"Rwanda: Genocide and the Continuing Cycle of Violence"

Testimony of Alison Des Forges, Human Rights Watch before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights Tuesday, May 5, 1998

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing and for inviting me to testify. My name is Alison Des Forges, consultant to the Africa division of Human Rights Watch and the organization's specialist on Rwanda and Burundi.

The U.S. government has acknowledged that it was wrong in trying to ignore the Rwandan genocide. Now that President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright have admitted this serious error in policy, it is important examine in detail how it happened and how similar errors might be avoided in the future. Such an examination is all the more pressing given the continuing violence in the region. Hence the importance of this hearing this morning.

The lesson from the tragedy is indisputable: we must heed the warnings of a genocide in preparation and, should efforts to avert violence fail, we must intervene early to halt the slaughter. While always stressing this fundamental lesson, we must also have the wisdom and imagination to go beyond the obvious. It is unlikely that we will soon be presented again with conditions exactly like those of Rwanda in 1994. It would be both irresponsible and counterproductive to assume that we need not act until and unless a situation of similar horror presents itself. We must realize that not just genocide but any large-scale ethnic strife will impose incalculable suffering on the local people as well as unacceptable political and financial costs on the international community.

POLICY ERRORS BEFORE THE GENOCIDE

Tolerating Discrimination

In the decade before the genocide, the U.S. and other major donors supported the government of General Juvenal Habyarimana because it offered stability and apparently satisfactory progress in economic development. Eager for a model of success, the donors ignored the Rwandan practice of officially identifying persons by ethnic group and the systematic discrimination against the minority Tutsi in education and employment opportunities. In 1991 consultants recommended to U.S. AID that removing ethnic classification from identity cards be made a condition for continued economic assistance, but the advice was ignored. Rwandan authorities were permitted to believe that isolation of and discrimination against Tutsi was acceptable to the international community.

Weak Response to Ethnically-Based Killing

In the years preceding the genocide, the U.S. failed to take a firm, consistent stand against official Rwandan use of violence for political ends even though human rights organizations and the U.S. Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary and Summary Executions documented government-directed massacres against Tutsi beginning in 1990. The U.S. also

failed to act in neighboring Burundi in late 1993 when Hutu political and administrative leaders incited the slaughter of thousands of Tutsi and Tutsi soldiers killed thousands of Hutu civilians. Nor did the U.S. insist on accountability for organizers of these killings, whether military or civilian officials. In view of the ineffective response from the U.S. and other donor nations, organizers of the Rwandan genocide felt encouraged to believe that even larger scale slaughter of civilians would be tolerated.

False Economies

The U.S., along with other donors, invested considerable effort in bringing about the Arusha Accords that ended the war between the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front. But the U.S. then led efforts to cut the costs of the U.N. peacekeeping operation that was necessary to oversee implementation of the Accords. Haunted by the ghosts of Somalia, the U.S. wanted a successful peacekeeping operation, but faced with paying a substantial part of the cost of such an operation, it refused the means needed to ensure such a success. When U.N. military experts proposed a force of 8,000 or, at the very least, 5,000 troops, the U.S. suggested 500. In the end, some 2800 troops were sent. Because the force was of such minimal size, its mandate was also limited. Instead of a force to protect civilians throughout the country in the period of transition to a new government, the peacekeepers were tasked only with exercising a general supervision over security in the capital.

Ignoring the Warnings

For six months before the genocide, the radio and newspapers in Rwanda incited Hutu to violence against Tutsi and predicted the impending cataclysm. Radio RTLM, known to be financed and supported by high government officials, called for the assassination of the prime minister and other political leaders known for their moderation. Through songs, jokes and editorials, the radio sowed fear and hatred of Tutsi, promoting the idea that Hutu would be justified in taking up arms against their neighbors in a campaign of so-called "self-defense." The anti-Tutsi political party, the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic, issued a press release in late November 1993 in which it called on the "majority population," meaning the Hutu, to be "ready to neutralize by all means its enemies and their accomplices."

