A Properly Closed Book: The ICTR and the secrecy around the Akazu

(1)

A Properly Closed Book

The ICTR and the secrecy around the Akazu

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

in

History: Holocaust and Genocide Studies

University of Amsterdam

Name: Marjolein Verhaag Student number: 5677106

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Johannes Houwink ten Cate Second reader: Thijs Bouwknegt

(2)

Abstract

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was allegedly planned and prepared by a group known as the Akazu, an informal power structure centered around Rwanda’s President Juvénal Habyarimana and his wife Agathe Kanziga. According to the historiography on the Rwandan genocide, from the 1970s until 1994 this group of influential Rwandan Hutus infiltrated and consolidated the economic and political sphere in Rwanda in order to strengthen the president’s and their own power base. This study explores the structure and mode of operation of the Akazu on the basis of three cases that came before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, respectively the Media Trial, the Military 1 Trial and the case against Protais Zigiranyirazo. It will lead the reader to the conclusion that the Akazu consisted of the inner and wider Akazu, and that the power its members wielded differed significantly. Moreover it will argue that it was not so much the Akazu, but all the more a parallel clandestine organization called the Zero Network that masterminded the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Key words

Rwandan genocide, Akazu, Zero Network, clandestine organizations, Hutu Power, ICTR

(3)

(4)

Glossary

ADECOGIKA Association through which international aid and development money was channeled to the home region of the Akazu Akazu Kinyarwanda for ‘Little house’; group of influential

individuals close to President Juvénal Habyarimana and his wife Agathe Kanziga

AMASASU Clandestine group that made an urgent call for the legitimate use of self-defense against the RPF threat. Its members ranged from FAR officers to the smallest soldiers

Arusha Accords Peace agreement – signed on the 4th of August 1993 in Arusha, Tanzania – between the Rwandan government and the RPF to bring an end to the civil war

BBTG Broad Based Transitional Government

CDR Coalition pour la Défense de la République; the Hutu extremist party, formed in 1992 by the extremist wing of the MRND Clan de Madame See Akazu

Death squads Hutu extremist forces that massacred and assassinated the enemy and disturbed the events of opposition parties. Their aim was to destabilize the democratization process, intimidate the Tutsis and other opponents and bring a halt to the peace process

DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo

Enemy Commission Military Commission, established on the 4th_{of December 1991,}

that studied the enemy in order to find an answer to the question of how to defeat that enemy militarily, in the media and politically

ENI document Document, written by the Enemy Commission, that defined and identified the enemy of the Rwandan Hutu population

FAR Forces Armées Rwandaises; the Rwandan Armed Forces

(7)

Gacaca-courts Rwandan court system, based on a traditional dispute resolution mechanism, at which lay judges held trials for the smaller acts of genocide

GP French acronym for the Presidential Guard, the highly trained and well equipped unit of Hutu extremists, which were intensely loyal to President Habyarimana

HRW Human Rights Watch; international NGO that conducts research on and supports human rights

Hutu Power Movement, established in October 1993, which further disseminated the extremist Hutu ideology

Ibyitso Kinyarwanda for ‘Accomplice’

ICTR International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Impuzamugambi Kinyarwanda for ‘Those who have a single aim’; the youth

wing of the CDR

Inkotanyi Kinyarwanda for ‘war fighter’

Interahamwe Kinyarwanda for ‘Those who stand together’; the youth wing of the MRND

Inyenzi Kinyarwanda for ‘cockroach’

Kanguka Kinyarwanda for ‘wake up’; independent Rwandan newspaper Kangura Kinyarwanda for ‘wake others up’; Rwandan anti-Tutsi

periodical

Kinyarwanda One of the official languages of Rwanda

MDR Mouvement Démocratique Républicain; the main opposition party to the MRND

MRND Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développement; President Habyarimana’s political party

NGO Non-governmental organization

NUR National University of Rwanda

ORINFOR Office Rwandais d’Information; government agency that managed Rwanda’s public media

(8)

Prefecture At the time of the genocide, Rwanda was divided in ten prefectures, comparable to provinces, which were led by a prefect, a kind of governor who served as the personal representative of the president

RPA Rwandese Patriotic Army; the army of the RPF

RPF Rwandese Patriotic Front; Tutsi-led opposition party

RTLM Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines; the hate radio in Rwanda

SC Security Council

UN United Nations

UNAMIR United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda

UNAR Royalist Tutsi party that the members of the AMASASU linked to the RPF

Zero Network Clandestine organization that operated parallel to and partly in cooperation with the Akazu

(9)

(10)

Acknowledgements

“Rwandan history has the dark-magic ability to cause anyone who

studies it to lose all reason.”1

Thierry Cruvellier

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who supported me throughout the course of this research project. Writing this thesis took quite some time and energy, and without the help of a couple of people I would have never succeeded.

First of all, I want to extend my deepest gratitude to Prof. Dr. Johannes Houwink ten Cate. Without his suggestions, constructing criticism and encouragement this thesis would have never been written in the first place. I also want to thank Thijs Bouwknegt for his insightful thoughts, for challenging my thinking and helping me out when I got stuck, and for his interest in acting as my second reader. Thank you both for your patience.

I am very thankful to Adam Hayward for initially sparking my interest in the Akazu and for proofreading the draft text. I am also grateful to my friends for keeping me motivated and offering me a listening ear. Last but not least I want to thank my family, and especially my parents, for their love and support during this long journey.

1_{Thierry Cruvellier, Court of Remorse: Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, trans.}

(11)

(12)

Introduction

“The difficulty with any type of “secret societies” is that insider knowledge is rarely available, usually only after a longer period of time; however, the tribunal needs to know it in

order to bring the Akazu members to justice.”2

Christian P. Scherrer

“It was as if we were taken over by Satan. […] When Satan is using you, you lose your mind.

We were not ourselves. […] We had been attacked by the devil.”3

Gitera Rwamuhizhi, Hutu farmer

The twentieth century has known quite some genocides. From the Armenian Genocide to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda and eventually Bosnia, it happened, and despite saying ‘never again’, it does happen again. Every time after such an atrocity, people have asked the question of how this could possibly happen. There is, unfortunately, not one single answer to this question. Before, during and after a genocide, several parties and events fulfill several roles and release several forces on several levels. We often see a certain set of ‘genocidal preconditions’ that occur in the decades preceding a genocide. These preconditions enclose, but are not restricted to, the rise of a utopian ideology, ideas of social engineering, a political, economic and/or social crisis, a deteriorating social position of minorities and the process of ‘othering’.4 These preconditions on their own are not so threatening, yet the combination of these conditions can lead to a serious and dangerous escalation of events.

