April 6, 1994: Rwandan genocide begins when the aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana is shot down

By Scott Peterson | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

From the April 19, 1994 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

Rwanda’s Tragedy Plays Out in War-Torn Capital

HIGHLIGHT: Since the murder of its president on April 6, this tiny
Central African country has been plunged into violence, fueled
increasingly by ethnic rivalries. As the fighting rages, relief
agencies do what they can to avert starvation.



KIGALI, RWANDA - A CROWD of Rwandans lining the muddy road are silent, stopping
momentarily from their bloody work like children caught with their
hands in the cookie jar. Armed with cudgels, machetes, and long
knives, their handiwork is nearby: three corpses, bleeding in the
dirt.

An hour later, as I pass by that spot with a group of Belgian
evacuees, the number of those killed by the crowd has risen to 11.
One Belgian woman peers over the edge of the truck and grimaces
with fear: ”Oh God,” she gasps. ”Is it like that everywhere?”

Such brutality among the lush hills of the central African
nation of Rwanda - home to the famous mountain gorilla and formerly
known as the ”Switzerland of Africa” - is inescapable. No one is
safe as Rwanda slides back to all-out civil war. Violence is
random, lurking around corners on muddy trails and behind thick
undergrowth.

Fighting has centered on gaining control of the Rwandan capital,
Kigali. It continues despite United Nations attempts to arrange
truce talks between rebels and government forces.

As senior commanders considered each others’ conditions for
peace over the weekend, rival sides fought noisy street battles
along a shifting front line. Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels,
mainly members of the minority Tutsi tribe, advanced last week from
bases in the north toward Kigali’s city center to ”restore
order.”

This added to an already violent mix in the capital sparked by
the death of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose plane was
shot down nearly two weeks ago. UN officials believe that rocket
attack was launched by Hutu extremists inside the elite
Presidential Guard. The extremists were concerned that the
president, a Hutu, was giving too much to the Tutsi in the
implementation of peace accords signed last August.

Members of the Guard then rampaged through Kigali suburbs
seeking opponents of the regime, battling with regular Army and
gendarme forces. That slaughter revived latent rivalries between
the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. People in the capital formed militia
units and gangs of looters along ethnic lines. They armed
themselves with all manner of instruments of death, from
screwdrivers to hand grenades.

The RPF rebels broke through a UN-monitored demilitarized zone
north of Kigali to reinforce a battalion of 600 rebels billeted in
the capital as part of now-forgotten peace accords signed last
August. A rebel occupation of the city is almost certain to provoke
a bloody backlash from Hutus, Rwandans and relief workers say.

The carnage already has taken tens of thousands of lives,
according to relief workers, though International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC) delegate Patrick Gasser admits that now the death
toll is so high that the actual number of dead is ”academic.”

Ethnic conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi first became violent
during Belgium’s colonial rule. From the late 1950s to independence
in 1962, colonial authorities sought to maintain control by playing
the tribes off one another. The Belgians for years backed the
better-educated Tutsi; but in 1959, as independence approached,
they switched support to the majority Hutu.

More than 2,000 UN peacekeeping troops are in Rwanda to monitor
the cease-fire, but the final pullout, expected yesterday, of 400
Belgian UN troops from the force - along with the logistic and
military backbone they provide - has left the remaining units,
mostly from Bangladesh and Ghana, apprehensive. But the UN mandate
is so limited that they can do nothing to stop the slaughter.

”We can’t do anything for the civilians. We must stay
neutral,” says Belgian UN 1st Lt. Oliver Carlens. ”I’ve seen
women and children massacred there, in front of our compound, but
we cannot intervene.”

Canadian UN commander Gen. Romeo Dallaire admits that his troops
have witnessed incredible massacres. The killers, he says, are
”like demons in human form.”

As rebels further infiltrate Kigali, the mood among mostly Hutu
government soldiers and civilians at makeshift barricades turns
ugly. Government radio Mille Collines, run by Hutu extremists,
further fuels the Rwanda’s style of ”ethnic cleansing” by
broadcasting messages summed up by one foreign listener this way:
”A good Tutsi is a dead Tutsi.”

Soldiers patrolling one set of back streets stop long enough for
passersby to see a dead pregnant woman with a small child they just
killed and left behind - along with the corpses of others soaked in
fresh blood. A gang of youth and soldiers sit in the back of one
pick-up truck, and one boy of about 14 holds a heavy club, spiny
with long nails. This lethal mace is covered in blood, but his
young eyes hardly look like those of a murderer.

ICRC delegates have temporarily suspended collecting the wounded
since a Red Cross ambulance was stopped at a checkpoint on April
14, and the six wounded inside were dragged out by the crowd and
bayoneted to death. ICRC delegates broke down in tears after
learning that 30 of their 120 local Rwandan staff had been killed
in the past week, and that more were losing their lives each day.

Terrified screams could be heard at night from the hotel where
most journalists stayed until a few days ago, only to be silenced
after bursts of gunfire.

UN commander General Dallaire says that rebel tactics of advance
and withdraw in the city make the front line fluid and dangerous.
Control of areas shifts depending on ‘’sector and time of day,” he
says.

REBEL forces number some 15,000, and are considered a relatively
even match for the demoralized government force of 30,000 to 35,000
troops. The August peace accord, signed after three years of civil
war, stipulated the formation of a joint Rwandan Army of 20,000
soldiers.

As the rival armies continue to battle instead, they considered
conditions for truce. Government forces on Sunday broadcast truce
conditions for the first time, though they are widely blamed by
civilians for sparking the slaughter.

The Army ”demanded an immediate halt to firing and military
operations” and ”punitive raids” by the RPF. They also want
their security forces to patrol the capital to stem the
bloodletting, though throughout the crisis, such units have moved
at ease throughout Kigali, leaving in their wake a path of
destruction.

The RPF say they have agreed to conducting joint patrols and the
restoration of telecommunications services in the areas under their
control.

Dallaire says that UN mediation attempts are still useful,
though three cease-fires announced by the UN last week dissolved
almost immediately. During a brief lull in the fighting, though, he
told journalists that he was not entirely optimistic: ”When people
suffer so much, and in many cases have so little to lose, their
instincts tend to come to the surface faster,” he said.