Representatives of foreign embassies knew, and presumably communicated to their home governments, that weapons were being distributed to civilians. The Bishop of Nyundo, a diocese in northwestern Rwanda, issued a press release in late December asking the Rwandan government to explain why firearms were being handed out to certain civilians. Embassy personnel also knew also that militia were being recruited and trained by regular military instructors in a number of locations.

In early December 1993, five months before the genocide began, several leading officers of the Rwandan army wrote to General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping operation, telling him that massacres "are being prepared and are supposed to spread throughout the country, beginning with the regions that have a great concentration of Tutsi."

A month later, General Dallaire informed both his superiors in New York and the ambassadors of the U.S., France and Belgium that he had received details of preparations for systematically eliminating Tutsi from Rwanda. He reported that groups of militia were ready to attack throughout the capital and to kill up to 1,000 Tutsi in twenty minutes. He requested permission to confiscate stocks of arms and he asked for protection for his informant. He was refused both requests. The U.N. peace-keeping office in New York, fearing "serious political repercussions" of any such firm action, told Dallaire that his mandate did not permit him to confiscate the arms; he had the authority to enforce the existence of a weapons-free area, but not to create a weapons-free area. The U.N. would not grant protection for Dallaire's informant but instead directed him to seek such help from one of the three important embassies in Rwanda, that of the U.S., of Belgium, or of France. When Dallaire approached these ambassadors, all three refused to offer protection to the informant, thus making it highly unlikely that he would furnish any further information. At the direction of his New York office, Dallaire asked these three ambassadors also to raise the preparations for mass killing directly with President Habyarimana. After discussion among themselves, the ambassadors decided not to do so, apparently at the request of the French ambassador.

Some U.S. analysts were sufficiently concerned about the movement towards renewed violence to request a CIA study of the question. The study, produced at the end of January 1993, concluded that if conflict were to begin again in Rwanda, up to one half million lives would be lost. A source in the intelligence community told us that this analyst's work was usually highly regarded by others, but that in this case, his superiors did not take the assessment seriously.

General Dallaire appealed without success for a stronger mandate in late January. In early February he cabled New York that the success of the entire peacekeeping operation would be jeopardized by continued delay in confiscating the arms being stockpiled by the militia. He predicted "more frequent and more violent demonstrations, more grenade and armed attacks on ethnic and political groups, more assassinations and quite possibly outright attacks" on the U.N. peacekeepers.

In February, Belgian authorities also became increasingly concerned about the threats of violence, both in general against Rwandans and, more specifically, against Belgian troops which were serving in the peacekeeping force. They tried to move the U.N. to a firmer interpretation of the mandate, but could not prevail against opposition led by the U.S. and the U.K. These governments refused to support any measure which might increase the cost of the operation. During this month also, the assassinations of two leading politicians, attempts against others, and the killing of dozens of people in the capital underscored the likelihood of immediate and serious violence.

During this period, the Rwandan government sought to receive several planeloads of arms, in violation of the Arusha Accords. Although the U.N. was able to block such major deliveries, weapons were still circulating in the area. In mid-March, the Belgian Minister of Defense Leo Delcroix found Kigali "awash with weapons" and proposed that the peacekeeping mandate be strengthened. Again nothing was done.

Belgian intelligence sources reported regularly to Belgium and to the U.N. about secret meetings to plan the massacres, information that was presumably passed on to the U.S. Between January and March, Dallaire six times requested more troops and a stronger mandate from the U.N. and warned that the peacekeeping operation would fail unless it had the means for taking tougher action against extremists.

When the mandate of the peacekeeping operation was being considered for renewal just before the genocide was launched, the Secretary-General reported to the Security Council on the preparations for genocide, including the distribution of arms and the training of militia, the assassinations and violent demonstrations. But he chose to stress the problems of banditry rather than those of politically motivated crimes. Instead of backing the request of the top commanders of the peacekeeping force for more troops and heavy guns, he proposed adding forty-five policemen, a measure that would mean only a minimal increase in the cost of the operation. Hardly an appropriate response to the threats recorded, this measure did fall within the financial parameters set by the U.S. and the U.K.