Then, as soon as the genocide is eventually sparked, the perpetrators get into action and do their job. The question of why these ‘ordinary men’ obey the orders and do their jobs has been widely investigated and discussed by Christopher Browning

2_{Christian P. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa: Conflict Roots, Mass Violence, and}

Regional War (Westport: Praeger, 2002), 106.

3_{Gitera Rwamuhizhi, “Taken over by Satan,” BBC News (2 April 2004), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/}

programmes/panorama/3582011.stm [21-02-2014].

4_{Ervin Staub, “Genocide and Mass Killing: Origins, Prevention, Healing and Reconciliation,” Political}

(13)

and Hannah Arendt amongst others.5 It is however harder to understand why the chief culprits, the ideologues or the ‘genocidal masterminds’ initially picked up the idea of exterminating a certain group, and subsequently designed a plan to carry out that extermination. When trying to answer this question, one needs to look at several factors: Who were these planners? What did they fear? What was the cause of that fear? And how did they transmit that fear to the ‘ordinary men’ in order to let them do their ‘job’? In other words, who is this Satan that Gitera Rwamuhizhi mentioned in Ghosts of Rwanda, and how does he annihilate his enemy?

Historiography

Two decades have passed since a group of Hutu extremists started up their plan to eliminate the Rwandan Tutsi population. The means through which they tried to achieve that goal were as gruesome as they were effective. While the world was watching, or actually looking away, approximately one million Hutus mutilated, raped and killed over 800.000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, in only one hundred days.

In the following twenty years, the Rwandan genocide has been extensively investigated and documented. Scholars, lawyers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) wondered what exactly happened and how this could have happened. By now, the question of what happened both during and in the decades preceding the genocide has been answered quite clearly by Alison Des Forges, Gérard Prunier and Roméo Dallaire amongst others.6

Furthermore, Scott Straus, Jean Hatzfeld and Lee Ann Fujii have discussed the topic of why and how this genocide occurred on the micro – in other words perpetrator – level.7

Yet the Rwandan genocide, like any other genocide, did not appear out of the blue. It needed planners and instigators in order

5_{Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland}

(New York: HarperCollins, 1992); and Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the

Banality of Evil (Penguin Classics, 2006).

6_{Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 1999);}

Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst & Company, 1995); and Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (London: Arrow Books, 2004).

7_{Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University}

Press, 2006); Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, trans. Linda Coverdale (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005); and Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence

(14)

for the ordinary men to pick up their machetes. And precisely those instigators, which appear to be gathered in a group called the Akazu, remain a poorly documented topic of the Rwandan genocide. Yet poorly documented does not mean undocumented. Therefore the following paragraph will explore the historiography of the Akazu, which will serve two purposes. On the one hand it will offer the historical context in which we can place, and through which we can better understand, the events that will be discussed in the rest of this thesis. On the other, maybe even more important hand, it will explore what has been written about the Akazu so far. This is important to know, as it will help to understand the relevance of this research. Hereafter, the aim of this study will be defined and the mode of operation of the following chapters will be clarified.

The rise of the Akazu

One of the first works that was published on the 1994 genocide was The Rwanda Crisis by Gérard Prunier, a French historian specialized in the Great Lakes Region. As he was defining Rwanda’s political history of ethnic division, Prunier inevitably brought up the topic of where and when the tensions, which would in the end result in the genocide, had started. This is where the Akazu entered the historiography of Rwanda.

According to Rwandan customs, its ruler was supposed to have a group of followers or ‘clan’ centered around him. While this clan held no official power, it functioned as the eyes and ears of the sovereign and gave him its unconditional support. When Juvénal Habyarimana came to power in 1973, he lacked such a backing, at least from his own relatives. He was a self-made man without an influential family to rely on, and thus had to find another clan that would support him. The answer was very close. Habyarimana’s wife Agathe Kanziga came from a well-known lineage that had ruled an independent principality in the north of Rwanda until the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. Despite the fact that the principality had recently fallen on hard times, Agathe and her relatives were still eager to exercise authority. The president’s search for a loyal backing consequently offered this Clan de Madame or Akazu as they are more often called, the perfect opportunity to regain

(15)

power and status. By the early 1990s, the Akazu turned out to be a paramount factor in Habyarimana’s decision-making.8

The tide in Rwanda had changed during the second part of the 20th

century. When Habyarimana came to power in 1973, he brought peace and stability to the agrarian country. During the previous reign of President Grégoire Kayibanda the Rwandan Tutsi had been systematically suppressed and persecuted. Though they were still not given any political power under Habyarimana, they were at least tolerated. Everyday life in Rwanda became carefully controlled, almost free of crime and seemed politically stable on the surface. Meanwhile, as there was little surplus value to be extracted from the peasants, the different clans enriched themselves with earnings from Rwanda’s export and the creaming off of foreign aid. The members of the Akazu even set up a special association, the ADECOGIKA, through which they channeled international aid and development money into their own pockets. Whoever dared to protest against these corrupt practices, especially those of the Akazu, was immediately silenced. However, as the regime was well disposed against its foreign donors, the western world seemed to be satisfied with Habyarimana’s achievements.9

By 1986 this prosperity started to decline. The prices of Rwanda’s main export products – coffee, tea and tin – dropped dramatically and as a result the country’s economy collapsed. The different clans still had to be provided with an income, but as the resources of the export were allocated to running the government, all clans came to depend on foreign aid. Since this could only be appropriated through control of the highest governmental positions, the internal power struggles intensified and the political stability began to falter. Obviously, Habyarimana’s Akazu came off best. However as internal opposition was still suppressed, the international community started to demand political democratization in return for economic aid. Habyarimana was consequently forced to declare his support for a multiparty system, encouraging the Rwandan opposition to get into action. Hence, by 1990, not only Rwanda’s economy, but also its political scene was in deep crisis.10

This course of events in the decades preceding 1990 as told by Gérard Prunier, is widely supported by the historians and academics that have discussed this topic in

8_{Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 85-87.}

9_{Ibid., 74-76, 81-84; and Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s}

Genocide (Chippenham: CPI Antony Rowe, 2009), 47.

