# Hutu regime in Rwanda

Part of a series on the :
History of Rwanda :
| Kingdom | ?–1962 |
| German East Africa | 1885–1919 |
| Rumanura famine | 1916–1918 |
| Belgian mandate (Ruanda-Urundi) | 1922–1962 |
| Revolution | 1959–1962 |
| Coup of Gitarama | 1961 |
| Republic of Rwanda | 1962–present |
| Bugesera invasion | 1963 |
| Coup d'état of 5 July | 1973 |
| Civil War | 1990–1994 |
| Genocide | 1993–1994 |
| First Congo War | 1996–1997 |
| Second Congo War | 1998–2003 |
| COVID-19 pandemic | 2020–present |
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the Rwandese Republic, was the official name of the Rwandan state during 1994, under a Hutu-dominated totalitarian regime.
During this period, Extremist Hutu militants like the Interahamwe killed 800,000 to 1,000,000 lives in what would be known as the Rwandan genocide. The killings ended when the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front conquered Rwanda and toppled the Hutu government, and thousands of Hutu were imprisoned pending the establishment of the Gacaca courts.

## Background

Initially, Habyarimana abolished the quota system, winning him favour among Tutsi. However, this didn't last. In 1974, a public outcry developed over Tutsi over-representation in professional fields such as medicine and education. Thousands of Tutsi were forced to resign from such positions, and many were forced into exile. In associated violence, several hundred Tutsi were killed. Gradually, Habyarimana reimposed many of his predecessor's policies favouring Hutu over Tutsi.
In 1975, President Habyarimana formed the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND) whose goals were to promote peace, unity, and national development. The movement was organized from the "hillside" to the national level and included elected and appointed officials.
Under MRND aegis, a new constitution making the country a totalitarian one-party state under the MRND was approved in a referendum in December 1978. These were shortly followed by presidential elections a few weeks later. Habyarimana, as president of the MRND, was the only candidate on the ballot. He was re-elected in 1983 and again in 1988, each time as sole candidate. However, in a minor concession to democracy, voters were given a choice of two MRND candidates in elections to the National Development Council of Rwanda. Responding to public pressure for political reform, President Habyarimana announced in July 1990 his intention to transform Rwanda's one-party state into a multi-party democracy.

## Civil war

Many exiled refugee Rwandan Tutsis in Uganda had joined the rebel forces of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in the Ugandan Bush War and had then become part of the Ugandan military upon the rebel victory in 1986. Among these were Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, who rose to prominence in the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Rwandan rebel group largely consisting of Tutsi veterans of the Ugandan war. On October 1, 1990, the RPF invaded Rwanda from their base in neighboring Uganda. The rebel force, composed primarily of ethnic Tutsis, blamed the government for failing to democratize and resolve the problems of some 500,000 Tutsi refugees living in diaspora around the world.
The Tutsi diaspora miscalculated the reaction of its invasion of Rwanda. Though the Tutsi objective seemed to be to pressure the Rwandan government into making concessions, the invasion was seen as an attempt to bring the Tutsi ethnic group back into power. The effect was to increase ethnic tensions to a level higher than they had ever been. Nevertheless, after 3 years of fighting and multiple prior "cease-fires," the government and the RPF signed a "final" cease-fire agreement in August 1993, known as the Arusha Accords, in order to form a power sharing government, a plan which immediately ran into problems.
The situation worsened when the first elected Burundian president, Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was assassinated by the Burundian Tutsi-dominated army in October 1993. In Burundi, a fierce civil war then erupted between Tutsi and Hutu following the army's massacre. This conflict spilled over the border into Rwanda and destabilized the fragile Rwandan accords. Tutsi-Hutu tensions rapidly intensified. Although the UN sent a peacekeeping force named the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), it was underfunded, under-staffed, and largely ineffective in the face of a two country civil-war. The UN denied Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire's request for additional troops and changes to the rules of engagement to prevent the coming genocide.

