On April 6, 1994, the plane carrying the President of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, and the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, both of Hutu ethnicity, was shot down. This attack
served as the pretext for the violent and indiscriminate killing of the Tutsi population, the minority group that shared the Rwandan territory with the Hutu.
To fully understand what happened 30 years ago, however, it is necessary to take a step back in history.
The background
Before making any consideration on the topic, it's important to clarify that the Hutu and Tutsi ethnicities have never objectively existed: these two peoples are not ethnic or religious minorities, but, on the contrary, their "transformation" into irreconcilable and distinct ethnicities, which would later be internalized by both parties, was the result of the European colonilization.
Historically, the country's population can be divided into 3 groups: Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. The latter, according to historical hypotheses, were the first to settle and represent a minuscule percentage of the Rwandan population, while the Hutu, predominantly farmers, constitute the majority. Finally, there are the Tutsi, a group dedicated to cattle herding.
It's crucial to understand this typical (and peaceful) coexistence of the two peoples from the origins in order to (and must) question how it was possible for an event of such magnitude to occur when, from the beginning, there were no particular reasons to cultivate such hatred towards someone who represented not only a neighbor but also a brother, a friend.
European Colonialism
The colonizers, first the Germans and then the Belgians (to whom the League of Nations had entrusted the government of the country at the end of the First World War), relied on the so-called Hamitic hypothesis (or Camitic, depending on the writings), which, referring to Genesis, identified dark-skinned men as the descendants of Cam/Ham, one of Noah's three sons; Ham, after seeing his father naked, received a curse, and for this reason, his descendants were considered degenerate and impure.
This is the idea of colonialism and modern racism that consolidated in the nineteenth century and, effectively, led Europeans to consider the Tutsi as the survivors of the original humanity and, consequently, as the most suitable to govern, to the detriment of the Hutu population, black, and therefore naturally inferior. It was particularly with the Belgians that this ideology solidified: the Hutu were defined as a Bantu group, while the Tutsi, in the eyes of the scholars of the time and within the framework of the Hamitic theory, had a very different origin, a noble origin.
The perspective shift
The second half of the 1950s was marked by strong social tension between the two peoples, with a gradual crystallization of the two factions. Towards the end of 1959, events escalated, and the Belgians, although understanding the situation, failed to manage it.
In the early months of 1960, the colonial government decided to replace many Tutsi leaders with Hutu ones, who, mindful of the past, organized a violent and systematic persecution against a people who began to be increasingly seen as a rival, forcing them into exile in neighboring countries.
Following the abolition of the monarchy and the proclamation of the republic in 1961, the following year Rwanda, coming off a series of violent conflicts, became independent despite not being ready for this complex process.
If from the moment of the revolution there were the first violent acts against the Tutsi, it was from 1963 that the first massacres and expulsions took place, accompanied by systems of quotas in public employment and education, to clearly show the minority its place in society.
These initial measures were followed by increasingly stringent ones, made possible also by the rise to power of the new president Habyarimana and the consolidation of his dictatorial regime starting from 1973.
In fact, there was a reversal of roles: the Hutu became the indigenous people while the Tutsi became the colonizers, and this was the starting point of an extremism that contributed to turning the victims of the colonial period into potential killers.
From violence to genocide
Starting from 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), composed of the second generation of Tutsi exiles in Uganda, decided to launch a full-scale offensive on Rwandan territory, which soon turned into a genuine and bloody act of war.
Meanwhile, the most extremist wing linked to the presidential movement had created an organization capable of large-scale killing, fearing collaboration between the Tutsi inside and outside the country. From this moment onwards, localized massacres occurred, effectively foreshadowing the genocide. With the threat of the FPR at the country's doorstep, after seventeen years, the regime seemed to be faltering. It was precisely at this moment that the leadership of the MRND (the presidential party), with Habyarimana at the forefront, chose to use any means to regain popularity and galvanize the masses against the common enemy.
A crucial event was the signing of the Arusha Accords on August 4, 1993, between the government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a measure that marked the birth of a transitional government, consolidating the rebels' goal of shifting the struggle for power onto a political rather than solely ethnic plane. The event clearly constituted the defeat of the Hutu (those in the North in particular), resulting in a radicalization of extremists: starting from December of the same year, weapons were distributed, and preparations for the attack began.
This last observation is particularly important to understand that, regardless of the timing of the final decision, the police, administration, and army were already operational and waiting for the best moment to attack, which did not take long to arrive.
On April 6, 1994, at 8:30 PM, the presidential plane carrying then-President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while returning from a peace talk, accompanied by his Burundian colleague Ntaryamira. To this day, it remains unknown who launched that missile, although the most credible hypotheses point to the responsibility of extremist factions within the president's own party, who opposed the ratification of the Arusha agreement granting the Rwandan Patriotic Front an important political and military role within Rwandan society.
What matters is that officially, the attack was attributed to the RPF, and so, immediately after the plane crash, massacres began during the night of April 6, under the pretext of cross-tribal revenge: everything was already set for the genocide.
Victims were chosen solely because they were Tutsi, without exception: men, women, children, the elderly, and the sick, whose identification was facilitated by identity cards introduced during the colonial period.
For 100 days, massacres and atrocities of all kinds occurred, and nearly a million people were systematically massacred.
A hate cultivated over years
Several historians agree that in Rwanda, the decision to proceed with the genocide took root in a manner similar to what happened in the Holocaust: in other words, this could only be the logical conclusion of a series of preparatory acts and more or less explicit planning. From the revolution of 1959 onwards, the Tutsi group is considered an imposter scheming in the shadows, a treacherous speculator, a parasite.
In 1973, the coup by Juvénal Habyarimana strengthens the regime, and this has initial consequences that sound like a warning bell: to isolate the "Tutsi cockroaches", their deportation is ordered, often accompanied by the confiscation of their belongings. These initial measures are followed by others that become increasingly discriminatory
day by day: the first racial laws are enacted, and admission quotas
in schools are introduced, prohibiting mixed marriages, as if the idea that the two ethnicities should remain strictly separated from each other without "contamination" were not already clear enough.
Today, the issue of the plane's downing is not the only knot to untie: among the criticisms, there is also the indifferent attitude of the international community and, above all, the failure of intervention by the UN.
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Translated by Stefania Errico