(16)

the past twenty years. Yet, disagreement arises when it comes to the question of when the Akazu was ‘established’. Just like any ‘regional mafia’, as Prunier labeled the Akazu, this mafia did not document all its activities. Documentation was risky; it could later on serve as evidence of complicity, and that is something any clandestine organization fears. As a result, no written records or agreements have been found, yet Prunier concluded that the Akazu was already formed before 1973. Its members subsequently benefited from the fact that Habyarimana had come to power as they saw their own influence in the Rwandan politics grow. Joan Kakwenzire and Dixon Kamukama – respectively historian/human rights activist and researcher on Rwanda – have shared this view. In their article “The Development and Consolidation of Extremist Forces in Rwanda”, they traced the origins of the Akazu back to the 1960s. Initially, Kakwenzire and Kamukama stated, this group began to structure itself not out of an ethnical but all the more out of a regional threat. The then President Kayibanda mainly surrounded himself with supporters from his home base Gitarama and the southern city of Butare. Though Kayibanda and his clan were all Hutu, the northern Hutus, especially those from the Gisenyi and Ruhengeri prefecture, felt alienated from the power system. Hence, they drew up a plan and devised the 1973 bloodless coup. As Head of the National Guard, their in-law family member Juvénal Habyarimana would become president and the power base of the Akazu would be recaptured.11

Thus, without mentioning an exact year, Kakwenzire and Kamukama determined that the Akazu was founded decades before the genocide actually took place.

Yet not all authors share this view. According to central and east Africa specialist Andrew Wallis and the Dutch researcher Helen Hintjens, the Akazu was not founded until the end of the 1980s or even 1990. Wallis, who shed light on the role of France in the Rwandan genocide in his book Silent Accomplice, stated that Agathe Kanziga began to form the Akazu by the late 1980s. With the economic and political crisis and the additional erosion of power in mind, she decided to make her own plan in order to stay in control. Wallis claimed that the common and only objective of the relatives she gathered around her was to use the presidency for their own personal

11_{Ibid., 85; and Joan Kakwenzire and Dixon Kamukama, “The Development and Consolidation of}

Extremist Forces in Rwanda 1990-1994,” in The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda

to Zaire, ed. Howard Adelman and Astri Suhrke (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999),

(17)

wealth and power.12

If one assumes that the only aim of the Akazu was a violent retention of power, then the Akazu could indeed not have been established earlier, as it was not until the end of the 1980s that their influence threatened to diminish. In “Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda” Hintjens supported this view. She stated that the Akazu was formed as a response to growing opposition; its members feared a loss of power. According to Hintjens however, the foundation took place even later, by the beginning of 1990.13

The power of Juvénal Habyarimana

Despite differences of opinion in the historiography of the founding of the Akazu, it is certain that by the time the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the armed branch of the Tutsi led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), crossed the Ugandan border into Rwanda on the 1st

of October 1990, the Akazu was well in control. The tensions between the Hutu majority and Tutsi minority in Rwanda were by then already deeply embedded, and would only grow worse over the next few years. The roots of these tensions can be traced back to the colonial era.

In 1897, when the European powers were expanding their territory, Rwanda fell into the hands of Germany. With their fascination for racial matters around that time – witness the fact that in those years anti-Semitism in Germany was up and coming – the Germans began to explore Rwanda and its people from a European point of view. In order to explain the domination of certain African groups over others and to justify their own colonial presence, German scientists applied the Hamitic theory. According to this theory, the Hamites were a race of people, mostly Egyptians, which had spread through parts of Africa and carried with them “greater sophistication than the Negroid races of equatorial Africa.”14

The scientists concluded that in the Rwandan case, these Hamites were the tall, light-skinned, cattle owning Tutsis who seemed to dominate the shorter, darker and poorer Hutus.15

12_{Andrew Wallis, Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of France’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide}

(London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 51.

13_{Helen Hintjens, “Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,” Journal of Modern African Studies 37,}

no. 2 (1999): 259.

14_{Bruce D. Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure (Boulder: Lynne Rienner}

Publishers, 2001), 17.

(18)

By appointing the Tutsi as the superior Rwandan race, the German rulers disregarded both the fact that the social relations in Rwanda were far more complex, and that during preceding centuries the ruling status had not been a result of ethnicity but all the more of clans. When the Belgians took over Rwandan control in 1919, this ethnic separation became even worse. First, the Belgians labeled the Tutsi as the intellectual and administrative ‘ruling class’, on which the Belgians relied to fulfill the administration of the League of Nations’ mandate to officially legitimize their colonial authority. Furthermore, they introduced the system of identity cards that specified a person’s ethnicity. Though this period of Tutsi domination did not last long, the memory of this domination, the additional Hutu-Tutsi competition and the legacy of the identity cards would be felt throughout the rest of the century.16

Subsequently, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Western cry for democratization and equality that had entailed the end of World War II also reached Rwanda. With decolonization looming ahead, the competition between the Hutus and Tutsis once again intensified. Realizing their flaws from the past, the Belgians adapted their colonial policy and opened up educational and economical opportunities for the Rwandan Hutus. Due to this, it did not take long before those Hutus started to demand political reform as well. Soon the 1959 Hutu Revolution, a series of clashes between Hutus and Tutsis over who would control the independent Rwandan state, began.17

The Hutu majority ultimately were the victors of this revolution. From the moment the Belgian colonists left Rwanda in 1959, ethnic violence, first under the Kayibanda and later under the Habyarimana regime, forced Rwandan Tutsis into exile. Whether they fled to Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania or Zaïre – present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – over the next decades many of these refugees began to share the same dream: to be able to return to and live in Rwanda one day. In the course of the 1980s, those who had fled to Uganda began to organize themselves as a response to growing threats in their ‘new’ home country. Even though a lot of these second generation Rwandans had been born in exile and had never stepped foot in Rwanda, they were determined to go back. Hence the RPF, an

16_{Ibid., 18-19.}

(19)

“offensive political organization dedicated to the return of exiles to Rwanda”18

was created. Due to the growing threats in Uganda and their desire to turn back to Rwanda, the RPF invaded its country of origin on the 1st

of October 1990.19

This RPF attack meant the start of a civil war that would rage through Rwanda for almost four years. The ruling regime, in which the Akazu had obtained a considerable role by that time, deliberately came to direct that civil war. Only five days after the RPF attack, a second assault took place, this time in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. Though it appeared to be another RPF attack, it was actually staged by the regime in order to exaggerate the gravity of the RPF threat. As a response to these attacks, the government began to arrest educated Tutsis and opposition-minded Hutus, who were said to be RPF accomplices.20

Yet this was only the beginning. During the next three years, staged attacks and round-ups appeared on a regular base. By April 1994, these staged attacks turned out to be part of a bigger plan.