## 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, the President of Rwanda, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu President of Burundi, was shot down as it prepared to land at Kigali. Both presidents were killed when the plane crashed.
Opposition politicians based in Kigali were killed on the first day of the genocide. and the city then became the setting for fierce fighting between the army and the RPF including at the latter's base.
Military and militia groups began rounding up and killing Tutsis en masse, as well as political moderates irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds. The killing swiftly spread from Kigali to all corners of the country; between April 6 and the beginning of July, a genocide of unprecedented swiftness left between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis (800,000 is a commonly noted number) and moderate Hutus dead at the hands of organized bands of militia (Interahamwe). Even ordinary citizens were called on by local officials to kill their neighboring Tutsis who were called Inyenzi (cockroaches) by the local radio stations inciting fear and hatred. The president's MRND Party was implicated in organizing many aspects of the genocide. The Hutu genocidaires were abetted by the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines broadcasting hate speech advocating violence against Tutsis. It broadcast at the same time as Radio Muhabura broadcast from Uganda, sponsored by the RPF and their Ugandan allies.
The RPF renewed its civil war against the Rwanda Hutu government when it received word that the genocidal massacres had begun. Its leader Paul Kagame directed RPF forces in neighboring countries such as Uganda and Tanzania to invade the country, but here, Paul Kagame did not direct RPF Forces from neighboring countries because RPF was already in Rwanda for three years and half battling the Hutu forces and Interahamwe militias who were committing the massacres. The resulting civil war raged concurrently with the genocide for two months. The Tutsi-led RPF continued to advance on the capital, and soon occupied the northern, eastern, and southern parts of the country by June. Thousands of additional civilians were killed in the conflict. UN member states refused to answer UNAMIR's requests for increased troops and money. The remaining part of the country not under RPF control was occupied by France in Operation Turquoise. While the French operation did prevent mass killings it has been alleged that the deployment of French troops was intended to allow the Hutu militias to escape, and that the slaughter of Tutsis continued in the French controlled area.

## Fall of the Hutu regime and RPF victory

On 7 April, as the genocide started, RPF commander Paul Kagame warned the crisis committee and UNAMIR that he would resume the civil war if the killing did not stop. The next day, Rwandan government forces attacked the national parliament building from several directions, but RPF troops stationed there successfully fought back. The RPF then began an attack from the north on three fronts, seeking to link up quickly with the isolated troops in Kigali. Kagame refused to talk to the interim government, believing that it was just a cover for Bagosora's rule and not committed to ending the genocide. Over the next few days, the RPF advanced steadily south, capturing Gabiro and large areas of the countryside to the north and east of Kigali. They avoided attacking the capital city Kigali or Byumba, but conducted manoeuvres designed to encircle the cities and cut off supply routes. The RPF also allowed Tutsi refugees from Uganda to settle behind the front line in the RPF controlled areas.
Throughout April, there were numerous attempts by UNAMIR to establish a ceasefire, but Kagame insisted each time that the RPF would not stop fighting unless the killings stopped. In late April, the RPF secured the whole of the Tanzanian border area and began to move west from Kibungo, to the south of Kigali. They encountered little resistance, except around Kigali and Ruhengeri. By 16 May, they had cut the road between Kigali and Gitarama, the temporary home of the interim government, and by 13 June, had taken Gitarama itself, following an unsuccessful attempt by the Rwandan government forces to reopen the road; the interim government was forced to relocate to Gisenyi in the far north west. As well as fighting the war, Kagame was recruiting heavily to expand the army. The new recruits included Tutsi survivors of the genocide and refugees from Burundi, but were less well trained and disciplined than the earlier recruits.
Having completed the encirclement of Kigali, the RPF spent the latter half of June fighting for the city itself. The government forces had superior manpower and weapons, but the RPF steadily gained territory as well as conducting raids to rescue civilians from behind enemy lines. According to Dallaire, this success was due to Kagame's being a "master of psychological warfare"; he exploited the fact that the government forces were concentrating on the genocide rather than the fight for Kigali, and capitalised on the government's loss of morale as it lost territory. The RPF finally defeated the Rwandan government forces in Kigali on 4 July, and on 18 July took Gisenyi and the rest of the northwest, forcing the interim government to flee into Zaire and finally ending the genocide. At the end of July 1994, Kagame's forces held the whole of Rwanda except for the zone in the south-west which had been occupied by a French-led United Nations force as part of Opération Turquoise.
The Liberation Day for Rwanda would come to be marked as 4 July and is commemorated as a public holiday.

