one of the biggest genocides in human history more than three years after its completion.
In less than three months, between 700,000 and over a million Rwandans were exterminated simply because they were or were thought to be Tutsis.
Several tens of thousands of Hutus were killed at the same time: either political oppo nents of the then regime, or people who refused or might have refused to join in the genocide. Before the killing took place, the population was estimated at about 7.5 million.
With few exceptions few have yet been brought to trial for this outrage. The victims' families - hundreds of thousands of them - are contending with terrible material and psychological conditions.
The direct complicity of (in particular) the French and Belgian authorities is being covered up or is simply denied. The deadly role of the macro. economic policies imposed by the multilateral financial institutions - World Bank and IMF - is being obscured. Worst of all, the survivors are being forced to pay for the weapons that were used to massacre their families and neighbours. Eric Toussaint reports: THE ANTI-TUTSI genocide was planned beginning in the early 1990s by the authoritarian regime of General Habyarimana which exuded a genocidal ideolgy at every level of the system The army increased eightfold in size from 1990 to 1993. The creation of the Interahamwe militias ("those who fight together") in 1992 was the finishing touch to the arrangements.
At the end of 1993 the killing machine was in place: in each of Rwanda's 146 municipalities, 200300 armed men, about one for every ten families, were ready to act.
The massacres started as carly as 1992-93. By the beginning of 1993 2000 people had already been assassinated. Each action was preceded by a mecting, often organised at the Were poised in gie de the do The were painstakingly delined. necessary means were put at the killers disposal: petrol coupons, vehtcles - often cars or trucks belonging The gendarmerie or the army proviaca inc opciations conce In January 1993 the Rwandan Federation for Human Rights published a report that stated, "The preconditions present During this whole preparatory mhase, General habys manas c rime ensoved constacrable inicinational support especially feam France. The Interahamwe mistlas were trained by French troops stationed in Rwanda. According to Janvier Afrika, who took part himself in massacres in the carly 1990s, "The French taught us how to catch people and how to tie them up."
French support for Habyarimana goes back to 1975, when a first milicary co-operation agreement was signed by Giscard d'Estaing. Before chis time Rwanda did not seem to be an acave part of icaces 101584 Belgium on the other hand, the former colonial power, was omnipresent in Kwanda. It provided military aid to the Rwandan army until the genocide began on 1994. Habyarimana regularly visited the Belgian king and queen at the royal palace. When King Baudouin died, Habyarimana graced the official ceremony an honour which The MNRD, the ruling party Habyarimana created, was largely financed and supported on the Democratic International and the Flemish and Walloon Christian France greatly increased its mili. dan Patriotic Front (FPR) launched a military offensive from Uganda in October 1990. Mitterrand sent paratroopers stationed in the Central AFrican Republic to support the Rwandan regime and evacuate forMore than 1000 French troops times between October 1990 and 1993, even though Paris saw where the Rwandan regime was heading.
When the Arusha accords were signed in January 1993-accords for a democratic transition between the Habyarimana regime and the FPRMitterrand reaffirmed his total support for the regime. He was afraid of the accords being implemented, of French influence.
On 6 April 1994, the signal was given to begin the genocide when a missile destroyed the plane bringing Habyarimana and his Burundian colleague from a negotiating session in Dar-es-Salaam. In a few hours hundreds of Hutu political opponents were assassinated according to a minutely prepared plan. The prime minister herselt was assasstnated. Ten Belgian paratroopers, members of MINUAR - the UN multinational force - were massaselves. The MINUAR command let The provisional government that toek over held its meetines in the French embassy. The massacre of oppollents and the launching of the genocide was directed from there.
Several hundred thousand people died in a few weeks. At the end of June 1994, the genocide was an accomplished fact. The figure of a milOperation Turquoise was launched by France ten weeks after the massacres began, essentially in order to allow what was left of the Rwandan army and the genocidal militias to retreat into Zaire, bringing hundreds of thousands of civilThe policies imposed by the international financial institutions, the Habyarimana regime's main funders, accelerated the process Icading to genocide. The negative effects of these policies are generally ignored in explaining the tragic outcome of the Rwandan crisis.
In the carly 1980s, when the Third World debt crisis broke our, Rwanda (like its neighbour Burundi had very little debt. While elsewhere in the world the World Bank and IMF abandoned their active lending policies and preached abstinence, they adopted a different attitude towards Rwanda.
Dictatorial
The dictatorial regime in power since 1973 guaranteed that Rwanda would not adopt policies of progrestively supported by the Western powers: Belgium, France and Swit• It was seen as a potential bulwark against countries in the region that were clinging to old notions about independence and progressive change (neighbouring Tanzania, for example). During the 1980s and up until 1994, Rwanda roceived many loans, of which Habyarimana appropriated a considerable share. Rwandan economy more tightly into the world economy by developing its potential exports - coffee, tea and tin - at the expense of crops meant to satisfy local needs. The model worked until the mid-1980s, when first tin prices collapsed, then coffee prices, and finally tea prices Rwanda, for which coffee was its main source of hard currency, was hard hit by the US-provoked breakSeveral weeks before the FPR Profitably for the arms dealers, the Rwanda crisis has spilled over into Zaire coffee producers. These farmers and the most impoverished citydwellers constituted from then on a permanent source of recruits for the Interahamwe militias and the army.
Ninety per cent of the population lives in the countryside, and 20 per cent of the peasant population has less than a half-hectare of land per family. Between 1982 and 1994, there was a massive process of im. poverishment of the majority of the rural population, with an impressive accumulation of wealth at the other extreme of society.
According to Professor Jef Maton, the richest 10 per cent of the population took in 20 per cent of rural income in 1982, 41 per cent in 1992, 45 per cent in 1993, and 51 per cent in carly 1994. The catastrophic social impact of the policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank and the fall of coffee prices on the world market (which also had something to do with the Bretton Woods insti• tutions' policies) played a key role in the crisis, i he enormous social discontent was channelled by the Habyarimana regime towards genocide.
Weapons spree
Both the hard currency and the particular credit mechanisms given by the World Bank after 1990 enabled the Rwandan authorities to finance massive purchases of weapons for the genocide. Military spending tripled from 1990 to 1992. The World Bank and IMF sent several expert missions during this period: the experts stressed various positive aspects of Habyarimana's austerity policies but threatened to suspend payments if military spending con. tinued to grow. erly hidden: trucks bought for the army were covered by the Ministry of Transport budget; petrol used by army vehicles was covered by the Ministry of Health budget, etc.
Finally, the World Bank and IMF turned off the financial aid tap in carly 1993. But they did not block the bank accounts that the Kwandan authorities held in major banks abroad; major sums in these accounts remained available for arm' purchases.
Rwanda's main arms suppliers in 1990-94 were France, Beigium, South Africa, Egypt and the People's. Republic of China.
Once the genocide was under way, while the UN had decreed an arms embargo since 11 May 1994, France and the British firm Mil-Tec supplied arms to the criminal army through the Goma airport in Zaire.
Once Kigali was taken by the FPR, several high officials responsible for the genocide were received at the Elysee palace. The Rwandan authorities in exile, with the help of the French army, set up the head. quarters of the Rwandan National Bank in Goma. From this office they continued payments for arms sales until the end of August 1994. Several private banks accepted orders of payment from the perpetrators of genocide.
Today, Rwanda's foreign debt is almost $1 billion, almost entirely contracted by the Habyarimana regime. From 1998, Rwanda will have to pay back S155 million each year to its creditors, mainly the Bretton Woods institutions. Can we accept that those who survived the genocide will be forced to pay for the weapons with which the crime was arricd out?