Obviously, the Akazu played an important part in the unfolding of events that led to the genocide. But what exactly was President Juvénal Habyarimana’s role in these events, and thus in the Akazu? The opinions on this matter differ. According to Prunier and Philip Gourevitch, Habyarimana’s power decreased gradually in the course of his reign. While the extremist group had depended on Habyarimana during the 1970s and first part of the 1980s, this tide changed as soon as the crisis hit. The growing opposition from the Tutsi and moderate Hutu side exposed and challenged Habyarimana’s vulnerability as a political leader. The Akazu consequently agreed that in order to stay in control, the grip on the president had to be tightened. Not only was the Akazu reluctant to share power with any other political group, they probably realized that the crimes they had committed over the past couple of years would not remain unpunished lest there be a new government. Hence, they came to interfere with the politics of the president on every level.21

This interference did not go unnoticed. Though Rwanda’s state radio and newspapers presupposed that the president was still in control, it was widely known that no political steps could be taken without the consent of Habyarimana’s wife and her entourage. They were the ones who made the decisions, they only needed and

18_{Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 73.} 19_{Ibid., 61-62, 66-74.}

20_{Ibid., 101-102, 108-109.} 21_{Ibid., 86-87.}

(20)

used Habyarimana to execute their power and officially decree their regulations. As Prunier stated, Habyarimana “gradually became their prisoner and eventually their victim,”22

and he was aware of that fact. When for example Habyarimana proposed Colonel Mayuya, one of his few own men, as his successor, the Akazu, who felt threatened with a loss of power, simply arranged Mayuya’s assassination.23

Moreover, the March 1994 edition of Kangura, the Rwandan journal that was financed and published by people close to the Akazu, ran the headline “Habyarimana will die in March”.24

It will be clear that these were not Habyarimana’s own actions and words. In her book Conspiracy to Murder, Linda Melvern was also of the opinion that Habyarimana gradually lost his power. She blamed this, however, on the fact that he was actually reluctant to share that power. Due to that reluctance, his command had steadily shifted into the hands of his brother-in-law Protais Zigiranyirazo, better known as Mister Z.25

Mahmood Mamdani, a researcher from Uganda and author of When Victims Become Killers, has on the other hand argued that Habyarimana’s diminishing power was not caused by unwillingness, but all the more by the fact that Habyarimana and the Akazu aspired different objectives. While Habyarimana pursued tightened ties with the Tutsis, the Akazu was using the Hutu Power web of political, economic and military muscle and patronage, of which the Akazu itself was the core, to try to “undo the Presidents attempt to rehabilitate the Tutsi as an ethnic minority in Rwandan society.”26

Thus, for whatever reason, all these authors share the view that President Habyarimana gradually lost his power to the Akazu. Yet some other important authors on the genocide, including Andrew Wallis and Roméo Dallaire, have contradicted this statement. Wallis concluded that though it seemed like Habyarimana split ways with the Akazu by the end of his reign, he only did this as an answer to national and international pressure. As the international community started to demand political reform and the signing of the Arusha Accords – the peace agreement that should bring

22_Ibid.

23_{Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families:}

Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996), 77, 81; and Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 86-87.

24_{Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You, 108.}

25_{Linda Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide (New York: Verso, 2006), 12-13,}

124.

26_{Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in}

(21)

an end to the civil war in Rwanda – in return for financial support, both Habyarimana and the Akazu realized that they had to pander to the community’s request. Consequently, on the surface it appeared that the president took a more moderate stance and was willing to share power, while in the meantime the Akazu could continue to operate and plan the genocide on the background.27

It was right after the signing of the Arusha Accords in August ’93, that Roméo Dallaire arrived in Rwanda. As Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), his job was to monitor the implementation of the Accords that were designed to bring a halt to the civil war in Rwanda. One of the most important elements of these Accords was the installation of a Broad Based Transitional Government (BBTG), in which five political parties would be seated. Yet by the end of December 1993, Dallaire was told by Faustin Twagiramungu, the prime minister designate, that “President Habyarimana was trying to manoeuver around the installation of the BBTG and that this interference was one of the major factors behind the political impasse.”28

Since Twagiramungu had been chosen in Arusha to lead the BBTG, he was quite concerned by this interference. A little more than three months later Twagiramungu and Dallaire would find out the real reason behind Habyarimana’s hindrance.29

From civil war to genocide

On the evening of the 6th of April 1994 the installation of the BBTG and President Habyarimana’s interference were suddenly stopped. Earlier that day, the president had attended a meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, where he ended up discussing the similar Accords with his fellow presidents from Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania. Somewhat startled, as his colleagues had admonished him for not making much progress in implementing the Accords, Habyarimana returned home in his presidential jet. Around 8.30 p.m., right before the airplane would touchdown in Kigali, two missiles were launched from just outside the airport. The plane, that carried not only Habyarimana but also the Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira and some other

27_{Wallis, Silent Accomplice, 66-67.}

28_{Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil, 133.} 29_{Ibid., 60, 133.}

(22)

officials, was hit, crashed into the presidential garden and burst into flames. None of the passengers survived.30

Twenty years later it is still not clear who ordered and arranged the attack. Different authors have presented different theories with different suspects, but up till today the real culprit has not been found. It is known however, that within one hour after the attack Kigali was turned upside down, with two sides fighting each other. On the one hand, the Presidential Guard (GP) and militiamen were erecting roadblocks and searching houses all over town to find ‘enemies’: Tutsis and moderate Hutus who could be held responsible for the assault. On the other hand, Habyarimana’s army, the Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) tried to halt them. This disorder was caused by the fact that the FAR commander-in-chief Marcel Gatsinzi was not aware of the plot, while the head of the GP, Colonel Protais Mpiranya, was. Gatsinzi had just succeeded the former commander-in-chief, Déogratias Nsabimana, who had also died in the plane crash, and thus tried to do what he thought was best: keep the army out of the ‘final solution’.31

Gatsinzi’s efforts were to no avail. During that first night, the Presidential Guard, together with the paramilitary Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, deliberately attacked their opposition. Previously drawn up killing lists were finished and Tutsis were killed simply because they were Tutsi, and therefore considered to be RPF ‘accomplices’. By the afternoon of the 7th of April, the slaughter had spread throughout almost the whole country and in the night that followed the provisional government, which consisted exclusively of politicians who rallied to the ‘final solution’, was established.32