### Killings by the Rwandan Patriotic Front

During the genocide and in the months following the RPF victory, RPF soldiers killed many people, although the number of casualties is disputed. Alison Des Forges was one of the first researchers to conclude that RPF committed atrocities in a systematic fashion that were directed by officers with a high level of authority. She estimated that RPF killed around 30,000 people considered enemies of the Tutsi. Some witnesses blamed Kagame himself for ordering killings. After ICTR investigators reportedly discovered two layers of bodies in a mass grave in Kibuye in early 1996—one of Tutsi victims of the genocide and another left by RPF killings of Hutu civilians—further forensic investigations were prohibited by the Rwandan government. French scholar André Guichaoua charged the post-genocide government with deliberate destruction of evidence regarding killings of Hutu in order to avoid prosecution by the ICTR. Some critics have suggested that these crimes should have been prosecuted by the ICTR, or even amounted to genocide under international law. In contrast, the post-genocide regime maintains that killings by RPF soldiers were perpetrated by undisciplined recruits seeking revenge and that all such transgressions were promptly punished.
The first rumours of RPF killings emerged after 250,000 mostly Hutu refugees streamed into Tanzania at the border crossing of Rusumo on 28 April 1994. The refugees had fled before the Tutsi rebels arrived because they believed the RPF were committing atrocities. A spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) observed that "There's a lot of propaganda by the Government radio aimed at the Hutu" which "makes them feel very anti-Tutsi." After the RPF took control of the border crossing at Rusumo on 30 April, refugees continued to cross the Kagera River, ending up in remote areas of Tanzania. In early May, the UNHCR began hearing concrete accounts of atrocities and made this information public on 17 May.
After the RPF took power in Rwanda, UNHCR sent a team led by Robert Gersony to investigate the prospects for a speedy return of the nearly two million refugees that had fled Rwanda since April. After interviewing 300 people, Gersony concluded that "clearly systematic murders and persecution of the Hutu population in certain parts of the country" had taken place. Gersony's findings were suppressed by the United Nations. The Gersony Report did not technically exist because Gersony did not complete it, but a summary of an oral presentation of his findings was leaked in 2010. Gersony's personal conclusion was that between April and August 1994, the RPF had killed "between 25,000 and 45,000 persons, between 5,000 and 10,000 persons each month from April through July and 5,000 for the month of August." The new authorities categorically denied the allegations of Gersony, details of which leaked to the press. According to an RPA officer, "There was not time to do proper screening. ... We needed a force, and some of those recruited were thieves and criminals. Those people have been responsible for much of our trouble today." In an interview with journalist Stephen Kinzer, Kagame acknowledged that killings had occurred but stated that they were carried out by rogue soldiers and had been impossible to control.
The RPF killings gained international attention with the 1995 Kibeho massacre, in which soldiers opened fire on a camp for internally displaced persons in Butare prefecture. Australian soldiers serving as part of UNAMIR estimated at least 4,000 people were killed, while the Rwandan government claimed that the death toll was 338.

## Foreign relations

France actively supported the Hutu-led regime against the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front. France provided arms and military training to Habyarimana's militias, the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, which were among the government's primary means of operationalizing the genocide.
Near the end of the 100-day genocide, French troops were deployed to establish the Turquoise Zone, largely preventing further waves of genocide within the purported safe zone. In practice, the zone enabled many genocidal Hutus to safely escape to Zaire in advance of the victorious RPF soldiers. The facts related to the French role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi have formed the focus of ongoing debate, and diplomatic relations between France and Rwanda have frequently been strained since 1994.

