How genocide ideology was built, spread and executed

Newsstands in Kigali, in December 1990, bore startling evidence of the anti-Tutsi animus that had been increasingly pervading local public discourse since the liberation war, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), began two months earlier. ALSO READ: Habyarimana's role in planning, implementing 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi According to the Muse Report, a four‑year investigation – activated in 2017 and carried out by U.S. law firm Levy Firestone Muse – into the role of the French government in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the December 1990 issue of Kangura, a bimonthly newspaper whose name, in Kinyarwanda, meant “Wake Them Up,” featured a noxious and soon-to-be-notorious manifesto under the heading, “Ten Commandments of the Bahutu.” ALSO READ: Kangura's 8th Hutu commandment re-examined As reported, published in French, the “Ten Commandments” admonished Hutu, on threat of being “deemed a traitor,” to avoid consorting with Tutsi women; to know that “all Tutsis are dishonest in their business dealings” and “are only seeking ethnic supremacy”; and to reserve armed forces membership, and dominance in politics and education, for Hutu. ALSO READ: Ngeze and his role in inciting the 1994 Genocide This “ideology must be taught to Hutus at all levels,” the commandments concluded. “Hutus must cease having any pity for the Tutsi.” “Founded in May 1990, Kangura was privately run—it was the brainchild of journalist Hassan Ngeze (later convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, or ICTR, for, among other things, inciting the Genocide through Kangura)—but it also benefited from close ties to some of the Habyarimana era’s most powerful state officials,” reads the Muse Report. ALSO READ: Eradicating genocide ideology is more urgent than ever ICTR prosecutors presented evidence suggesting that financial support for Kangura came from the government, and more specifically from individuals who played a central role in the genocide in which more than one million Tutsi were massacred in 100 days, between April and July 1994. ALSO READ: How Rwanda’s clans were erased and replaced with ethnic division The foundations of genocide ideology in Rwanda were laid through a deliberate process of artificial racialization, in which a historically cohesive society was rigidly divided along fabricated ethnic lines, according to genocide researcher Tom Ndahiro. Colonial authorities, Ndahiro explained, working closely with influential segments of the Catholic Church, institutionalized these divisions through administrative practices and ideological indoctrination, “turning difference into a political weapon.” ALSO READ: A historical timeline of Belgium's divisive politics in Rwanda Ndahiro adds: “The creation of PARMEHUTU marked a decisive turning point, transforming ethnic identity into a tool of exclusion and persecution. “What followed was not a break from injustice but its entrenchment, as anti-Tutsi ideology became embedded in governance and society.” Founded in 1957 by Rwanda’s first president Grégoire Kayibanda, the Parti du Mouvement et de l’Émancipation Hutu [Party of the Movement and of Hutu Emancipation] (PARMEHUTU), was a political party with a virulent anti-Tutsi ideology. “By 1994, the Genocide against the Tutsi was not an isolated case in abstraction, but the culmination of decades of cultivated hatred. Sort of a cancer that had steadily metastasized into the most horrific and efficient genocide in world history,” Ndahiro said. ‘Criminal elite was used to infiltrate institutions of state’ British investigative journalist Linda Melvern who has extensively researched and written on the circumstances of the 1994 genocide explained how “a criminal network was created by the ruthless cabal” around former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and his wife, Agathe Kanziga; the family corrupting and intimidating public officials -- the clergy, lawyers, army officers, bankers, and politicians. ALSO READ: Why the Agathe Kanziga genocide dossier matters She said: “This criminal elite was used to infiltrate and plunder the institutions of state. With terror as a political tactic the whole of society was enmeshed. Murder squads dealt with opponents. “When threatened with the loss of power this same criminal gang used these same state institutions to plan a genocide. A key element was a propaganda machine to broadcast incitement to murder, to spread an absurd racist ideology defining Tutsi victims outside human existence – vermin and subhuman – producing a torrent of odious and vile disinformation.” ALSO READ: Early release of genocide criminals one more betrayal Melvern, the author of three books on Rwanda; A People Betrayed, Conspiracy to Murder, and Intent to Deceive, explained that the same criminal gang moulded the unemployed into an army of brutes and killers trained to kill at speed. ALSO READ: Killing many in a short period; how civilians were prepared for the Genocide “They tested various techniques to kill large numbers of people quickly and efficiently, using local leadership and administrative officials,” Melvern said. “The genocide against the Tutsi was the result of a joint criminal enterprise, a co-ordinated plan of action. The core group that planned, instigated, financed, ordered and aided and abetted the extermination has been estimated at 240 people. Their names are known.” ALSO READ: Rwanda’s commemorations in the shadow of indifference More than three decades later, however, the threat of genocide ideology persists especially in eastern DR Congo where the remnants of the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide were given a safe haven and continue to plan to complete the extermination of the Tutsi. ‘FDLR is no ordinary armed group. It is a genocidal force’ In 2023, Bernard Maingain, a Belgian lawyer who has, for several years, condemned the anti-Tutsi hate speeches in eastern DR Congo, stressed that it is under the impulse of these the genocidaires who managed to stay in the country and mingle with the population that the ideology is propagated while in Europe their relays speak of human rights being flouted. ALSO READ: Why genocide ideology doesn’t dissolve three decades after dispersion of genocidaires When the Rwanda Patriotic Army stopped the genocide against the Tutsi, in July 1994, the ousted genocidal regime’s army (ex-FAR), politicians, and Interahamwe militia that committed genocide – fled, en masse, with their weapons, to eastern DR Congo, then known as Zaire. They later banded together into what they called the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALIR). In 2000, after the US government listed it as a terrorist organization following its murder of American tourists in Uganda’s Bwindi forest, they formed FDLR so as to evade or distance themselves from their horrendous crimes. Today, backed by Kinshasa, the genocidal forces continue to wreak havoc, especially as they seek to wipe out the Congolese Tutsi community in eastern DR Congo, as well as invade Rwanda. ALSO READ: FDLR links to Habyarimana's son raise regional security concerns - report During a March 26 Security Council briefing, in New York, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative, Amb. Martin Ngoga, reiterated that for Rwanda, the central issue is the continued presence of the FDLR in DR Congo, which remains an existential threat to Rwanda’s security. ALSO READ: Kagame says Habyarimana's son travelled to Kinshasa to deepen ties with FDLR Amb Ngonga said: “The FDLR is not an ordinary armed group. It is a genocidal force, founded by remnants of those responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and its genocidal ideology has not changed. “After 31 years of discussion, in this chamber on the origin and intention of FDLR, there should be no ambiguity about it. It is a group whose intent is to exterminate a people! That is their ideology.” Addressing the FDLR is indispensable to any credible and lasting solution to the conflict in eastern DR Congo, the Rwandan envoy stressed, adding that: “FDLR must be neutralized and their ideology and its vectors including hate speech must be eradicated.”