Rwanda Flashcards

Question

Li (2004), importance of RTLM's everyday role

Answer 1

RTLM did not simply whip Hutu into a frenzy to channel fear and anger into sudden attacks. Rather, through the daily diet of informational updates, operational details (not to leave bodies on the road in view of Western journalists, for example), and encouraging monologues, it contributed to the framing of schedules and the routinization of “work.”

Answer 2

while state actions in Rwanda in 1994 may have speeded the process of genocide, people themselves, thinking and acting in mobs, assumed a degree of initiative in the violence, and killed with methods that far exceeded state mandates.

Answer 3

reducing the human targets to non-human status generates broad social consent to mass murder this consent was built through extensive ideological and political preparation that included dehumanizing Tutsi as “cockroaches” (inyenzi) and snakes (inzoka) and rewriting history to demonize an entire group, the Tutsi, as “foreign invaders.”

Answer 4

in response to my question about what they had pleaded guilty to, all the avoues confirmed that they had pleaded guilty to the crime of “genocide” (using the French word). When I asked them what “genocide” was, the majority told me that it was ubwicanyi (“killings”). Very few of the prisoners used the term itsembatsemba or itsembabwoko (itsemba extermination, ubwoko tribe), which are common Kinyarwanda translations for “genocide,” suggests that there is little if any understanding on the part of the perpetrators about the legal, moral, or political differences between committing genocide and murder

Answer 5

The use of hunting metaphors in the genocide likens the killing of Tutsi to the process of environmental culling or sanitation in traditional Rwanda

Answer 6

The Holocaust paradigm is so dominant, however, that the field of genocide studies has focused almost exclusively on explaining the actions of the perpetrators of genocide, leaving aside the actions, strategy, and potential responsibility of victim groups and third parties.

Answer 7

1990s, RPF - with the support of the international community threatened Rwanda’s Hutu regime to such an extent that it retaliated with genocide Rwanda’s 1994 genocide was a retaliation by the state’s Hutu regime to a violent challenge from the Tutsi rebels who invaded from Uganda in 1990 and fought for over three years to seize effective control of Rwanda.

Answer 8

June 1987, The Rwandan Alliance for National Unity abandoned its quasi-Marxist ideology and embraced secretly a last-resort “zed option”—the use of military force, if necessary, to return to Rwanda To mark the change, in December 1987, the organization renamed itself the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Although RANU’s original goal had been refugee return, the RPF had a broader political agenda, which included removal of Habyarimana and implementation of political reform in Rwanda to provide the returning Tutsi a significant share of political power.

Answer 9

on democratization and refugees to satisfy international demands and undercut support for the rebels. For example, on February 19, 1991, he signed the Dar-Es-Salaam declaration on the right of refugee return. In March, his government negotiated a cease-fire with the rebels. In July, Habyarimana offered Rwandan passports to Tutsi refugees abroad, and he legalized opposition political parties. - 1991, Habyarimana made a small gesture toward pluralization by adding an opposition member to his government. More significantly, in April 1992, he installed a multi-party government comprising 10 ministers of his own party and 9 from the opposition, though he still retained effective control - July 1992, Habyarimana conceded in principle to the rebels’ demands on rule of law, democratization, power-sharing, and creation of a unified military, although without specifying the crucial details

Answer 10

On February 8, 1993, the rebels broke a seven-month cease-fire and rapidly captured a large swath of northern Rwanda, including portions of the hardline Hutu stronghold of Ruhengeri. ---> -retaliatory killing of Tutsi in Ruhengeri on March 5, 1993, and displaced an estimated one million Rwandans, or approximately one-eighth of the country’s entire population -enabled Habyarimana to unite the Rwandan Hutu political class against the rebels and their domestic Tutsi “accomplices.”

Answer 11

In February 1994, the RPF also started arming and training separate Tutsi “self-defense forces” within Rwanda to defend against the expected retaliatory massacres. When the genocide started, the program was a few months away from fruition, so that most Tutsi in Rwanda still were defenseless. In the first two months of 1994, some RPF officials also proposed publicly exhorting the “expected targets” of retaliation in Rwanda—that is, all Tutsi—to flee the country.