## Legacy

The genocide would lead to life expectancy in Rwanda dropping to 14.10 years. To this day large Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi populations continue to live as refugees throughout the region.

### Refugee crisis, insurgency, and two Congo Wars

Following the RPF victory, approximately two million Hutu fled to refugee camps in neighbouring countries, particularly Zaire, fearing RPF reprisals for the Rwandan genocide. The camps were crowded and squalid, and thousands of refugees died in disease epidemics, including cholera and dysentery. The camps were set up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but were effectively controlled by the army and government of the former Hutu regime, including many leaders of the genocide, who began rearming in a bid to return to power in Rwanda.
By late 1996, Hutu militants from the camps were launching regular cross-border incursions, and the RPF-led Rwandan government launched a counteroffensive. Rwanda provided troops and military training to the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi group in the Zairian South Kivu province, helping them to defeat Zairian security forces. Rwandan forces, the Banyamulenge, and other Zairian Tutsi, then attacked the refugee camps, targeting the Hutu militia. These attacks caused hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee; many returned to Rwanda despite the presence of the RPF, while others ventured further west into Zaire. The refugees fleeing further into Zaire were relentlessly pursued by the RPA under the cover of the AFDL rebellion and 232,000 Hutu refugees were killed, according to one estimate. The defeated forces of the former regime continued a cross-border insurgency campaign, supported initially by the predominantly Hutu population of Rwanda's northwestern prefectures. By 1999, a programme of propaganda and Hutu integration into the national army succeeded in bringing the Hutu to the government side and the insurgency was defeated.
In addition to dismantling the refugee camps, Kagame began planning a war to remove long-time dictator Mobutu Sese Seko from power. Mobutu had supported the genocidaires based in the camps, and was also accused of allowing attacks on Tutsi people within Zaire. Together with Uganda, the Rwandan government supported an alliance of four rebel groups headed by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, which began waging the First Congo War in 1996. The rebels quickly took control of the North and South Kivu provinces and later advanced west, gaining territory from the poorly organised and demotivated Zairian army with little fighting, and controlling the whole country by 1997. Mobutu fled into exile, and Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rwanda fell out with the new Congolese government in 1998, and Kagame supported a fresh rebellion, leading to the Second Congo War, which would last up until 2003 and caused millions of deaths and massive damage. In 2010, a United Nations (UN) report accused the Rwandan army of committing wide-scale human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the Congo during those wars, charges denied by the Rwandan government.

### Domestic situation

The infrastructure and economy of the country had suffered greatly during the genocide. Many buildings were uninhabitable, and the former regime had carried with them all currency and moveable assets when they fled the country. Human resources were also severely depleted, with over 40% of the population having been killed or fled. Many of the remainder were traumatised: most had lost relatives, witnessed killings or participated in the genocide. The long-term effects of war rape in Rwanda for the victims include social isolation, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and babies, with some women resorting to self-induced abortions. The army, led by Paul Kagame, maintained law and order while the government began the work of rebuilding the country's structures.
Non-governmental organisations began to move back into the country, but the international community did not provide significant assistance to the new government, and most international aid was routed to the refugee camps which had formed in Zaire following the exodus of Hutu from Rwanda. Kagame strove to portray the new government as inclusive and not Tutsi-dominated. He directed the removal of ethnicity from Rwandan citizens' national identity cards, and the government began a policy of downplaying the distinctions between Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa.

