In 100 days - between April 6 and July 16, 1994 - an estimated 800,000 men, women and children were brutally killed in the obscure African country of Rwanda. The victims - many horrifically hacked to death with machetes - were Tutsi, and moderate Hutus who supported them. One man was tasked by the United Nations with ensuring that peace was maintained in Rwanda - Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire. But unsupported by U.N. headquarters and its Security Council far away in New York, Dallaire and his handful of soldiers were incapable of stopping the genocide. Shake Hands With The Devil is the most powerful documentary produced about the Rwandan genocide. Unflinching. Gut-wrenching. Challenging. Hard-hitting. This is appointment television for viewers throughout the world who care about human rights and international justice.
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Rwanda - Shake Hands With The Devil. Video hosted on Google. One of the 20th century's worst atrocities—the brutal slaughter of approximately 800,000 people in the East African nation of Rwanda in 1994—still demands an accounting. Three years after the genocide ended, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), created by the United Nations (UN), has yet to bring a war criminal to justice. In contrast, the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established in 1993 to try war crimes committed during the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has proceeded relatively smoothly. The ICTY reached its first conviction in May 1997. The ICTR's lack of progress has led many Rwandans to believe that the outside world is more concerned about “ethnic cleansing” in Europe than about mass atrocities in east central Africa. On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down by unknown assailants as his plane approached the Rwandan capital of Kigali. Habyarimana's death triggered a chain of events in which neighbor turned on neighbor and friend upon friend. Murders occurred within families as ethnic Hutu killed their ethnic Tutsi relatives. Many Hutu priests refused asylum to Tutsi fugitives, and some Hutu schoolteachers actually murdered their Tutsi students. Although the violence appeared spontaneous, it was in fact planned. Many reports in Western news media inaccurately described what was happening as a tribal conflict. The true causes lay elsewhere.
The conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi in east central Africa was not new. Nor was it the product of ancient tribal hatreds as was so often reported. The Hutu and Tutsi are not tribes. A tribe is a distinct community with its own language, customs, territory, and religion. Hutu and Tutsi in the nations of Rwanda and Burundi share the same territory, speak the same languages (Kinyarwanda in Rwanda, Kirundi in Burundi), share the same customs, practice the same religion, and frequently intermarry. The real difference between the majority Hutu (who make up between 80 and 85 percent of the population in Rwanda and Burundi) and the minority Tutsi (between 12 and 15 percent in both countries) is sociopolitical.
The aboriginal inhabitants of the area now known as Rwanda were the Twa. Rwanda's Hutu migrated to the region later and were well established by the time the Tutsi arrived in the 1400s. This early precolonial society was hierarchical, with Tutsi serving as the ruling aristocracy. Their status was linked to the ownership of cattle, a symbol of social distinction in many East African societies.
Hutus were not allowed to own cattle unless the cattle were given to them by a Tutsi overlord. The granting of cattle, a ceremonial process called ubuhake in Kinyarwanda, was an essential link between Tutsi social patrons and their Hutu clients. For example, Hutu soldiers who served their Tutsi masters well in war were often rewarded with cattle.
Wars in the region were frequent, but they did not pit Tutsi against Hutu. Rather, they were civil conflicts between high lineage Tutsis who were supported by their Hutu retainers in a system similar to that of medieval Europe. Or they were wars between the kingdom of Rwanda and the neighboring kingdoms of Iweju, Mpororo, Nkore, or Buha, which today are part of Uganda and Tanzania.
Rwanda was first colonized by Germany (from 1894 to 1916) and then by Belgium (from 1916 to 1962). Belgium occupied the region during World War I (1914-1918) and ruled under a mandate from the League of Nations and later the UN. Both Germany and Belgium chose to exercise their rule through Rwanda's existing social system of Tutsi aristocrats and Hutu clients. However, their reasons for doing so created tensions between these groups and helped lay the groundwork for Rwanda's later conflicts.
