22 April 1999 Edition
Five years after the massacres
Five years on, the international community seems to have forgotten the massacres in Rwanda, while in the African country, the population is still trying to come to terms with the horror endured in 1994.
On Friday, 16 April, the Rwandan police arrested the Bishop of Ginkongoro, Agustin Misago. The Bishop is accused of being involved in 1994's Rwanda genocide that claimed the lives of around 800.000 Tutsis, killed by the Hutu militia in a three-month period. The Vatican missionary agency, Misna, claims that the bishop's detention is part of ``a campaign launched by the Rwandan government and its media against the Catholic Church and the Pope''.
Some analysts, however, believe this demonstrates how embedded was the ethnic division between Hutus and Tutsis in all areas of society. Last February, during a meeting with the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), the Rwandan president, Pasteur Bizimungo, pointed out that it will not be difficult to find the responsible behind the genocide, ``because every episode from 1900, when the seeds of genocide were sown, to 1994, when the `final solution' was launched, has been documented and the key players are known''.
Bizimungo was referring them to the European colonial countries that introduced racist stereotypes and set up a racist administrative structure, sometimes with the help of missionaries. European missionaries arrived in Rwanda in the 1870s. Within ten years, German troops established a military post in Burundi. By the end of the century, both kingdoms came under German
Empire protection. After the First World War, Rwanda and Burundi were taken from Germany and turned over Belgium, which ruled until 1962.
Now, five years later, it is clear that the Rwandan massacres were not spontaneous expressions of tribal tension, but that the genocide was well planned by the Hutu government, which used the media and the militia to eliminate the Tutsi political opposition, which wanted a share of the power and privileges that Hutus were enjoying. Furthermore, the Tutsi population will not forget how the UN decided to ignore the warnings and how UN soldiers just walked away.
The UN entered Rwanda in 1994, following a peace agreement that ended the civil war. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) decided to end their three-year campaign against the government in exchange for some kind of power-sharing. But the agreement was not implemented, as Hutu hardliners decided not to relinquish part of their power and started plotting the genocide.
Five years later, some of those responsible for the genocide have not been brought to justice, having found sanctuary abroad. Cairde Rwanda, a voluntary group within the Irish development group, Comhlámh, points out that at least 100,000 people are awaiting trial in inhuman conditions for their participation in the
genocide. Intimidation and killing of witnesses and reprisal killings continue in the vacuum created by the lack of a judicial system. Refugees and internally displaced people keep suffering, as the country has not had the possibility to rebuild even its most basic infrastructures.
On Friday, 16 April, the Rwandan police arrested the Bishop of Ginkongoro, Agustin Misago. The Bishop is accused of being involved in 1994's Rwanda genocide that claimed the lives of around 800.000 Tutsis, killed by the Hutu militia in a three-month period. The Vatican missionary agency, Misna, claims that the bishop's detention is part of ``a campaign launched by the Rwandan government and its media against the Catholic Church and the Pope''.
Some analysts, however, believe this demonstrates how embedded was the ethnic division between Hutus and Tutsis in all areas of society. Last February, during a meeting with the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), the Rwandan president, Pasteur Bizimungo, pointed out that it will not be difficult to find the responsible behind the genocide, ``because every episode from 1900, when the seeds of genocide were sown, to 1994, when the `final solution' was launched, has been documented and the key players are known''.
Bizimungo was referring them to the European colonial countries that introduced racist stereotypes and set up a racist administrative structure, sometimes with the help of missionaries. European missionaries arrived in Rwanda in the 1870s. Within ten years, German troops established a military post in Burundi. By the end of the century, both kingdoms came under German
Empire protection. After the First World War, Rwanda and Burundi were taken from Germany and turned over Belgium, which ruled until 1962.
Now, five years later, it is clear that the Rwandan massacres were not spontaneous expressions of tribal tension, but that the genocide was well planned by the Hutu government, which used the media and the militia to eliminate the Tutsi political opposition, which wanted a share of the power and privileges that Hutus were enjoying. Furthermore, the Tutsi population will not forget how the UN decided to ignore the warnings and how UN soldiers just walked away.
The UN entered Rwanda in 1994, following a peace agreement that ended the civil war. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) decided to end their three-year campaign against the government in exchange for some kind of power-sharing. But the agreement was not implemented, as Hutu hardliners decided not to relinquish part of their power and started plotting the genocide.
Five years later, some of those responsible for the genocide have not been brought to justice, having found sanctuary abroad. Cairde Rwanda, a voluntary group within the Irish development group, Comhlámh, points out that at least 100,000 people are awaiting trial in inhuman conditions for their participation in the
genocide. Intimidation and killing of witnesses and reprisal killings continue in the vacuum created by the lack of a judicial system. Refugees and internally displaced people keep suffering, as the country has not had the possibility to rebuild even its most basic infrastructures.