Answer 12

- During the first two and a half weeks of genocide, the rebels also repeatedly rejected cease-fire offers from the government. - on April 23, the RPF belatedly offered to accept the cease-fire that the army moderates had proposed 10 days earlier, having realised rapidity of genocide and decided this cost = too high. Purging of moderate Hutu officer Marcel Gatsinzi on April 17 removed hope of ceasefire being effective

Answer 13

Primarily, the battle plan was designed to conquer the country, rather than to protect Tutsi civilians from retaliatory violence.

Answer 14

all five major outbursts of anti-Tutsi violence from 1990 to 1993 were launched “in reaction to challenges that threatened Habyarimana’s control"

Answer 15

Tutsi were not even suffering discrimination relative to most Hutu, let alone violence. In secondary schools, they “remained overrepresented” (Uvin, 1997, p 101). Likewise, in the mid-ranks of the public sector, “Tutsi remained represented beyond the 9 percent they were theoretically allocated. In Uganda, likewise, the Tutsi had faced no significant discrimination or violence for several years prior to the invasion. Indeed, the late 1980s represented a high-water mark for Tutsi in Uganda, given their military role, ties to Museveni, and economic advancement The largest group of refugees, about a quarter-million, lived in Burundi, where they had been treated well for decades by that state’s Tutsi-dominated government Burundi and Tanzania even had offered citizenship to the refugees

Answer 16

- “You always have to balance the pros and cons,” says Tito Rutaremara, who acknowledges that “We knew if we fought, people would suffer” and there would be “civilian atrocities.” - schism within the Rwandan Tutsi that stemmed from the prolonged refugee experience. By 1990, many refugees who had spent up to three decades in Uganda felt little kinship for those in Rwanda who faced retaliation

Answer 17

between 175,000 and 210,000 The figure supports the claim that mass participation characterizes the Rwandan genocide If active adults are defined as 18–54 years old, 175,000 to 210,000 perpetrators equals 7% and 8% of the active adult Hutu population at the time of the genocide and 14% to 17% of the active adult male population

Answer 18

my calculation of the total number of perpetrators would strongly suggest that a small minority of perpetrators did the majority of killing. analysis overall suggests importance of disaggregating category of 'perpetrators', and that collective blame of “the Hutus” should be eschewed.

Answer 19

a normative order in which genocide constitutes “normal,” not aberrant, behavior depends directly on the inculcation of fear—of the threat posed by the targeted group as well as the threat of punishment for noncompliance

Answer 20

In updated version of Hutu Power history, Tutsi were not simply a foreign race, Tutsi were fundamentally different from Hutu, as different as men are from women The danger lay with Tutsi—all Tutsi

Answer 21

“The history of Rwanda shows us clearly that a Tutsi stays always exactly the same, that he has never changed. … Who could tell the difference between the Inyenzi who attacked in October 1990 and those of the 1960s.2 They are all linked … their evilness is the same”

Answer 22

Mugusera called repeatedly for the “extermination” and “liquidation” of the Tutsi “vermin” and “scum” (Des Forges, 1999, p 85). Mugusera warned his listeners that the enemy’s goal was extermination and urged them to “rise up … really rise up” in self-defense. He then ended his speech with a “kill or be killed” warning: “Know that the person whose throat you do not cut now will be the one who will cut yours”

Answer 23

By 1993 so common “that a magazine could coldbloodedly publish a headline saying ’By the way, the Tutsi race could be extinguished’ [and] cause no shock or even surprise” - Prunier 1995

Answer 24

The importance of RTLM, in short, was not only to motivate willing participants before and during the genocide, but also to make genocide a familiar concept that was no more remarkable than the concept of drinking beer with friends. Before the genocide, RTLM had become the dominant source of information for most people. Once the genocide began, and travel and communication became difficult, people became even more dependent on the station

Answer 25

high by African standards nearly 60% in urban areas, close to 30% in rural

Answer 26

Following the October 1, 1990 invasion by the RPF, for example, the extremists staged an attack in Kigali (the capital city) in the early morning hours of October 4, 1990. There was shooting but no casualties and only little damage. The government pinned the attack on the RPF A week after the faked insurrection, over 300 Tutsi were massacred and 500 houses burnt to the ground in the commune of Kibirira

Answer 27

Three historically-linkable events were key to spreading a genocidal norm: - the persistence of a majoritarian—i.e. Hutu—ideology which had its roots in the revolution of 1959–1962 - second, the civil war with the RPF, which provided opportunities for exploitation by all sides and unintended consequences for a few - finally, the assassination of Melchior Ndadaye, the first popularly elected Hutu president of neighboring Burundi, in October 1993. These factors helped to carve a cognitive pathway between Tutsi as revanchist–foreigner to Tutsi as an enemy so vile and threatening as to be relegated outside the universe of moral obligation.