### Justice system after genocide

The systematic destruction of the judicial system during the genocide and civil war was a major problem. After the genocide, over one million people (nearly one-fifth of the population remaining after the summer of 1994) were potentially culpable for a role in the genocide. The RPF pursued a policy of mass arrests for those responsible and for those persons who took part in the genocide, jailing over 100,000 people in the two years after the genocide. The pace of arrests overwhelmed the physical capacity of the Rwandan prison system, leading to what Amnesty International deemed "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". The country's 19 prisons were designed to hold about 18,000 inmates total, but at their peak in 1998 there were over 100,000 people in crowded detention facilities across the country.
Government institutions, including judicial courts, were destroyed, and many judges, prosecutors, and employees were murdered during the genocide. Of Rwanda's 750 judges, 506 did not remain after the genocide—many were murdered and most of the survivors fled Rwanda. By 1997, Rwanda only had 50 lawyers in its judicial system. These barriers caused the trials to proceed very slowly: with 130,000 suspects held in Rwandan prisons after the genocide, 3,343 cases were handled between 1996 and the end of 2000. Of those defendants, 20% received death sentences, 32% received life in prison, and 20% were acquitted. It was calculated that it would take over 200 years to conduct the trials of the suspects in prison—not including the ones who remained at large.
The RPF government began the long-awaited genocide trials, which had an uncertain start at the end of 1996 and inched forward in 1997. It was not until 1996 that courts finally began trials for genocide cases with the enactment of Organic Law No. 08/96 of 30 on 30 August 1996. This law initiated the prosecution of genocide crimes committed during the genocide and of crimes against humanity from October 1990. This law established the regular domestic courts as the core mechanism for responding to genocide until it was amended in 2001 to include the Gacaca courts. The Organic Law established four categories for those who were involved in the genocide, specifying the limits of punishment for members of each category. The first category was reserved those who were "planners, organizers, instigators, supervisors and leaders" of the genocide and any who used positions of state authority to promote the genocide. This category also applied to murderers who distinguished themselves on the basis of their zeal or cruelty, or who engaged in sexual torture. Members of this first category were eligible for the death sentence.
While Rwanda had the death penalty prior to the 1996 Organic law, in practice no executions had taken place since 1982. Twenty-two individuals, including Froduald Karamira, were executed by firing squad in public executions in April 1998. After this, Rwanda conducted no further executions, albeit it continued to issue death sentences until 2003. On 25 July 2007 the Organic Law Relating to the Abolition of the Death Penalty came into law, abolishing capital punishment and converting all existing death sentences to life in prison under solitary confinement. In parallel, the 2007 UN resolution presented and campaigns continued for a global moratorium on capital punishment.

### Gacaca courts

In response to the overwhelming number of potentially culpable individuals and the slow pace of the traditional judicial system, the government of Rwanda passed Organic Law No. 40/2000 in 2001. This law established Gacaca Courts at all administrative levels of Rwanda and in Kigali. It was mainly created to lessen the burden on normal courts and provide assistance in the justice system to run trials for those already in prison. The least severe cases, according to the terms of Organic Law No. 08/96 of 30, would be handled by these Gacaca Courts. With this law, the government began implementing a participatory justice system, known as Gacaca, in order to address the enormous backlog of cases. The Gacaca court system traditionally dealt with conflicts within communities, but it was adapted to deal with genocide crimes. Among the principal objectives of the courts were identification of the truth about what happened during the genocide, speeding up the process of trying genocide suspects, national unity and reconciliation, and demonstrating the capacity of the Rwandan people to resolve their own problems.
The Gacaca court system faced many controversies and challenges; they were accused of being puppets of the RPF-dominated government. The judges (known as Inyangamugayo, which means "those who detest dishonesty" in Kinyarwanda) who preside over the genocide trials were elected by the public. After election, the judges received training, but there was concern that the training was not adequate for serious legal questions or complex proceedings. Furthermore, many judges resigned after facing accusations of participating in the genocide; 27% of them were so accused. There was also a lack of defense counsel and protections for the accused, who were denied the right to appeal to ordinary courts. Most trials were open to the public, but there were issues with witness intimidation. The Gacaca courts did not try those responsible for massacres of Hutu civilians committed by members of the RPF, which controlled the Gacaca Court system.
On 18 June 2012, the Gacaca court system was officially closed after facing criticism. It is estimated that the Gacaca court system tried 1,958,634 cases during its lifetime and that 1,003,227 persons stood trial.

### International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Meanwhile, the UN established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania. The UN Tribunal tried high-level members of the government and armed forces, while Rwanda prosecuted lower-level leaders and local people.
Since the ICTR was established as an ad hoc international jurisdiction, the ICTR was scheduled to close by the end of 2014.