For those who have experienced or studied the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, its facts might seem like common knowledge. The extremist Hutu killers made no secret of their target: Tutsis. Their extermination chants and their zeal in killing Tutsis for more than three months stay in our memories, as does the hate-filled Kantano Habimana directing them on RTLM radio. Tutsis were explicitly targeted via media and speeches, labeled “cockroaches” and foreigners who deserved to be sent down the Nyabarongo River to Abyssinia, “where they came from.”
However, a recent experience in a Twitter Space (a feature for live audio group discussions) revealed to me that what seems commonly understood about the genocide is, in fact, not so universally acknowledged. As with the Holocaust, despite extensive scholarship and survivor testimonies, the genocide against the Tutsis continues to face denial and lack of understanding. During this discussion, I was abruptly removed for merely mentioning the term “genocide against the Tutsis,” a phrase the participants vehemently contested.
Their main argument was against the specific phrase “genocide against the Tutsi,” noting that Hutus were also victims during the same period. While it’s true that some Hutus were killed, including moderates who opposed the Habyarimana regime, those married to Tutsis, and even Hutus mistaken for Tutsis because of facial stereotypes, this doesn’t alter the characterization of the event as a genocide against the Tutsi.
The term “genocide against the Tutsi” doesn’t negate the fact that others, including foreigners, were killed; it simply clarifies the primary intent of the perpetrators: to exterminate the Tutsi as an ethnic group.
This distinction is crucial. The Tutsis were targeted for extermination based on their ethnic identity, which aligns with the 1948 UN Genocide Convention’s definition. The Convention defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That is what sets genocide apart from other crimes.
The moderate Hutus and others were targeted for their actions (such as marrying or protecting Tutsis or opposing the Hutu Power faction) and their political views. Examples include Boniface Ngurinzira, the Foreign Affairs Minister from the moderate MDR party, and Agathe Uwiringiyimana, the Prime Minister, both of whom were murdered not for being Hutus, but for their political opposition to the Habyarimana regime and the subsequent genocidal government.
These killings, while heinous, fall under different categories of international law, such as crimes against humanity or war crimes, but not under genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. Whether to include political groups in the definition was debated by scholars and human rights activists during the drafting of the Convention, but they were left out of the final version.
Some extremists call the term “genocide against the Tutsi” RPF propaganda, but it is not. Survivors have fought to have a clear definition of the extermination of Tutsis since 1994, when the new RPF government used vague phrases like ‘’itsembatsemba n’itsembabwoko,” loosely translated as “massacres and genocide.” It took more than 10 years of advocacy for the RPF government to start using the term “genocide against the Tutsi,” as survivors had demanded from the start.
While the term ‘’genocide against the Tutsi’’ is a good starting point, I hope a better term can be coined to show the scale of this tragedy, which annihilated nine out of ten Tutsis in Rwanda. My preference is something like Irimburabatutsi (the annihilation of the Tutsi).
In Rwanda, possessing an ID card labeled “Tutsi” was effectively a death sentence, whereas “Hutu” indicated a chance for survival. Moderate Hutus could sometimes find safety in unfamiliar areas, but for Tutsis, there was no safe haven in Rwanda during the genocide.
That is why the term “genocide against the Tutsi” is not only accurate but necessary, for history and for the law. As that Twitter Space showed me, many people still don’t understand this, so we have to keep explaining it.
Written by Albert Gasake, December 18, 2023.
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