Answer 28

the war presented the Habyarimana regime with options that it would not have otherwise had What the war provided, in short, was cover for genocide The role of war in the Rwanda case, however, differs from the Armenian and Nazi cases in that the Rwandan government truly was at war with the “enemy.” This state of war provided a legitimate basis for fear within the population, which would help explain why popular support failed to materialize when the rebel army crossed the border from Uganda.

Answer 29

N = first democratically elected president of Burundi Ndadaye’s murder convinced the extremists that it was time to act. They calculated rightly that the shock of the murder, along with ensuing acts of violence and the large flow of refugees from Burundi into Rwanda, would convince once moderate or hesitant people to go along with their genocidal plans.

Answer 30

Prunier’s conformist mentality thesis or an illiterate mass argument overlooks evidence of disobedience and resistance to genocide in Rwanda and participation of educated middle class Hutu in the genocide. In fact the obedience thesis revives the discredited colonial myth of the Hutu as obedient and docile.

Answer 31

first mission stations in Rwanda were established in 1900 by the Society of Our Lady of Africa, commonly known as the White Fathers. If chiefs and kings could be convinced to adopt Christianity, Lavigerie argued, their subjects would naturally follow

Answer 32

In every conversation we had with the government and church people alike, the point was brought home to us that the church itself stands tainted, not by passive indifference, but by errors of commission as well.”

Answer 33

missionaries were instrumental in creating cultural identities through their specification of “custom” and “tradition” and by writing “tribal” histories. … Once these elements of culture were in place and available to be used as the cultural base of a distinct new, ascriptive ethnic identity, it could replace older organizing principles that depended upon voluntary clientage and loyalty and which, as such, showed great plasticity. Thus firm, non-porous and relatively inelastic ethnic boundaries constructed missionaries “incorporated into the curricula of their mission schools the lesson that the pupils had clear ethnic identities,”

Answer 34

In Rwanda, missionaries played a primary role in creating ethnic myths The concepts of ethnicity developed by the missionaries served as a basis for the German and Belgian colonial policies of indirect rule which helped to transform relatively flexi- ble pre-colonial social categories into clearly defined ethnic groups. the missionaries hypothesized that the Tutsi were not really African but a Hamitic or Semitic group from the Middle East, perhaps a lost tribe of Israel.

Answer 35

Intermarriage between Hutu and Tutsi was relatively common, and those Hutu who acquired cattle, the traditional sign of wealth and source of power in the ubuhake patron-client system, could eventually be considered Tutsi, a process known as icyihuture.

Answer 36

the organizations best situated w/in Rwanda to challenge the progress toward genocide, bc they remained the largest non-state actors even w the explosion of civil-society assocs in the preceding decade

Answer 37

89.8 % of pop claimed membership in a Christian Church

Answer 38

In general, churches offered little support to those groups and individs seeking to force the state to accept reforms Refused to support human rights groups Continued to support MRND publicly after new constitution allowing opposition parties adopted June 1991

Answer 39

Christian churches met the massacres of Tutsi that took place from 1990-3 w resounding silence, even when on several occasions church property and personnel were targeted During period of democratic reform and renewed ethnic conflict in early 1990s, church leaders completely failed to condemn ethnic violence and support political reforms, but instead lent their support to the govt that was organizing the violence

Answer 40

- Military support offered to the Habyarimana regime by France and other countries helped the regime rebuild its strength at a moment when domestic opposition had seriously weakened its position - Vast expansion of the military that foreign support made possible - from around 5000 troops at begin of war to more than 50,000 in 1992, allowed the govt to place soldiers throughout the country, where they harassed and subdued the population and eventually oversaw the implementation of the genocide - France deployed troops that bolstered the resolve of the Rwandan army, helped organize its counter-attack, and assisted in operations such as targeting artillery. The French continued this military support for the next three years, deploying reinforcements whenever necessary - France deployed 150 troops to reinforce the Rwandan army on February 9, 1993 and another 250 troops on February 20

Answer 41

- Catholic bishop of Kabgayi issued several letters in 1992 and 1993 demanding political reform and criticizing his church for its inaction