Prunier frequently uses the term ‘final solution’. He stated that the Hutu extremists had already, on the night of the 6th_{of April, started to work on that}

solution. He subsequently defined that the most important difference between large-scale killings and genocides is the purpose of a ‘final solution’. While in a ‘regular’ large-scale killing the slaughter stops when the killers get tired or feel like their enemy has learned its lesson, a genocide only stops when the targeted group is completely destroyed and thus the final solution has been achieved. As this was the aim the Akazu envisioned from the start, the Rwandan genocide, at least according to

30_{Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 211-212.} 31_{Ibid., 229.}

(23)

Prunier, was set in motion on the night of the 6th of April, immediately after President Habyarimana’s airplane was shot down.33

Furthermore Prunier stated that the plan for the genocide was first put together in outline by the end of 1992. It was around that time that a couple of extremist officers, who were gathered in a secret society called the AMASASU, began to arm the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militias.34_{In order to succeed they worked}

hand-in-hand with the Zero Network, a civilian-military organization that constituted a death squad. According to Prunier “the list of the death squad’s leaders […] read like an Akazu ‘who’s who.’”35 Still, though the members of the Zero Network were closely linked to the Akazu, they gradually began to lean more on the extremist CDR political party as they started to lose their faith in the die-hard resolution of the president. Linda Melvern supported this view on the Zero Network, especially regarding its members. In Conspiracy to Murder she explained how, over the course of 1992, the Hutu extremists had began to draw the first preparations for the genocide. These preparations involved the training of death squads that were part of the Zero Network, and close to the clan of the president.36 At the same time, Melvern stated, this Zero Network was a “secret communications link, a radio network whose existence was known only to the extremists and which enabled them to keep in touch with each other.”37

Indeed, the accounts on the Zero Network that were given by Prunier and Melvern appear rather vague, yet it seems like it was hard to find detailed information on the group. Christian P. Scherrer only claimed that the Zero Network, which coordinated the death squads, was headed by Habyarimana’s sons-in-law and controlled by the Akazu. In Leave None to Tell the Story, the famous report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) two years after the genocide, Alison Des Forges supported this assumption. She moreover stated that this Network was responsible for the apparently random attacks that occurred all over Rwanda in 1992 and 1993. In addition, Andrew Wallis argued that the Zero Network was a hard core of men around the president who expanded into the economy, the army, the civil service and the

33_{Ibid., 237-238.}

34_{AMASASU means ‘bullets’ or ‘ammunition’ in Kinyarwanda. This clandestine organization made}

an urgent call for the legitimate use of self-defense against the RPF threat. For more details on this group see §2.3.

35_{Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, 168.}

36_{Ibid., 168-169, 182; and Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 31, 41.} 37_{Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 31-32.}

(24)

churches with the means to take over the state and put it at their own service. Thus, though the Network certainly played an important part in the escalation of events, it remains hard to determine its exact structure, activities or responsibilities.38

With regards to the ‘final solution’, Linda Melvern also agreed with Prunier on this matter. On the basis of several witness testimonies she concluded that the attack on the Tutsis started right after Habyarimana’s assassination. As the Akazu had determined that the Inyenzi-Inkotanyi – ‘cockroach-war fighter’, the term used to indicate Tutsis – were responsible for Habyarimana’s death, the battalions were told that “All soldiers should get out and start killing people who were against the government, including Tutsis.”39_{Another witness recalled that the troops “were}

ordered to kill anyone who had an identity card bearing the Tutsi ethnic group reference and anyone who was opposed to the government.”40

Subsequently, the troops went out on the streets and “started forcing people out of their houses, asking them for identity documents. If your ID card had the word Tutsi, then you would be killed.”41

This was no longer warfare, but genocide in a very pure form.

Another witness to the events, Roméo Dallaire, drew the same conclusion. During the first critical hours after the plane crash, the ruling Hutu extremists, who were now faced with a power vacuum, were acting as if they were trying hard to keep the Presidential Guard and the army in control. It did however not take long for Dallaire to notice that he was actually excluded from the important meetings and decision-making. Though Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, chef de cabinet of the Ministry of Defense, promised Dallaire that he did not want to jeopardize the Arusha Accords and risk another war with the RPF, Dallaire, in his own words, “didn’t trust him for a minute.”42

As the killings continued and neither Bagosora nor any of the other prominent extremist Hutus made an attempt to intervene, Dallaire concluded, “in just a few hours the Presidential Guard had conducted an obviously well-organized and well-executed plan”.43

However, it was not only the Hutu extremists who contributed to the escalating situation. On the 7th

of April, Paul Kagame, the Military Commander of the

38_{Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis, 130; Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, 46, 67; and Wallis,}

Silent Accomplice, 52-53.

39_{ICTR prosecution testimony. Military One. Witness DBQ in Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 144.} 40_{ICTR prosecution witness statement. GS in Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 145.}

41_{ICTR prosecution testimony. Military One. Witness DBQ in Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder, 145.} 42_{Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil, 223.}

(25)

RPA and present-day president of Rwanda, offered Bagosora and Dallaire a clear ultimatum. By nightfall, either the killings throughout Kigali had to be over or the RPA would be ordered to intervene. Bagosora, on his turn, once again made no attempt to change the situation, stop the killings or cooperate with the RPF. Gatsinzi made some efforts, but they were to no avail, and the mandate given to UNAMIR did not allow the Blue Berets to use proactive force, only in case of self-defense. Hence, by the end of that day the hostilities had resumed and Dallaire realized that his mission had failed.44

He would later recount, “It was the end of the first day of a hundred-day civil war and a genocide that would engulf all of us in unimaginable carnage.”45

Andrew Wallis and Christian P. Scherrer supported this view as well. According to Wallis, the Akazu was already carrying out its ‘carefully nurtured’ genocidal plan while Habyarimana’s plane was still burning, ironically in his own garden. Scherrer even stated that the starting signal for the massacres was given at 6 p.m., two and a half hours before the plane crashed. From that moment, and for the next 100 days, Rwanda’s residents were summoned to go out ‘to work’ and ‘do their job’, which in genocidal terms meant nothing less than to kill any Tutsi and moderate Hutu that they would run in to. Philip Gourevitch however indicated that the extermination of the Tutsi only got underway by the 7th

of April, after the most important Hutu opposition leaders had been killed. In Leave None to Tell the Story Des Forges claimed that the widespread killings, which had been prepared for months, started immediately after the attack on Habyarimana. Though Des Forges labeled these killings as ‘genocide’, she remarked that the aim of the slaughter was to draw the RPF back into combat and hence give the Hutu extremists a new chance for negotiations or maybe even victory.46

