message of peace’. He paid tribute to the
Interahamwe and called upon them to ‘flush out, stop and combat the enemy’ in collaboration
with the youth wings of the other parties. Recall that the prefecture of Kibuye, where in the
mountains of Bisesero many Tutsi had fled, had its share of rumours about RPF attacks. For
instance, it was claimed that the RPF would launch a helicopter strike to free the Tutsi
gathered in the stadium. Tutsi residents in Kibuye town were accused of having grenades
stored in their toilets and inkotanyi in their homes.56
The ICTR convicted both Eliézer Niyitegeka and Edouard Karemera of genocide.
During Karemera’s trial the judges visited Kibuye prefecture and observed that the prefecture
office where the pacification meeting was held was ‘only minutes away’ from the location of
the Gatwaro Stadium and other places where massacres occurred just two weeks before the 3
May 1994 meeting. The mass graves for the victims had only been completed two days prior
to the arrival of the ministers. The judges observed that it would have been ‘utterly
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Théoneste Bagosora et al., 18 December 2008,
para 1267.
55
The ICTR Trial Chamber convicted Eliézer Niyitegeka for, inter alia, shooting and killing a teenage girl in
Bisesero on 20 May 1994. ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Eliezer Niyitegeka, 16
May 2003, para 302.
56
Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story, p.194.
54
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impossible for the interim government officials to be unaware of the killings that had
occurred.’ A pestilential stench was still present as a result of the killings of the civilian
population that had occurred prior to the meeting. Nonetheless, the speakers did not comment
on the killings. Instead, Karemera and the interim government officials only provided abstract
rhetoric about restoring peace in the country without referring to the reports that had been
circulated regarding the events occurring in Kibuye, the mass graves surrounding the meeting
venue, or, what must have been, the unbearable stench of decomposing bodies. The chamber
found that ‘…with such a backdrop, these words can only be understood as an unequivocal
endorsement of the killings… the Chamber is convinced that Karemera encouraged the
audience to physically attack and destroy Tutsi as a group’.
During the 3 May meeting, a doctor of the Kibuye hospital raised questions about the
security of a group of people, including children, who had taken refuge at the Kibuye
hospital. He requested the interim-government officials to take measures to ensure they
would be protected from assailants and to get food and medical supplies to them. Eliézer
Niyitegeka and MDR Power leader Donat Murego responded that the questions were futile
and that the doctor ‘had no idea concerning the state of the country’.
The children the doctor referred to, still alive during the meeting, were subsequently
killed.57 Immediately after the 3 May meeting, the Tutsi survivors who were hiding at the
Kibuye hospital were also killed. Just two weeks after the meeting large-scale attacks took
place at Muyira Hill, as a result of which a large number of Tutsi refugees were killed. A
number of people who had attended the 3 May meeting were among the attackers who set off
to kill the Tutsi at Muyira Hill. The judges in the trial of Eliezer Niyitegeka concluded that
from the content of the discussions and the accused’s conduct and words spoken at the
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Édouard Karemera & Matthieu Ngirumpatse, 2
February 2012, para 968.
57
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meeting, that the accused supported actions or inaction in failing to protect the Tutsi
population, which resulted in the deaths of many Tutsi victims.58
During the trial of Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho, former prefect of Kigali-Ville
prefecture, a Tutsi woman testified that she was identified as an inkotanyi during a
pacification meeting which was held near the house of a local administrator in the Rugenge
secteur in Kigali. Renzaho reportedly stated that she should not be killed because she was a
woman and was ‘food for the militiamen’. Having been forced to attend that meeting by
Interahamwe, the witness was returned to her house where militias, soldiers and policemen
continued to rape her.59 In his 1996 report the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rwanda
stated that during the Rwandan genocide ‘rape was the rule and its absence the exception’.60
Concluding remarks
Genocidal regimes in search for international respectability strive to make lies credible to the
outside world.61 At a press conference in Nairobi on 3 June 1994, when the majority of the
Tutsi in Rwanda had already been exterminated, two Rwandan bishops claimed that the RPF
army was in fact a ‘big hindrance to the work of pacification by the interim government, the
church and other peace-lovers’. Journalists were so disgusted at this presentation of the
cronies of the genocidal government that they left the conference.62
While spokesmen of the Hutu Power regime tried hard to shield off the genocide from
the Western media, in Rwanda itself there were hardly any efforts to hide the killings. Tutsi
were hacked to death in broad daylight, right in the open. Sites of large-scale massacres
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Eliezer Niyitegeka, 16 May 2003, para 250.
ICTR Trial Chamber judgement and sentence in the case of Tharcisse Renzaho, 14 July 2009, para 709.
60
Cited in Shattered lifes. Sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide (New York: Human Rights Watch,
1996), p.24.
61
See on this subject Hannah Arendt, The origins of totalitarianism (New York: A Harvest Book, 1976), p.429.
62
Des Forges, Leave none to tell the story, p. 189.
58
59
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(schools, churches and hospitals) were not hidden in remote areas; there were no trains
destined for unknown Treblinka. The scene captured by the British cameraman Nick Hughes
on 11 April 1994 of a victim praying for mercy just before he is hacked to death by men
holding machetes and clubs standing on a dirt road in the Gikondo neighbourhood in Kigali is
a telling illustration. Yet, as far as we know, this is the only footage of 'perpetrators in action'
so to speak that was available to Western news agencies during the genocide.
We should be careful not to dismiss this whole fantasy construction that accompany
genocide as some sort of bizarre exceptionality.63 The importance of disinformation as
intentional propaganda is an essential element of genocide and genocidal violence.
Perpetrators often held genuinely convictions that they really are confronted with forces that
could wipe them of the face of the earth. They do not come to their conclusions about the
nature of threat in a complete vacuum. Genocides usually take place in the context of war,
political crisis or struggles for the control of land and resources, which are genuinely real,
intense and threatening. At the time when the Rwandan population was increasingly
confronted with immense suffering because of the civil war that had started in October 1990,
the whole fantasy construction around the supposed Tutsi threat had its moment of
crystallisation. The assassination of President Habiyarimana, in the eyes of many the 'father
of the nation', on 6 April 1994, and the subsequent blaming on the Tutsi, was nothing less
than a take-off in the direction of genocide.
All of this left only a few Rwandans 'unconcerned'. With a military defeat looming on
the horizon Hutu radicals succeeded at convincing ordinary citizens to kill innocent human
beings, who were physically so close but 'spiritually infinitely remote', to use Zygmunt
Bauman's words.64 The 'kill or be killed' doctrine became the only salient frame of reference
Mark Levene, Genocide in the age of the nation state. Volume I. The meaning of genocide (London: I.B.
Tauris & Co LTD., 2005) p.136.
64
Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).
63
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perpetrators had to understand what was going on around them. Pacification, the antidote to
the 'war of the Tutsi', had a banalizing effect on extermination and surrounded the whole
genocidal enterprise with a mist of 'normality'. It offered perpetrators a semblance of
common sense that made extermination sounds reasonable in a surrealistic world in which
patent forgeries offered infinite possibilities for crimes.
Rotterdam (The Netherlands), September 2017
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