The Rwandan Slaughter
It took 100 days for ethnic Hutu extremists to slaughter more than 800,000 people in Rwanda. In 1994, they targeted members of the minority Tutsi tribe as well as moderate Hutus due to their political stance. Shockingly, the genocide had a faster pace than the Nazi Holocaust. Despite the obvious atrocities, the international community remained relatively silent. The UN peacekeepers and Belgian forces present in the country to regulate the political conflict pulled out after the first casualties. The United States government decided not to intervene prioritizing national interests over the violence in Africa. Europe tried to justify the indifference in the face of genocide by claiming ignorance of the actual numbers of those affected. Religious leaders seemed strangely reserved as Hutus repeatedly committed one of the most heinous sins known to man.
To understand why the ethnic cleansing carried out by extremist Hutus has been so vicious, it is crucial to restoring the chronological order of events leading up to April of 1994. The majority of Rwandans are Hutus even though the Tutsi monarchy has dominated the country for a long time. In 1959, Hutus overthrew the Tutsi tribe, which led to thousands of Tutsis fleeing to neighboring African countries. A small group of exiles then organized a group of rebels known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). They invaded Rwanda in 1990 and continued fighting until 1993 when the peace treaty was finally agreed. On 6 April 1994, the plane carrying then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, was shot down, killing him and everyone else on board. Extremists blamed Tutsis and justified the slaughter campaign that followed as revenge. The RPF argued that Hutus themselves killed the President to have an excuse for the genocide and to get rid of their political opponents (moderates). Ghosts of Rwanda tells the stories of those involved in the tragic events of 1994, creating a collective narrative that highlights the failure of the international community to stop crimes against humanity committed by Hutus.
Despite the lack of artillery, Hutu militias carried out the killings at an exceptionally high pace. The Hutu extremists handed out lists of government opponents to armed militias who then murder them along with their entire families. They also set up roadblocks to check the IDs of anyone trying to leave. At the time, ID cards in Rwanda required one’s ethnic origin on them. The Hutu extremists set up a radio station circulating propaganda, which also included “cartoons of Tutsis killing Hutus began appearing in magazines, along with warnings that all Tutsis were RPF spies bent on dragging the country back to the days” of Tutsi domination. As a result, in a matter of weeks, armed gangs killed hundreds of thousands of people, often keeping women as sex slaves.
Indifference Explained
There are a number of explanations as to why no one intervened and tried to stop the genocide happening in Rwanda. Firstly, the UN representatives as well as the US officials claimed that they simply did not know about the scale of the violence taking place in Rwanda. This version has been rebuked by multiple sources, including General Romeo Dallaire, “then a major general in the Canadian army who at the time of the genocide was the commander of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda”. In the documentary, he revealed that the United Nations had enough intelligence even in 1993 to contribute to the efforts to prevent the genocide. There is no denying that the events in Rwanda have not lacked monitoring. There were UN peacekeepers there, who managed to gather enough intelligence to transmit it to their superiors.
The second possible reason is the misinterpretation of the events in Rwanda as civil war. The United Nations were never created to infringe upon states’ right to self-determination. Therefore, the genocide in Rwanda could be seen as two groups fighting for autonomy, which had nothing to do with Europe or America. The only states that had the authority to intervene were neighboring countries (Uganda, Tanzania, Zaire, etc.), but they chose to remain indifferent due to internal conflicts and the lack of military power. This meant that the UN had to act as “the global nine-one-one” even though the organization already supplied more than 70,000 peacekeepers to seventeen missions worldwide.
The third reason eliminates all the aforementioned ‘excuses’ and claims that the international community has tried to protect its own interest. The United States’ failure in Somalia led to the administration’s fear of criticism. The country no longer wanted to intervene in foreign conflicts in order to save American soldiers and avoid unnecessary international pressure to act as the ‘peacekeeper’ moving forward. In addition, the US had already owed millions to the UN “half a billion dollars in UN dues and peacekeeping costs”. The international community simply disregarded the criminalization of genocide and decided to protect national interest, while hiding under the umbrella of ignorance.
The Role of the Media
It is hard to evaluate the blame of each and every state and IGO that decided to take the route of non-intervention. When it comes to human lives, even a hundred Tutsi killed should have already been considered a disaster. However, it is important to note the role media played in the Rwandan genocide. It is evident that newspapers around the world have been more concerned with the conflict in Yugoslavia. Even though governments kept denying they had any information about the slaughter in Rwanda, television networks and other media outlets had enough resources to become the most influential actors on the global scene. The media’s disregard for the atrocities in Rwanda partially shaped the international policy. In turn, as soon as CNN and European media giants started to focus on Rwanda, Hutus began to back down and France decided to intervene. This demonstrates that the international community had the means to stop the killings of Tutsis and moderate Hutus, but made a choice to remain indifferent.
The Responsibility to Protect
The foundation argument of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is that if states fail to protect their own citizens, other states can intervene and use military force in order to stop mass violations of human rights. In theory, it seems like a great initiative, but selectivity and institutionalization associated with it lead to R2P’s ultimate failure as an international policy. The main issue with the Responsibility to Protect is various contradictions regarding the role of national rights to sovereignty compared to the rights of individuals to protection (Paris). The Security Council is the only organ, which can decide whether an intervention should be undertaken. This implies the rights of the veto of P-5 members. Therefore, the universal human rights principles established by the R2P are subordinate to the notion of sovereignty – particularly to rights of P-5 states. In the case of Libya, the United States justified the air campaign using the R2P. As for Syria, Russia managed to control the narrative by publicly protecting the country’s right to self-determination.
In conclusion, it is evident that genocides are going to be stopped as long as one of the powerful states has a political interest in overthrowing an existing regime. They will not, however, be ceased if an influential state (or a number of them) are indifferent or object to the political changes resulting from a military intervention. Politics and self-interest are a main motivator, despite the noble nature of R2P.
The Role of the Church
Despite some efforts from NGOs and a number of religious organizations, the global response to the events in Rwanda, Syria, and Darfur has been slow and ineffective. It is apparent that non-state actors often have limited access to information. Therefore, such organizations need to rely on media, which can become a source of subjective information rather than actual truth. In addition, media outlets are still a business, which means that they rely on consumer interests when distributing news. As for the church, there were some scattered efforts from small religious organizations in Syria and Darfur. However, in order to make a difference, there had to be an organized initiative led by Vatican itself.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church remains an institution, which is characterized by bureaucracy and self-interest. An example of that would be the fact that Europe protected dozens of religious leaders, who participated in the Rwandan genocide. France sheltered “Father Athanase Seromba who ordered the bulldozing of his church with 2,000 Tutsis inside and had the survivors shot.” Nuns and priests convicted by Belgian courts for their direct participation in the killings enjoyed refuge in Catholic churches across Europe.
Bibliography
Epstein, Helen C. “America’s Secret role in the Rwandan Genocide.”The Guardian, 2017. Web.
Kimani, Martin. “For Rwandans, the Pope’s Apology Must Be Unbearable.” 2010. Web.
Merkel, Bernard-Alexandre. “The Rwandan Genocide: The Guilty Bystanders.”E-International Relations, 2010. Web.
Mingst, Karen, Heather Elko McKibben, and Ivan Arreguín-Toft. Essentials of International Relations. 8th ed. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Paris, Roland. “Is It Possible to Meet the ‘Responsibility to Protect’?” The Washington Post, 2014. Web.
Power, Samantha. “Bystanders to Genocide.” The Atlantic, 2001. Web.