Despite all these assumptions about an immediate outbreak of the genocide, Scott Straus held a somewhat different point of view. In The Order of Genocide, he stated that on what would be later seen as the ‘eve of the genocide’, there were four major parties that were operating on the Rwandan national level. The first two, the Hutu moderates and the international actors on site were determined to implement the

44_{Ibid., 247-248, 254, 261.} 45_{Ibid., 262.}

46_{Wallis, Silent Accomplice, 79; Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis, 108; Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform}

(26)

Arusha Accords. The other two, the Hutu hardliners and the Tutsi rebels had however no interest in these Accords at all. While pretending to strive for peace and a multiparty government, they were actually training their militias, importing weapons and preparing for a war that was eventually sparked on the night of the 6th

of April. Especially the Hutu hardliners felt threatened by a loss of power as a result of the Accords, and therefore decided to seek alternative ways to regain that power. The anti-Tutsi propaganda, the killings lists and the training of paramilitary troops were initially all meant to win the coming war, not to eliminate the Rwandan Tutsi population. As it is still unclear when or even if an order for a systematic and coordinated attempt to physically eliminate the entire Tutsi population of Rwanda was given, it remains hard to tell when the Akazu decided to turn the war into genocide. Turid Laegreid of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs went even further by stating that the attack on the Rwandan president had only resumed the civil war, and did not even mention the word ‘genocide’ in her article “U.N. Peacekeeping in Rwanda”.47

Focus

So far this chapter has given a short overview of the Rwandan history as it led to the outbreak of the genocide. It has also explored the most crucial opinions and some discussions that have occurred on the Akazu and other informal powers, such as the Zero Network, in the existing literature. There is however one quite important organization that has not yet been mentioned in the historiographical discourse, and this organization is the United Nations (UN). Though the UN has not given a literary contribution to this discourse, the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) did gather and examine a lot of information on some of the most crucial perpetrators of the genocide. This information, and especially the knowledge it gathered on the Akazu, will be the focus of this study.

Four months after the end of the genocide, on the 8th_{of November 1994, the}

UN Security Council adopted Resolution 955 and thereby created the ICTR. The

47_{Straus, The Order of Genocide, 42-44, 49; and Turid Laegreid, “U.N. Peacekeeping in Rwanda,” in}

The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire, ed. Howard Adelman and Astri

(27)

purpose of this international court was to prevent impunity and promote national reconciliation in Rwanda. Just like at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the aim of the ICTR was to focus on indicting and trying the ‘big fish’: the leaders, chief culprits and organizational masterminds of the genocide. The ordinary perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide would, on the other hand, be prosecuted by the national and later on gacaca courts.48

Over the past twenty years the ICTR has indicted almost one hundred men – and one woman – who were accused of playing a considerable role in the planning and execution of the genocide. The information that was brought forward during their trials not only lead to their eventual judgment, it also contributed to the historiography of Rwanda. Hence these trials served not only a legal, but also an extralegal purpose. This extralegal purpose of producing a historical record in which the events that led to the genocide can be better understood, grew with the responsibilities of the accused; the more they were involved in the planning of the genocide, the more their case could tell about this planning. And though this extralegal information often needs to be left out of account by the judges and other legal investigators, for the historian they offer an important source for the investigation of certain topics and hence the writing of history.49

From that point of view this study will examine the Akazu. As the ICTR aimed at prosecuting the highest officials and the Akazu operated among these highest officials, the cases that came before the Rwanda Tribunal inevitably revealed information on this clandestine organization. The aim of this study will be to gather and unravel this information. However since it is too much for this study to investigate all the ICTR cases, the focus will be on one aspect of the genocide in which the Akazu was said to be specifically involved: the planning. Though in almost every case this topic has been mentioned at some point, there were two trials in which the planning received particular attention. These cases were the Media Case and the Military 1 Trial, which respectively discussed the ideological incitement and physical preparations that eventually led towards the genocide.

48_{United Nations Security Council (SC), Resolution 955, “Establishment of the ICTR,” 8 November}

1994; and Timothy Longman, “An Assessment of Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts,” Peace Review 21, no. 3 (2009): 305-306.

49_{Nena Tromp, “Understanding the Milošević Case: Legacy of an Unfinished Trial,” in The Genocide}

Convention: The Legacy of 60 Years, ed. H.G. van der Wilt et al. (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2012),

27-28; and Richard Ashby Wilson, Writing History in International Criminal Trials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 72-73.

(28)

Each chapter will explore its own case. On the basis of the concerning judgment the chapters will discuss the topics that were brought forward during that trial. In that manner we will for example see that during the Media Case the judges not only investigated the role of the hate media, but also of the CDR political party and the Hutu Power movement. Hence we will get a better understanding of how the Rwandan people were gradually directed to and prepared for the genocide. Where necessary this information will be completed by secondary literature.

Subsequently the chapters will examine who pulled the strings in all these activities. Obviously, the defendants in the concerning cases played an important part, but there were also people who operated more on the background. By looking at testimonies and analyzing evidence we will try to get a better picture of who these people were. Who, for example, defined the enemy and who drew up the plan to give military training to civilians and youth militia? Once this is clear we can see whether and how these people were connected to each other, after which we can turn to the real subject of this study: the Akazu.

The third and last chapter will then broach a different kind of case, that against Protais Zigiranyirazo, also known as Mr. Z. In the introduction it has already been discussed that Zigiranyirazo and Habyarimana were family members, as Mr. Z. was the older brother of Agathe Kanziga. This family, and especially the direct family of Agathe, played an important role in the Akazu. The last chapter will therefore investigate the testimonies of insider as well as expert witnesses, to see what they revealed about the Akazu and parallel organizations, such as the Zero Network. It will not only discuss their structure and hierarchy, but also their mode of operation and activities.

The conclusion will link the knowledge that was gained about the Akazu and other clandestine organizations during the Zigiranyirazo trial, to what has been revealed in the first two cases, in order to conclude what these trials have learned about the Akazu. Subsequently it will discuss the findings of this research and compare these findings to what has been recorded in the historiography. Did it add anything to the existing literature, or has it given us completely new insights? And did it find answers to the questions about the rise of the Akazu, the power of Juvénal Habyarimana or the outbreak of the genocide? Since the historiography on the Akazu and other informal power structures in Rwanda still appears to be rather incomplete and open for discussion, by the end of this research we will be able to conclude if and

(29)

how these leading researchers on the Rwandan genocide have used these three ICTR trials to find an answer to the ongoing secrecy around the Akazu.