THE GENOCIDE

The genocide was sparked by the shooting down of the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and his counterpart from Burundi. Responsibility for this crime remains unclear and largely uninvestigated. A scholar in Belgium has published the serial numbers of the launchers used to fire the missiles that supposedly struck the plane and has claimed that missiles bearing those numbers were in the stock of booty taken by France after the Gulf War. French officials have rejected all responsibility and have asserted that the missiles were given by the U.S. to Uganda, which passed them to Rwanda. U.S. officials have denied this claim, but have contributed little information to help attribute responsibility for the crime. Should the U.S. possess indications that missiles with the published numbers were once in French hands, it would do well to make that information public.

Regardless of who was responsible for the assassination of the Rwandan president, his death only served as pretext for launching a killing campaign that had been planned for some time.

The organizers of the genocide were at the start only a small circle of military and political leaders, but they had at their command the three most important elite military units in Kigali, including the Presidential Guard, as well as several thousand militia members. Even with this advantage, it was not clear that they would succeed in mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Rwandans to kill their fellow citizens. The propaganda barrage of the previous months had prepared a large segment of the population to distrust and even hate Tutsi and moderate Hutu, but it would require considerable organizational resources to move them from these sentiments to actually taking up their weapons to kill people.

Moderate military officers at first opposed efforts by the extremists to take power and sought support from the international community. Several leading officers contacted U.S., Belgian and French representatives, either in Kigali or in foreign capitals, seeking backing against the forces of genocide, but got none. Lacking any clear foreign assistance, they failed to organize any coherent movement of opposition. When extremists saw the moderates dithering, they pushed their advantage and removed them from key posts where, with time, they might have been able to organize an effective resistance to the killing campaign.

Once in effective control of much of the military apparatus, the organizers of the genocide used soldiers, members of the national police forces, members of the military reserves, and retired soldiers to initiate and supervise genocidal massacres throughout the country. In every major massacre investigated by Human Rights Watch, some members of the regular military sparked and directed the killings carried out by civilians. In one community after another, we found evidence that members of the armed forces had incited and indeed ordered civilians to participate in the killing campaign.

The organizers also appropriated the dense and effective administrative system and turned its personnel and practices to the purposes of exterminating Tutsi. A small country, Rwanda had a highly centralized administration that functioned efficiently down to the level of the neighborhood. Under pressure from superiors and from the military, even administrators who were not personally hostile to Tutsi carried out the many separate tasks that together made up the genocide: driving Tutsi from their homes and assembling them at places of slaughter, mobilizing masses of assailants, communicating instructions, chairing meetings, providing transportation and materials, arranging for the disposal of corpses, and directing the division of looted property and confiscated land.

The organizers won support quickly from regions where parties loyal to President Habyarimana were strongest, but in the center and south, they encountered resistance from the local administration. On the weekend of April 16 to 17, the organizers decided to push the genocide into these areas. At that time, they made changes in both high-ranking military posts and in local administration, removing those who had opposed the slaughter and naming others whom they expected to implement the killing campaign more effectively. Two governors (préfets) who resisted the genocide were removed and killed. Several lower level officials were also slain. Faced with the clear threat that their own lives might be the price of continued opposition, other administrators gave in, some becoming enthusiastic proponents of exterminating Tutsi, others complying reluctantly with efforts to wipe out the minority.

Once the organizers had control over the military and administrative systems, they had the means to compel participation of the population at large. They called on the people to join in the killing. They offered as incentives the opportunity to pillage the goods of victims and, even more important in this country of land-starved farmers, the chance to obtain the lands of those slain. For all those decent people who would not be moved by greed, the organizers used fear to push them to action, fear not just of the Tutsi as generated by the months of propaganda, but fear of their own military and civilian authorities who threatened them with retribution should they fail to join in the attacks.

