Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

RWANDA: Catholic Role in Genocide is All Kagame Propaganda

By Joseph Magiri
CISA News
Nairobi
May 20, 2008

Columnist Oscar Kimanuka of the East African newsweekly and CISA editor Henry Makori hold that the pope should apologise for the Catholic Church’s involvement in the Rwandan genocide just as he has done for sexual abuses by priests in USA. This is like comparing mangoes to oranges. The story of the genocide is much more complicated. Additionally, it is an unfair simplification to highlight the genocide as the Church's only legacy in Rwanda.

One senses that in the midst of the infamy of the genocide the Hutu side of the story is untold, and that all we see is the official version of events as related by the government of Rwanda.

The basic details are universally agreed upon, but the standard interpretation of the events that led up to and overlapped with the genocide are rarely given hearing. Indeed, much of the detail about the genocide is murky and unverifiable: the world media has largely let the government of Rwanda get away with an "official" version of the events.

If Rwanda's wounds are ever to heal, the real story of the genocide needs to get out ­ with a full background and a clear delineation between facts and conjecture. A common approach to the genocide is to begin with the shooting down, in April 1994, of the plane carrying presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprian Ntaryamira of Burundi, both Hutu.

But four years earlier, in 1990, the rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) had invaded Rwanda from Uganda. To understand this invasion, in turn, one needs to go further back in Rwanda's history.

Rwanda and Burundi was one nation called Ruanda-Urundi, placed under Belgian administration by the UN following the Second World War. Prior to the colonialism, a monarchical system headed by the Tutsi had virtually enslaved the Hutu and Twa ethnic groups.

Catholic Belgian missionaries to the region began working to help the Hutu underclass. These measures (including redistribution of wealth and land) were opposed by the Tutsi minority.

In 1959, the Belgians held elections in Rwanda, and the Tutsi minority was defeated by the Hutu. After centuries of ruling the country, the Tutsi were not ready to be led by the Hutu. Most of them left the country in fear.

It was the descendants of Tutsi exiles that would later invade Rwanda as the RPF. The foreign nature of the fighters is readily evident in Rwanda's leadership today: most were brought up in English-speaking East Africa, and speak English rather than French, which was post-colonial Rwanda's second language. Indeed, President Paul Kagame lived and worked in Kenya as a teacher.

The RPF invaded Rwanda when there was a significant push for democratization. But the RPF was seen by some as a proxy for the restoration of Tutsi hegemony. The RPF hierarchy contained virtually no Hutu. It is now clear that the RPF had no democratic agenda: they just wanted power. The RPF committed atrocities against civilians, creating a massive refugee crisis.

In August 1993, facing defeat by the RPF, Habyarimana acquiesced and signed a UN-brokered power-sharing accord that gave the RPF 40 percent representation in government, a lopsided accord because RPF represented the Tutsi, just 15 percent of the population.

All was primed for a violent explosion, and this was duly provided by the assassination of President Habyarimana in 1994. It has been difficult to pin down the perpetrator: all indications, though, are that the RPF carried out the attack, as they had previously tried to kill the president.

Indeed, the plane was downed at Kigali airport that was guarded by UN troops, who were supplemented by over 600 Tutsi soldiers who were there as part of the accord between Habyarimana and RPF. The RPF soldiers were in the capital ostensibly to "protect" returning Tutsi refugees.

Accounts of the happenings in Kigali and the rest of the country in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Habyarimana have been heavily coloured by the official story as told by the RPF. However, a reasonably clear account emerges when one examines the records and testimonies of the Catholic missionaries in the region, who had been there since the early 20th century.

The RPF went on a murdering spree just after Habyarimana's assassination. They identified government supporters and killed them, lending an ethnic dimension to the conflict. The situation was exacerbated by the withdrawal of the UN troops the very day the president was murdered, claiming they had no mandate to intervene.

The refugee crisis sparked first by the RPF invasion in 1990 was intensified: the RPF targeted Hutu refugee camps, slaughtering indiscriminately. Reporting from a Hutu refugee camp in Eastern Congo at the time, the Catholic World News detailed repeated attacks by RPF militia, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians. The genocide had begun.

The Tutsi leaders of the RPF clearly knew that Habyarimana had armed Hutu youth. It is credible that the RPF leaders knew that these youths would retaliate if Habyarimana was murdered. The RPF then styled themselves as "liberators", coming in to stop the genocide. One of the myths perpetrated during this period was that there was a "systematic plan" to rid the country of Tutsis by murder. This story is, however, not corroborated by either Tutsi or Hutu refugees, even though it has become a staple component of Rwandan government rhetoric.

In any case, Rwanda is so small a country and the rate of intermarriage between Hutus and Tutsis was so high that such a plan would quickly have become evident had it existed. Like so much else in the story of Rwanda, though, the details of this claim ­ that the Hutus methodically planned, then set about eliminating Tutsis ­ have never been queried.

The massacre that followed adopted a political rather than ethnic dimension: civilians allied to the government were butchered by RPF soldiers and their supporters, while government troops and their associated militias massacred RPF-allied civilians and RPF troops. It was mutual bloodletting.

After the genocide, the RPF government ensured credibility of their side of the story by consistently claiming that the Hutus hatched and carried out a plan of genocide. Indeed, Hutus as an ethnic group have been painted in so murderous a light that they are unlikely to ever be viewed differently.

An important part of the RPF version of the events was implication of Catholic clergy. The trial of a few clergy found complicit have repeatedly been held up as proof of the involvement of the Church, a charge that appears to be untrue, going by the accounts of survivors of the atrocities.

Under the guise of ensuring justice for victims of the genocide, the government of Rwanda has instituted oppressive military rule in the country. Only one version of the events of 1994 is tolerated. Such is the terror of the Hutu civilians that some still refuse to return home. All that is required for them to be locked up is for a Tutsi neighbour to accuse them of having participated in the genocide.

Some Hutu refugees claim that the RPF government is pursuing a policy of "ethnic balancing", in which Hutus are kept away from the country while Tutsis are helped to resettle on confiscated Hutu land. The much-heralded removal of ethnic identification and the insistence on being labelled as "Rwandese", helpfully shields another reality: Hutus are virtually unrepresented in Rwanda's government and armed forces.

Reporting this version of events in Rwanda is not allowed: two journalists have spent 10 years in jail for daring to question the government's version of the genocide. The continued suppression of the press and general freedoms in Rwanda, and the complete abhorrence by the government of an alternative version of events are tolerated by a politically-correct world that has swallowed the RPF's story. It is a shame that the regional press in East Africa also helps to perpetrate this myth.

If Rwanda is to be at peace and free again, both sides of the story must be told, and official versions of events must be held up to scrutiny. The Hutu side of the story also deserves telling.

Related Materials:
Rwanda: Catholic priest honored again for saving 3,000 Tutsis

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 3:26 PM