Answer 42

- Ppl who sought sanctuary in church buildings were instead slaughtered there - Tutsi priests etc killed, oft by own parishioners, sometimes fellow clergy - In many cases clergy assisted the killers - Numerous examples of clergy who turned ppl over to be killed - Catholic archbishop himself, in may, turned over to a death squad a num of nuns and priests gathered at the cathedral at Kabgayi - In several cases I investigated, clergy participated in death squads - Many Christians clearly believed that in participating in the massacre of Tutsi, they were doing the will of the church

Answer 43

- Justifies crimes agains Tutsi in terms of false interp of the biblical 'eye for an eye' - Present situation results from domination exerted by the Tutsi between the invaders' 'arrival' in the 14th century and 1959 - Tutsi genocide provoked by the Tutsi forces of the RPF-Inkotanyi, who knew what they were doing

Answer 44

Acc to a num of priests from Rwanda and Burundi, one prayer in partic stands out in minds of many: 'My God, deliver us from the Jews.' In the racist ideology spread by the missionaries, the Hamite Tutsi are considered to be the cousins of the Jews and other whites, meaning that they were a sort of African Jews This notion had positive connotations until 1950, but increasingly negative ones thereafter

Answer 45

still safe Hutu extremists now confident UN not going to stop them Began gathering machetes, making death lists, etc

Answer 46

- US had 350 marines - Fr - 500 paratroopers - Belgians over 1000 paratroopers - There to save white ppl not Rwandans, despite potential for this being intervention force - strong belief of Dallaire

Answer 47

- truly shameful episode" where U.S. officials rejected a plan to jam the extremists' hate radio broadcasts "because of some legal nicety about international radio conventions. " discussion was about how we would be viewed if we declared genocide and didn't do anything about it

Answer 48

- An estimated 5-10% of Rwanda’s population was killed between the second week of April and the third week of May 1994 – one of the highest casualty rates of any population in history from non-natural causes.

Answer 49

ECONOMIC DISCONTENT AND 'DIVIDE AND RULE' IN THE REGIME THREATENED BY DEMOCRATISATION -The similarities between Rwanda and Germany lie in the extent of ideological and military preparation prior to genocide, and in the systematic use of conspiracy theories and myths to justify covert plans for slaughter. ECONOMIC DISCONTENT In Rwanda, the drop in coffee prices in the mid-1980s set off a period of political extremism and a search for solutions that was to lead to scapegoating and a physical extermination of a large part of the Rwandan population. Economic recession was a major facilitating factor in bringing latent competition and vague murderous intentions to such organised fruition, both in Nazi Germany and later in Rwanda. 'DIVIDE AND RULE' IN THE REGIME THREATENED BY DEMOCRATISATION In Rwanda, racialist ideologies served as a mask or pseudo-justification for the more fundamental goal of regime survival under conditions of sharp socioeconomic crisis and growling political opposition. By mobilising vertical social cleavages, racial and ethnic political ideologies can be particularly useful to failing regimes facing widespread opposition from within ‘their own ranks’. When political democratisation was imposed on Rwanda in the early 1990s, Habyarimana’s regime responded by rallying the majority ‘faithful’ against a purported common racial enemy,

Answer 50

Three broad explanations of the genocide can be identified from an initial review of the available literature on genocide in Rwanda: A focus on external influences, both colonial and neo-colonial. A focus on domestic causes, including demographic factors and ‘ethnic’ conflict. A psychological account based on the presumed social conformism and obedience of Rwandans.

Answer 51

An emphasis on external factors can place responsibility elsewhere Attributing genocide to domestic causes such as population pressure or ethnic loyalties again suggests that in organising and carrying out genocide, Rwandans were merely responding, almost mechanistically, to domestic pressures. Viewing them as conformists tends to reduce the Rwandan experience to a specific and extreme example of the supposed general human tendency to obey those in positions of power.

Answer 52

However, if Rwanda can be said to be an example of a failed state, it is certainly not because the state was weak and ineffectual; if anything, the state became so powerful and efficient that it crushed and overwhelmed Rwandan society completely. ---> Rwanda illustrates the danger of an efficient and centralised state that ‘does not embrace the entire polis’, but only ‘that part which members of the hegemonic elite think it should embrace’.

Answer 53

Imperialist designs of other countries, the historical legacy of inter-group conflict, and the use of psychological manipulation and patterns of social control by a highly authoritarian regime, all have a part to play in any adequate explanation of genocide. But even all these combined cannot explain what happened to Rwandans themselves when the 1994 genocide was planned and implemented. When the genocide started, it took most outsiders, and many Rwandans, by surprise.