U.S. AND INTERNATIONAL REACTION TO THE GENOCIDE

The Evacuation Force

According to one U.S. official, the first days of the genocide were a time of "total confusion," when policymakers "didn't know who was shooting at whom."⁽¹⁾ Yet even press reports, poor as they were generally, stated on April 11 that thousands of civilians had sought refuge in U.N. posts because they were "terrified by the ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing and terror" and that casualties were "quite heavy and primarily ethnic in nature."⁽²⁾ On that same date, the International Red Cross estimated some 20,000 dead in four days of terror, about half of them in areas remote from any battle zone. This evidence certainly accorded with all the warning signals of the weeks and months before. Had policymakers previously failed to grasp the meaning of the virulent propaganda, the training of the militia, the distribution of arms, and the information from confidential sources, surely they must have understood what was happening by April 8.

France, Belgium and Italy rushed troops to Rwanda to rescue foreign nationals and a few hundred fortunate Rwandans linked to them in various ways, while several hundred U.S. marines stood by twenty minutes away by air from the capital of Rwanda. Had these troops joined with the U.N. peacekeepers, they could have quelled the violence in Kigali. Because the campaign was so highly centralized, stopping the slaughter in the capital would have led to a quick halt in killings elsewhere. The commander of the Belgian contingent of the peacekeeping force wrote later:

The responsible attitude would have been to join the efforts of the Belgian, French and Italian troops. . . with those of UNAMIR and to have restored order in the country. There were enough troops to do it or at least to have tried. When people rightly point the finger at certain persons presumed responsible for the genocide, I wonder, after all, if there is not another category of those responsible because of...their failure to act.⁽³⁾

During that first weekend of the genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front offered to undertake a joint operation with U.N. peacekeeping troops and those troops of the Rwandan army opposed to the genocide, but the effort came to nothing. Although Dallaire called for a revision of the mandate and an increase in his troops, there was no support in New York for decisive action against the genocide. After ten Belgian peacekeepers were killed in the early hours of the genocide, Dallaire was ordered to do everything possible to minimize the risk to his troops. As the peacekeepers were regrouped from their outlying posts to more secure locations, they abandoned Rwandans who had sought protection under the U.N. flag. In the worst such case, that of the Kicukiro technical school, some one hundred, fully armed Belgian soldiers drove out of the school, leaving behind two thousand unarmed persons. Outside the compound were the military and militia who had been waiting for days for the chance to attack. As the Belgians drove out one gate, the killers stormed in the other. Most of those who had trusted in the protection of the U.N. troops were slain. At a psychiatric hospital near the capital, troops of the evacuation force arrived to escort foreigners to safety, ignoring the pleas for help of Rwandans on their knees before them.

Easy though it is for us to condemn such behavior, we must remember that it was our governments that passed the orders to these troops to withdraw and leave the Rwandans behind.

The Withdrawal of the U.N. Peacekeepers

After Rwandan soldiers killed the Belgian peacekeepers, the Belgian government decided to withdraw its forces from the operation. To cover its embarrassment at this ignoble departure, Belgian officials worked hard to persuade members of the Security Council that the entire force should be withdrawn. The U.S., ready to oblige a friendly government, at first agreed. As of the close of business April 15 in New York, the U.S. was supporting a policy of total withdrawal of the peacekeepers in confidential Security Council meetings. Rwanda, by happenstance, held a seat on the council at the time and its representative no doubt was keeping the Rwandan government apprised of these discussions. The next morning, the Rwandan Council of Ministers decided to push ahead with the genocide in the southern part of the country, confident that there would be no significant international opposition to the killing campaign.

The U.S. ultimately reconsidered its position and decided to support maintaining a token force in the country, a position that was adopted by the Security Council. Though hampered by lack of equipment and by restrictive orders from New York, this small force did protect some 20,000 Rwandans during the course of the genocide.

Genocide and War

Throughout the tragedy, U.S. policymakers, like those of other countries, failed to distinguish the genocide from the war between the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Rather than dealing with the genocide as a heinous crime demanding prompt action, they treated it as an unfortunate aspect of a war that could best be settled by the usual methods of diplomacy. They concentrated primarily on getting a cease-fire in the renewed combat. They placed more importance on retaining political "neutrality" that might be useful in negotiating between the parties than on the moral and legal duty to halt the genocide.