(30)

1. Ideology and propaganda: the ICTR Media Case

“Even if you were young at the time, it does not take a moral saint to realize that killing your neighbors is wrong. […] You killed not because you were mentally retarded or morally

derailed, but because you were led to believe that killing Tutsis, all of them,

was a matter of self-defense or of protecting your loved-ones.”50

Bert van Roermund

“The ideology – or what Rwandans call “the logic” – of genocide was promoted as a way not to create suffering but to alleviate it. The specter of an absolute menace that requires

absolute eradication binds leader and people in a hermetic utopian embrace,

and the individual – always an annoyance to totality – ceases to exist.”51

Philip Gourevitch

In times of crisis, seemingly normal things can make people perform absolutely terrible actions. Think of an utopia. You imagine a happy place, a mountain landscape with a babbling brook, or maybe an azure sea with white sand beaches. Drinks and food are abundant and the people are good for each other. Though this utopia may be somewhat theatrical, the original notion of the utopia that was introduced in the sixteenth century described an ideal world. Political philosophers of all kinds came to use the concept to promise the people a brighter future. Whether they were capitalists or socialists, they planned to achieve this utopia through economic prosperity or the implementation or improvement of social welfare programs. By the twentieth century, a new means of creating a utopian society was favored. The rise of extreme and revolutionary regimes started to offer states in crisis the promise of a better, homogeneous society trough the annihilation of a certain group that was pointed out as the cause of that crisis.52

The twentieth century has seen plenty of these extreme regimes, which usually prospered when a country was faced with a crisis. Whether economic or political, the country had a desperate need for reform, and that is exactly what these regimes

50_{Bert van Roermund, “Reconciliation from a Philosophical Perspective” (lecture, Tilburg University,}

Tilburg, October 4, 2013).

51_{Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You, 95.}

52_{Eric Weitz, “Utopian Ideologies as Motives for Genocide,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes}

(31)

offered. Their carefully designed ideology came to serve as an answer to the problems, a patch of light at the end of the tunnel. However, in order to reach the end of that tunnel, the initial cause of the crisis had to be eliminated. This cause, as will become clear, was always a group – political, national, ethnical, religious or racial. And this group, which the regime had picked as the target of their campaign, then became gradually classified, dehumanized, separated and eventually exterminated. It was scapegoated, labeled as the ‘enemy’ and depicted as vermin or simply the ‘other’, different from and absolutely not like ‘us’. It had distinctive customs, features and origins. And as the only goal of this enemy was to conquer ‘us’, it should not be there, it did not even deserve to be there. Therefore, in order to defend ‘us’, the country had to be purified; the ‘other’ had to be exiled or, even better, exterminated. Once that goal had been achieved, the crisis would be solved and the utopia had been reached.53

This utopian ideology however, never arises and disseminates itself out of the blue. It has been designed by so-called ‘ideologues’, who may have been waiting for the crisis to occur – or have even helped it occur a little bit – in order for the regime to grab this opportunity and present their solution to the crisis. During the Weimar Republic it was Hitler who designed the Nazi ideology, which he wrote down in Mein Kampf. Subsequently, his Minister of Propaganda Dr. Joseph Goebbels arranged the circulation of this ideology among the German Volk. For Democratic Kampuchea, Khieu Samphan started writing his thesis called Cambodia’s Economy and Industrial Development in 1959. This thesis became the ideological foundation of the Khmer Rouge regime some sixteen years later. And in Rwanda, it was Ferdinand Nahimana, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Hassan Ngeze who came to be known as these ideological and propaganda masterminds. Though they did not draft the extremist Hutu Power ideology, they nevertheless were the ones who arranged its dissemination through the use of the media.54

Soon after the genocide, Rwanda’s ideological masterminds were indicted by the ICTR. On the 23th of October 2000, Nahimana, Barayagwiza and Ngeze appeared before Trial Chamber 1 at the Rwanda Tribunal in Arusha, and the ICTR Media Case

53_{Jacques Semelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide, trans. Cynthia}

Schoch (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 37-41.

54_{Eric Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton: Princeton University}

Press, 2003), 105; and Khieu Samphan, Cambodia’s Economy and Industrial Development, trans. Laura Summers (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1979), 3 [In Asia the family name always comes before the individual’s name, therefore the name of Khieu Samphan appears in the same order in both the footnote and the bibliography].

(32)

finally took off. The men were accused of inter alia conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity. Their trials had been joined as the Chamber concluded that the alleged acts of the accused had formed part of a common scheme. The emphasis of the trial was on the role of the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) radio station and the Kangura periodical in the spread of the Hutu Power ideology and the planning and execution of the genocide. The case not only brought three key perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide to justice, it also looked deeper into the foundation of these media companies, which were financially supported by officials and businessmen who were often linked to the regime. This chapter will further investigate the Media Case and determine the role of these companies and their supporters in the dissemination of the genocidal ideology.55

1.1 Kangura and the Hutu Ten Commandments

The invention of hate media

The first public signs of the anti-Tutsi Hutu Power ideology appeared with the birth of Kangura in May 1990. The main purpose of Kangura, Kinyarwanda for ‘wake others up’ was to defend the extremist Hutu ideology. Its editor-in-chief was Hassan Ngeze, a Hutu from the northwestern prefecture of Gisenyi. In 1978, at the age of 21, Ngeze had started working as a journalist for Kanguka – ‘wake up’ – an independent Rwandan newspaper. After a clash with the owner of Kanguka, Ngeze decided to leave the paper and start a new periodical. Together with a couple of influential Rwandans he conceived a plan to set up Kangura, which soon became the best known and most widely read magazine in Rwanda. In his capacity as a journalist, Ngeze became in charge of the content of the journal, while his co-founders provided the financial resources.56 But who were these co-founders?

During the ICTR Media Trial, the topic of Kangura was widely investigated. Numerous witnesses were heard, evidence was examined and deliberations were

55_{International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), The Prosecutor against Ferdinand Nahimana,}

Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza and Hassan Ngeze: Judgement and Sentence, 3 December 2003, 9-10, 25;

Gregory S. Gordon, ““A War of Media, Words, Newspapers and Radio Stations”: The ICTR Media Trial Verdict and a New Chapter in the International Law of Hate Speech,” Virginia Journal of

International Law 45 (2004-2005): 141; and Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, 66-67.