Using physical characteristics as a guide—the Tutsi were generally tall, thin, and more “European” in their appearance than the shorter, stockier Hutu—the colonizers decided that the Tutsi and the Hutu were two different races. According to the racial theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tutsi, with their more “European” appearance, were deemed the “master race” and received preferential treatment. By 1930 Belgium's Rwandan auxiliaries were almost entirely Tutsi, a status that earned them the durable hatred of the Hutu.
After World War II (1939-1945) many African colonies began moving toward independence. Favored in everything, including education, Rwanda's Tutsi were more keenly aware of the trend toward independence and sought independence from Belgium. In a desperate bid to stave off this demand, the Belgians began supporting the Hutu against the Tutsi, touching off a violent struggle. The fighting began in 1959 and eventually led to independence under a Hutu-dominated government in 1962.
Although the number of people killed and exiled between 1959 and 1962 was tiny compared to 1994, the events of those years caused a great deal of damage to the relationship between Hutu and Tutsi. About 15,000 Tutsis were killed between 1959 and 1962 and about 120,000 fled Rwanda to escape persecution by the new Hutu-led government. Many fled to Burundi, where Tutsi dominated the new independent government, but also to Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania. Some traveled as far as Europe and the United States.
The killings in Rwanda shattered the post-World War II illusion that the world would no longer stand idly by while genocide was openly occurring. Unlike the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia that took the lives of nearly two million people in the 1970s while Cambodia was rigidly closed to the outside world, the atrocities in Rwanda were recorded on nightly television reports. The 1948 International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was shamelessly violated. Several countries, including the United States, carefully refrained from referring to what went on as a “genocide.” The 1948 convention would have obliged them to take action if they had.
The UN also failed to respond, unable to overcome the conflicting concerns of its members. The UN had a force of about 1500 peacekeepers in Rwanda at the time the massacres began, stationed there as part of the 1993 Arusha agreement. These troops did not attempt to halt the genocide because UN members were concerned about becoming enmeshed in the conflict. In fact on April 21, 1994, just as some of the most violent massacres were taking place, the UN Security Council voted to reduce the number of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda.
France was in the worst position of all. The French government had provided military support to the Hutu-led government throughout its war with the RPF. France believed that the Tutsi exiles—some of whom had learned English during their years in Uganda—were bent on destroying French influence in Rwanda with the support of the United Kingdom and the United States. This bizarre view had very little to do with reality. The majority of the exiles spoke little or no English, and they certainly did not take orders from the United Kingdom or the United States. Nevertheless, this belief led French officials to maintain contacts with the genocidal regime and tolerate the worst acts of violence perpetrated by their former clients.
Because of the chaotic nature of the genocide, the total number of people killed has never been systematically assessed, but most experts believe the total was around 800,000 people. This includes about 750,000 Tutsis and approximately 50,000 politically moderate Hutus who did not support the genocide. Many of these killings were carried out by club- and machete-wielding mobs, and their victims often died horribly. Only about 130,000 Tutsis survived the massacres.
In addition to the organized slaughter, there were also thousands of rapes and beatings, and untold psychological damage was done to those who witnessed but escaped the killings. Over 100,000 houses were torn down. Businesses were looted, and other property destroyed. Many of the country's most important citizens were killed or forced to flee, including its most experienced government workers, judges, lawyers, physicians, and many other professionals. These losses continue to haunt Rwanda today in the form of a poor economy, an overwhelmingly backlogged judicial system, and an inexperienced government.
The killings also triggered a new round of fighting between the government and the RPF, which sought to stop the slaughter by ousting the Hutu-led government. As the RPF advanced, its forces killed an estimated 50,000 Hutus considered responsible for the massacres. The Hutu-led government attempted to use these killings to convince the Hutu population that the RPF, which came to power in July 1994, was planning a counter-genocide and that all Hutus should flee the country.
The ousted Hutu government was partially successful. By August 1994 more than two million Hutus (about 30 percent of Rwanda's Hutu population) had fled to Tanzania and what was then Zaire (now renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Many of those responsible for planning and executing the genocide accompanied the refugees, hiding among the mass of innocents. Under the influence of these extremists, the UN-supported refugee camps became hotbeds of subversion and terrorism aimed at the new RPF-led government.
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