Using the Appropriate Term

Giving primacy to the settling the war would have been more difficult had there been an acknowledgment that the slaughter of Tutsi constituted a genocide. Using the appropriate term for the extermination campaign would also have entailed dealing with the moral and legal obligations incumbent on the U.S. and other governments which had signed the convention against genocide. For these reasons, U.S. officials were directed not to use the term, a position widely ridiculed after it was revealed in the press in early June.

The U.S. reluctance to use the appropriate term was mirrored by a similar hesitation at the Security Council, where member states also attempted to carry on with diplomacy as usual. In an April 29 resolution, the council in effect recognized the killings as genocide but never used the term itself, no doubt at the insistence of the U.S., and perhaps, other members also.

When the Security Council accorded a hearing to a delegation sent specially by the genocidal government to explain its position, the majority of its members failed to confront them with the crimes being carried out by their government. Throughout the genocide, the representative of the government responsible for genocide continued to sit on the council and even to vote on issues concerning Rwanda. No other member contested the right of representatives of a genocidal regime to sit at the table of a council supposedly devoted to the maintenance of peace.

The Second Peacekeeping Force

The Security Council, apparently concerned about the destabilizing effect in the region of the massive outflow of refugees after the end of April, decided to send a second peacekeeping force to Rwanda. Armed with a stronger mandate and more troops, the second operation was meant to protect Rwandan civilians and to assure them humanitarian aid. At first, the U.S. delayed implementation of the decision as it sought guarantees that the operation would conform to Presidential Decision Directive 25, (PDD 25), the just established policy concerning U.S. support for peacekeeping forces. After lengthy discussions resulted in clearing the plans for the operation, the U.N. experienced much difficulty in getting nations to contribute troops and then in getting other nations to contribute the equipment and supplies needed for the troops. The U.S. required seven weeks to negotiate a contract for delivering armored personnel carriers--a period needed to arrange the desired terms "for maintenance and spare parts"--but other nations also contributed little, if anything, or contributed it slowly. The U.K., for example, came up with only fifty trucks.

Such delays were not unusual for mustering U.N. operations. What was unusual was the context. The resolution authorizing the sending of the second force had finally used the term "genocide," not outright, but in its more tentative form of "acts of genocide." Even after the Security Council had finally acknowledged the crime for what it was, still U.N. members were unable to get help to Rwanda in time to make a difference. The first troops of the new contingent arrived after the RPF had already defeated the government responsible for the genocide.

Silencing the Radio

The radio which incited to killing before April 6 became the radio for giving instructions to killers after April 6. Although it would have been feasible to jam its broadcasts without any military action, neither the U.S. government nor any other government was willing to do so.

THE IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL POLICIES WITHIN RWANDA

Rwandans of all groups closely followed international reactions to the genocide. Tutsi and moderate Hutu looked to the international community--and particularly to its local representative, the U.N. peacekeepers--for protection. Even after the first force disappointed them so horribly and was withdrawn, many kept hope alive day after terrible day, believing that rescue would come from abroad. Six weeks after the slaughter began, when the Security Council decided to send in a second peacekeeping force in mid-May, I talked by phone with a Tutsi friend who crept out of his hiding place every few days to call me for news. I told him with great satisfaction that a new U.N. force was to be sent soon. He too was pleased, but weary. He said, "Tell them, please hurry." He was found and killed two days later and the second U.N. force arrived two months after that.

Moderate politicians, military officers and leaders of civil society had hopes, too, that the international community might help resist the extremists. But they too were disappointed and could not find the force to organize an internal resistance without any hope of external support.

