THE ARMING OF RWANDA, AND THE GENOCIDE

Abstract

authors, Barabara Harff and Ted Gurr state that the World War II holocaust should have enlightened the world as to what ethnic and religious hatred can do when used by unscrupulous leaders armed with exclusionary ideologies. They point out that many people hoped that with the end of colonialism, Africa could look forward to a better world in which nation-states would guarantee and protect the basic freedoms of their peoples. Harff and Gurr pose a question: when the United Nations came into existence, were we wrong to believe that a new world order would emerge, one in which minimum standards of global justice would be observed and violators punished? Is it still possible that a civil society will emerge in which citizens eschew narrow ethnic interests in favour of global issues? While the authors’ concerns are legitimate, it is true, as they later acknowledge, that some progress has been made to check ethnic wars since the mid-1990s. However, the world badly needs more innovative ideas about how to fight these scourges, which continue to plague mankind. Article I of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 requires that state parties consider genocide a crime, which they undertake to prevent and punish. This includes conspiracy to commit genocide, attempts to commit genocide, and direct public incitement to commit genocide. Rwanda acceded to the Convention in 1975.2 It has been said many times that the murder of close to one million people in Rwanda was preventable.3 Certainly the onslaught that began in Rwanda in 1994 could have been abated if serious measures had been put in place early enough. Much of the blame for the genocide that followed has been ascribed to the international community’s failure to intervene. However, many of the contributing factors have yet to be explored. For example, the question of how weapons reached the hands of the perpetrators remains unanswered. Who provided the missiles that shot down the plane carrying the then presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, on 6 April 1994? As Rwanda commemorates the ten-year anniversary of the 100 days of atrocities that followed, mystery still surrounds the identity and motivations of the instigators of that human catastrophe. The Arusha Peace Accords, which were signed on 4 August 1993, raised hopes that an end to the three-year war between the government and the then rebel forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) was in sight. THE ARMING OF RWANDA, AND THE GENOCIDE