(33)

made. The first issue that was discussed was the ownership and control of Kangura. Though some useful information was revealed, the Chamber in the end only concluded that it had found that Ngeze had established and controlled the journal. Yet, a closer look at the witness testimonies can tell us some more about its co-founders and sponsors. Several prosecution witnesses mentioned the fact that Kangura gained its income not only through sales and advertising, but also through the obtainment of sponsorships. One important sponsor, several witnesses said, was the governmental intelligence agency lead by Anatole Nsengiyumva. Some – like Ngeze’s housemate and Hutu colleague at Kangura – had learned this from Ngeze himself, others – a Tutsi journalist and another Tutsi from Ngeze’s home region of Gisenyi – heard this from his friends. The Chamber did not consider this evidence specific and sufficient enough to sustain this finding. However, the fact that several witnesses mentioned this involvement does imply that there probably was a link between Kangura and the intelligence agency, or at least Nsengiyumva.57

Yet Nsengiyumva was not the only government official who was said to be involved in the financing of Kangura. According to the former Prosecutor of Kigali Francois Xavier Nsanzuwera, the MRND Executive Secretary and Minister for Public Works and Trade Joseph Nzirorera was also financially involved. In 1990, as Nsanzuwera was investigating Ngeze and Kangura, he had discovered that a couple of MRND politicians, among them Nzirorera, were behind the periodical. In a confidential report, Nsanzuwera informed President Habyarimana about Nzirorera’s involvement in the funding of the paper, probably as he considered its dubious content. Nzirorera, on his turn, reacted furious and summoned Nsanzuwera. Subsequently, Nsanzuwera’s next investigation of Ngeze was halted by a higher-level official, who stated, “all matters had been sorted out and judicial action should not proceed.”58_{Though the Chamber did not find enough evidence to consider this as}

proof of Nzirorera’s complicity, this testimony does raise the impression that Nzirorera was somehow financially involved in Kangura.59

57_{ICTR, Prosecutor against Nahimana et al., 40-44.} 58_{Ibid., 42.}

(34)

Awake the Majority People

Soon after its launch Kangura began to call for the building of a new community that would be authentic and pure. In February 1991 it started running the subtitle ‘The Voice that Awakens and Defends the Majority People’. The RPF attack of October 1990, Kangura claimed, had not ushered a civil war but actually a counter-revolution against the 1959 Hutu Revolution. Kangura had therefore imposed itself with the task to awaken the Rwandan Hutus, who were until now unaware of that fact, in order for them to stop this Tutsi counter-revolution. Hence, the ‘voice of the Hutu’, as Kangura was called, began to publish articles that illustrated this new, pure community that the Hutus were now striving for. Though Tutsis would be tolerated, they would also be closely monitored to prevent them from regaining power and to diminish their imminent dangerous presence. Thus, Kangura started to provide its readers with a utopian ideology that could not yet be achieved through the extermination, but at least with the monitoring and segregation of a certain group.60

Already in December 1990, Kangura published what would come to be known as its most infamous article. Under the title “Appeal to the Conscience of the Hutu”, Vincent Ntezimana announced the Hutu Ten Commandments.61 Tutsi infiltrators and accomplices within Rwanda, Ntezimana stated, supported the counter-revolution that was conducted by the Tutsi extremists. The aim of this counter-revolution was to “conquer the country and establish a regime based on their [the Tutsi] feudal monarchy.”62 Though the RPF attack had been repelled successfully, Ntezimana warned his readers that

… The enemy is still here, among us, and is biding his time to try again, at a more propitious moment, to decimate us.

Therefore, Hutu, wherever you may be, wake up! Be firm and vigilant. Take all necessary measures to deter the enemy from launching a fresh attack.63

Subsequently, the article described how this enemy was planning to dominate not only Rwanda, but the whole of Central Africa. Through its money and women, the Tutsi had infiltrated the higher circles to spy on influential Hutus. The Hutus were

60_{Ibid., 45; and Marcel Kabanda, “Kangura: the Triumph of Propaganda Refined,” in The Media and}

the Rwandan Genocide, ed. Allan Thompson (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 62-63.

61_{Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis, 130.}

62_{ICTR, Prosecutor against Nahimana et al., 45.} 63_Ibid.

(35)

therefore prompted to wake up, stay away from Tutsi women, recapture important economic and political positions, cease feeling pity for the Tutsi and accept the new Hutu ideology that had its roots in and defended the 1959 Hutu ‘social’ Revolution. These orders were defined in the concluding Hutu Ten Commandments.64

Yet, this was only the beginning. Over the next couple of years the relevance of these Ten Commandments was regularly emphasized and an increasing amount of accusations about the still growing Tutsi threat was published. Repeatedly Kangura underlined the fact that not only the RPF, but actually all the Tutsis in Rwanda were conducting a counter-revolution in an effort to regain power. Generalizing and dehumanizing became the order of the day. An article in the November 1990 issue read that

… the Tutsis live like cats. When you have milk, they will come to you. The only thing that makes them better than cats – or, rather, their difference with cats is that once they’ve already drunk the milk, they’ll try to find ways and means of taking the milk away from you or even to harm you or they will also try to rule you.65

Clearly, this article generalized the Tutsi, as they were all said to live like cats and they were all eager to harm or rule ‘you’ – and ‘you’ in this case were the Hutu readers of Kangura. The means by which they tried to achieve this dominance was through the use of women and money, as was already pointed out in the Commandments. The July 1993 edition reminded the Hutus:

When a Tutsi is in need of something from a Hutu, he is ready to sacrifice by using all the means including money, his sister or his wife. … Immediately a Tutsi gets what he wants from he a Hutu, he turns his back and hurts him as if they have never had anything in common.66

Over and over again, the Tutsi were portrayed as those who are everywhere, take everything, control the business sector, govern despite appearances and constitute the majority in the school system.67

In addition to making the Hutus aware of the Tutsi slyness, Kangura also informed its readers on how the Tutsi should be dealt with, and how this new, pure

64_{Ibid., 45-46. See Appendix 1 for the Ten Commandments.} 65_{Ibid., 58.}

66_{Ibid., 61.}

A Properly Closed Book: The ICTR and the secrecy around the Akazu