The extremists were equally sensitive to positions taken abroad. Government officials followed expressions of foreign opinion very closely and by the end of April were dispatching delegations to try to win support among other governments in Africa and Europe. Soon after, they sent the pair of firm believers to try to justify the genocide at the U.N. Military officers needed foreign supplies of arms and anxiously courted old friends, such as France, to try to ensure continued support. Businessmen and intellectuals of national importance regularly discussed how to present events in Rwanda in the most positive light elsewhere in the world. When the French government told Rwandan military representatives that France could not give them open assistance so long as there were public killings of Tutsi, the national radio immediately broadcast the orders, "Please no more killings on the roads." When U.S. officials finally condemned the killings, that disapproval was reflected in government orders all the way down to the most local level. At community meetings held on the distant hills of the western prefecture of Kibuye, local officials instructed the people to halt the killings because, they said, the U.S. had made that a condition of dealings with the Rwandan government. Local officials even warned citizens that satellites overhead were monitoring what happened in their communities and informing the rest of the world about it.

Given that timid, half-hearted and tardy censure could produce such results down through the administrative hierarchy, it seems probable that a firm, united and prompt reaction by the international community would have cut short the genocide at its very beginnings.

LESSONS

Many participants and observers have commented that the international inertia in the face of the genocide resulted from a lack of political will rather than from a lack of knowledge. This analysis was repeated just yesterday by Kofi Annan, who headed the peacekeeping division of the U.N. in 1994.

Whether there will be sufficient political will to deal with other massive killings of civilians, even with other genocides, remains unclear. What is more certain is that we are unlikely to see again a situation in which preparations for a genocide are carried out so openly and where genocidal intentions are so publicly broadcast. Although the International Criminal Tribunal is still in the first stages of prosecuting those accused of leading the genocide, the extent of international revulsion against the genocidal plan has no doubt been felt by leaders and potential leaders in this region and elsewhere.

With the growing importance of respect for human rights as an indicator of the legitimacy of governments, we have experienced increasing difficulty in learning the truth about alleged abuses, particularly those most serious cases where military forces have been accused of massacring large numbers of civilians. The recent withdrawal of the U.N. investigatory commission from the Democratic Republic of the Congo illustrates the problem. In other cases, international authorities have been permitted to do the research, but the final report has been influenced by political considerations, such as that on the massacre by Rwandan government troops at the Kibeho displaced persons camp in April 1995; or the report has been delayed, such as that on the assassination of Burundian president Melchior Ndadaye; or it has been suppressed altogether, such as the report on 1994 killings by the Rwandan Patriotic Front produced by the Gersony team of consultants to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The special rapporteur on the Congo has been denied access to carry out investigations in that country, while the post of Special Rapporteur for Rwanda has been ended altogether following astute political maneuvers by the Rwandan government. The first UN Human Rights Field Operation for this region of central Africa was set up in Rwanda following the genocide. Similar offices have now been created in Congo and Burundi. But just as the operation is expanded elsewhere, the Rwandan government is in the process of insisting that the Field Operation halt monitoring within Rwanda. Rwandan authorities wish the operation to continue offering technical assistance and financial support to the local judiciary but to stop investigating alleged abuses, particularly those by its military in the war against the growing insurgency. The U.S. must make the continuation of monitoring a condition of its support for the Field Operation. It must make clear to all the importance that it attaches to complete and honest investigation of alleged abuses and to the prosecution of those charged with such abuses.

Even as we work on fortifying the political will to act in cases of grave violations of international humanitarian law, we must take care to inform ourselves responsibly on alleged cases of such abuses. When we knew, we did nothing. If now we chose not to know, what is the likelihood that we will act?

The horror of the Rwandan genocide must live on and our sense of responsibility along with it. The lesson of the catastrophe is not just the need to be alert and to intervene whenever genocide threatens but also the importance of prompt, firm action to insist on compliance with international law whenever and wherever lives are threatened.

1. Thomas W. Lipman, "U.S. Troop Withdrawal Ends Frustrating Mission to Save Rwandan Lives," The Washington Post, October 3, 1994.

2. Paul Lewis, "U.N. Forces Shelter Thousands in Rwanda," New York Times, April 11, 1994.

3. Colonel Luc Marchal, "Rapport relatif aux Ops d'évacuation des expatriés (08-19 avr 94) au RWANDA," 05 aout 1994, p. 15.