Rwandan Genocide - Catalyst and Initial Events

Catalyst and Initial Events

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, killing everyone on board. Responsibility for the attack was disputed, with both the RPF and Hutu extremists being blamed. A later investigation by the Rwandan government blamed Hutu extremists in the Rwandan army. In January 2012, a French investigation confirmed that the missile fire which brought down the Rwandan president’s plane came from a military camp and not Tutsi rebels. In spite of disagreements about the identities of its perpetrators, many observers believe the attack and deaths of the two Hutu presidents served as the catalyst for the genocide.

On April 6 the general staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces and Colonel Theoneste Bagosora clashed verbally with the UNAMIR Force commander, General Roméo Dallaire, who stressed that Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana had the legal authority to take control, as outlined in the Arusha Accords. However Bagosora disputed her authority. In response General Dallaire provided Uwilingiyimana with a UN escort in order to allow her to send a calming message on national radio the next morning.

In the early hours of April 7, UN peacekeepers arrived at Uwilingiyimana's official residence only to find it under attack by Hutus from the Rwandan Army. The UN unit, which comprised troops from the crack ParaCommandos of the Belgian Army, made a two-hour stand against the larger force. During the fighting Uwilingiyimana tried to escape but was captured and killed by Hutu fighters. After being told no help was available, the UN force surrendered and gave up their weapons. However after releasing the five Ghanaian peacekeepers, Hutu troops then turned on the remaining Belgian UN soldiers. All ten were systematically tortured, castrated and dismembered with machetes. Major Bernard Ntuyahaga, the commanding officer of the Presidential Guard unit which carried out the brutal murders, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by a court in Belgium in 2007.

Other Presidential Guard units also assassinated other moderate Hutu officials and politicians who favored the Arusha Accords. However the then-acting Prime Minister (under the Accords) of the Transitional Broad Based Government, Faustin Twagiramungu, escaped execution because he was protected by UNAMIR. Former UN commander, Roméo Dallaire, recalled the events from April 7, the first day of the genocide, in his book Shake Hands with the Devil:

"I called the Force HQ and got through to Ghanaian Brigadier General Henry Anyidoho. He had horrifying news. The UNAMIR-protected VIPs – Lando Ndasingwa, Joseph Kavaruganda, and many other moderates had been abducted by the Presidential Guard and had been killed, along with their families UNAMIR had been able to rescue Prime Minister Faustin, who was now at the Force HQ."

Jared Diamond theorized that population pressure was the main cause of the genocide. He points out that most of the Twa pygmies were wiped out despite being no threat to the Hutus. The Kanama region in the north west lost 5% of its population despite having virtually no Tutsis. A quarter of Rwandans have great grandparents from both tribes. Rwanda's population density in 1990 was 760 people per square mile, one of the highest in the world. The population grew at over 3% a year. By 1985 all the land except the national parks had been cultivated.