Answer 54

The 1994 killings were a genocide precisely because they were planned well before April 1994, with predictions of the mass killings that were to take place being made months, and even years, before they actually occurred. By January 1994 it was clear to the UN’s special envoy for human rights that death lists were being drawn up in preparation for the killing of Tutsi, and the elimination of Hutu opposition politicians and human rights activists.

Answer 55

By definition, a conscious and deliberate strategy like genocide cannot be attributed to spontaneous outbursts of mutual antagonisms between ethnic or racial groups. Genocide may well exploit such latent antagonisms, and may create new ones, but it cannot be caused by such divisions.

Answer 56

Research into the Rwandan media during the early 1990s suggests that a ‘hard core’ within the regime, concentrated in the army, did prepare for genocide. This faction feared for its own survival under any power-sharing arrangement with the RPF, and apparently resolved not to give up without a fight to the death. This provides us with the beginnings of an explanation of the 1994 genocide: as a state-organised incitement to violence, imposed through terror and ideology. The main organisers were a Hutu elite, united by their senior positions in the army and the top civil service.

Answer 57

identities might be printed on people’s papers, or may dominate people’s perceptions of a conflict situation, but they cannot in and of themselves be the root cause of conflict or violence; they are the way that political conflicts are expressed.

Answer 58

The combined impact of the end of the Cold War and of structural adjustment policies has been to further marginalise sub-Saharan Africa within the global economy. The situation deteriorated when coffee prices fell in 1986-1987. External debt accumulated As Rwanda’s trade deficit accumulated, existing redistributional and welfare policies came under pressure. These had been based on the construction of social cohesion among Hutu through the imposition of ethnic quotas

Answer 59

When democratic political reforms were introduced in 1991, political divisions in Rwanda did not coalesce along ethnic lines. Instead, with the dismantling of the one-party state, long-standing tensions surfaced between north and south. Southerners resented the dominance of a small group of Hutu northerners in control of the top echelons, whilst northern Hutu considered themselves purer ethnically, and historically less subservient to the Tutsi than the predominately ‘mixed’ southerners.

Answer 60

The most fundamentalist and exclusionary movements claim to be acting in self-defence. This explains why, so often, “the party which seeks to take power by instituting and legalizing exclusion, expulsion, segregation and extermination, claims to be a victim itself”. As early as the 1970s it had been claimed that the Tutsi had a plan, known as the Micombero plot, to kill off enough Hutu to ensure a Tutsi electoral majority. Fictitious reports were common, both on the radio and in the press. One example was a Rwandan radio report that a human rights organisation based in Nairobi had discovered evidence of an RPF plot to kill prominent Hutu politicians and carry out genocide of all Rwandan Hutu.

Answer 61

During the genocide itself, orders to kill were issues from the top and passed down; those who refused to kill were almost always killed themselves. The result was the almost total destruction of social bonds and relations of trust. “Pupils were killed by their teachers, shop owners by their customers, neighbour killed neighbour, and husbands killed wives in order to save them from a more terrible death”. Killing started in earnest once international observers, and European journalists, businessmen, clergy, diplomats and aid workers had left Rwanda. Local officials were obliged to comply with orders to kill, and after 20th April no area was left untouched.

Answer 62

The US in particular was preoccupied by its own domestic concerns and initially did not seem to give much thought to the nature of the killings, being wary of any intervention that would embroil it in something even more complex than Somalia. France maintained its ties with the Rwandan armed forces and militias even after the killings started. French material interests included arms sales, and rewards for private companies and ‘loyal’ Africans. Only a few hundred soldiers, mainly from Senegal and Bangladesh, stayed in Rwanda after mid-April. The only other intervention was when France set up Operation Turquoise, a so-called ‘safe zone’ in the south-west of Rwanda, at best an ambiguous intervention. One reason there was so little international response to advance warnings of genocide was because of international indifference and ignorance about the reality of Rwanda’s situation >>>>>>>The indifference of the international community raised all kinds of ethical and practical problems, particularly given the willingness to skirt round the issue of genocide with the government of Rwanda.

Answer 63

' I am always hearing the phrase 'international community' - where is this 'international community'? For me, it is far away from every country on earth During the first days they attacked men and young boys...it was only later that they attacked women

Rwanda Flashcards

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