"Ghosts of Rwanda," a special two-hour documentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide -- a state-sponsored massacre in which some 800,000 Rwandans were methodically hunted down and murdered by Hutu extremists as the U.S. and international community refused to intervene -- examines the social, political, and diplomatic failures that converged to enable the genocide to occur. "With the perspective of time, the Rwandan crisis can be seen as a crucial test of the international system and its values -- a clash between the ideals of humanitarianism and the cold logic of realism and national interest," says FRONTLINE producer Greg Barker. FRONTLINE marks the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide with a documentary chronicling one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. In addition to interviews with key government officials and diplomats, the two-hour documentary offers eyewitness accounts of the genocide from those who experienced it firsthand. FRONTLINE illustrates the failures that enabled the slaughter of 800,000 people to occur unchallenged by the global community.
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Ghosts of Rwanda. Video hosted on Youtube. The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis by Hutu militia. Over the course of approximately 100 days, from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April up until mid July, at least 500,000 people were killed. Most estimates indicate a death toll between 800,000 and 1,000,000. The genocide was perpetrated by two Hutu militias, the Interahamwe, the militant wing of the MRND, and the Impuzamugambi, the militant wing of the CDR on one side, and the Tutsi rebel group, the RPF, on the other side. The Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime with support from Francophone nations of Africa, as well as France itself, and rebel Tutsi exiles with support from Uganda, after their invasion in 1990, was its catalyst. With outside pressure on the Habyarimana's government, in 1993, the Hutu regime and Tutsi rebels agreed to a cease-fire, and the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords. The diplomatic efforts to end the conflict were at first thought to be successful, yet even with the RPF, the political wing of the RPA, and the government in talks, elites among the Akazu were against any agreement for cooperation between the regime and the rebels to solve the ethnic and economic problems of Rwanda and progress towards a stable nationhood.
A resurgence in the civil war compounded the genocide. The situation proved too "risky" for the United Nations to attempt to help. The invaders successfully brought the country under their sway, although their efforts towards a conclusion to the conflict were brought to a contravention after the UN Forces and the French, under Operation Turquoise, established and maintained a "safe zone" for Hutu refugees to flee to in the southwest. Eventually, after the UN Mandate of the French mission was at an end, millions of refugees left Rwanda, mainly headed to Zaire. The presence of Hutu refugees (see Great Lakes refugee crisis) on the border with Rwanda was the cause for the First and Second Congo Wars with clashes between these groups and the Rwandan government continuing.
The UN's mandate forbids intervening in the internal politics of any country unless the crime of genocide is being committed. France has been accused of aiding the Hutu regime to flee by creating what is known as Operation Turquoise. Canada, Ghana, and the Netherlands provided consistent support for the UN mission under the command of Roméo Dallaire although it was left without an appropriate mandate for the capacity to intervene from the U.N. Security Council. Despite emphatic demands from UNAMIR's commanders in Rwanda, before and throughout the genocide, its requests for authorization to end it were refused and its intervention-capacity was even reduced.
Numerous elite Hutu politicians have been found guilty for the organization of the genocide. Military and Hutu militia groups systematically set out to murder all the Tutsis they could capture, irrespective of their age or sex, as well as the political moderates. The western nations evacuated their nationals from Kigali and abandoned their embassies in the initial stages of the violence. National radio, with the exacerbation of the situation, advised people to stay in their homes, and the Hutu power station RTLM broadcast vitriolic propaganda against Tutsis and Hutu moderates. Hundreds of roadblocks were put up by the militia around the country. Lieutenant-General Dallaire and UNAMIR were in Kigali, escorting Tutsis, and were unable to stop the Hutus from escalating their attacks. During this time, the Hutus also targeted Lieutenant-General Dallaire, and UNAMIR personnel through the RTLM.
 The killing was quickly implemented throughout most of the country. The first to organize killings on the scale characterizing a genocide was the mayor of the northwestern town of Gisenyi, who on the evening of April 6th called a meeting to distribute arms and send out militias to kill Tutsis. Gisenyi was a center of anti-Tutsi sentiment, both as the homeland of the akazu and as the refuge for thousands of people displaced by the rebel occupation of large areas in the south. While killing occurred in other towns immediately after Habyarimana's assassination, it took several days for them to become organized on the scale of Gisenyi. The major exception to this pattern was in Butare Province. In Butare, Jean-Baptiste Habyarimana was the only Tutsi prefect and the province was the only one dominated by an opposition party. Prefect Habyarimana opposed the genocide, resulting in the province becoming a haven of relative calm, until he was arrested and killed on April 19th. Finding the population of Butare lacking in enthusiasm for the killing, the government sent in militia members from Kigali and armed and mobilized the large population of Burundian refugees in the province, who had fled the Tutsi-dominated army fighting in the Burundian Civil War.
Most of the victims were killed in their villages or in towns, often by their neighbors and fellow villagers. The militia members typically murdered their victims by hacking them with machetes, although some army units used rifles. The victims were often found hiding in churches and school buildings, where Hutu gangs massacred them. Ordinary citizens were called on by local officials and government-sponsored radio to kill their neighbors, and those who refused to kill were often killed themselves. "Either you took part in the massacres or you were massacred yourself." One such massacre occurred at Nyarubuye. On April 12, 1994, more than 1,500 Tutsis sought refuge in a Catholic church in Nyange, in then Kivumu commune. Local Interahamwe acting in concert with the priest and other local authorities then used bulldozers to knock down the church building. People who tried to escape were hacked down with machetes or shot. Local priest Athanase Seromba was later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison by the ICTR for his role in the demolition of his church and convicted of the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity. In another case, thousands sought refuge in Ecole Technique Officielle school in Kigali where Belgian UNAMIR soldiers were stationed. However, on April 11, 1994, Belgian soldiers withdrew from the school and members of the Rwandan armed forces and militia killed all the Tutsis who were hiding there. There is no consensus on the number of dead between April 6 and mid-July. Unlike the genocides carried out by the Nazis or by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, authorities made no attempts to record deaths. The RPF government has stated that 1,071,000 were killed, 10% of whom were Hutu. Philip Gourevitch agrees with an estimate of one million, while the United Nations lists the toll as 800,000. Alex de Waal and Rakiya Omar of African Rights estimates the number as "around 750,000," while Allison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch states that it was "at least 500,000." James Smith of Aegis Trust notes, "What's important to remember is that there was a genocide. There was an attempt to eliminate Tutsis — men, women, and children — and to erase any memory of their existence."
From: PBS.org
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