Citation
The Houston Chronicle
August 14, 1994, Sunday, 3 STAR Edition
BYLINE: RAYMOND BONNER; New York Times
DATELINE: KIBUYE, Rwanda
BODY:
KIBUYE, Rwanda -- Inside the Roman Catholic church, a stone
edifice with a rectangular bell tower high on a promontory jutting
into Lake Kivu, several thousand Tutsi men, women and children
sought sanctuary last April when killing started in their villages.
But a mob of several hundred Hutu men, some in uniforms with
rifles but most in civilian clothes with clubs and machetes, had no
respect for the church or for life.
The killing began about 10 a.m.; by early afternoon, blood
and bodies filled the cement-floor of the church, the small side
chapels, even the confessional booths. Then the killers went off to
drink beer.
The next day, the mob moved on to the soccer stadium, less
than a mile away in this small, grubby town with only one dirt road
running through it. More than 7,000 Tutsi were gathered there. The
soldiers fired rifle grenades into the crowd, then the militia
swarmed over it, hacking and beating people to death.
The slaughter started late in the afternoon, and some people
were still alive at nightfall. So the next morning, the mob
returned to finish the job.
The violence in Kibuye was neither random nor spontaneous,
and the United Nations has opened a sweeping investigation into
massacres like these in the hope of trying the main culprits for
what it calls acts of genocide in Rwanda.
Trials by international tribunals could yield some detailed
answers on how the killings were orchestrated. But for now the
outside world is struggling for an answer to the more troubling
question of why so many people in Rwandan towns took part -- or
stood by passively -- when friends, neighbors and children were
butchered.
In Kibuye, some of the survivors are pondering the same
issue. The massacres here were ""the last step'' in eliminating the
Tutsi in the province of Kibuye, Augustin Karara, the mayor of this
provincial capital, said.
He said that the mob had tried to force him to join the
rampage, but that he had refused. Perhaps by virtue of his
position, the mayor was not killed.
Other men joined against their will, to save their own lives.
Join roving mobs or die
Evode Micomyiza, a 33-year-old civics teacher, said he stood on
the hill at the east end of the soccer stadium that day with a club
in his hand as other men chopped and clubbed defenseless men, women
and children.
Micomyiza said that he did not kill anyone and that he had
gone along only because a gang heading to the stadium had said that
if he did not join them it was proof that he was a supporter of the
Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi-led rebel army.
""We were forced to move with the killers in order not to be
killed,'' he said.
""Everyone had to participate,'' said Bernard Ndutiye, a
Lutheran minister here. ""To prove that you weren't RPF, you had to
walk around with a club. Being a pastor was not an excuse. They
said you can have religion afterward. ''
Ndutiye said every morning for days before the massacres,
mobs roamed the town beating on drums and blowing whistles, calling
men out of their houses to join them.
One day, a gang came to Ndutiye's house and found he was
protecting three Tutsi children -- his children's playmates. The
gang clubbed one of the Tutsi boys to death in front of Ndutiye.
After that, Ndutiye said he agreed to take up a machete, but he
said he never killed anyone and found that if he feigned sickness
the gangs would leave him alone.
Massacre reasons cited
At the moment a few things seem clear. It was not random
violence that engulfed this country. ""Five hundred thousand people
aren't killed by a bunch of guys with machetes,'' says Lt. Col.
Erik de Stabenrath, a French military officer who has investigated
the massacres.
Land is often cited as the root cause of the killings – that
Hutu and Tutsi killed each other to keep the land they had or to
take over the land of others. While this is one of the world's most
densely populated countries, and rural peasants make up the bulk of
the population, that explanation is not complete.
Others point to long-simmering resentment between the Hutu
majority and the Tutsi minority. But ethnic differences between the
two are slight -- they speak the same language and have
intermarried for so many generations that many Rwandans do not know
if another person is a Hutu or a Tutsi.
Another explanation is that the violence arose out of a
struggle for political power.
During centuries of feudalism, the Tutsi ruled, even though
they made up only about 15 percent of the population. The Belgians
perpetuated Tutsi dominance. In 1959 the Hutu started to rise, and
by the time of independence in 1962 they were on top. They killed
thousands of Tutsi and forced tens of thousands into exile.
In 1990 a group of exiled Tutsi in Uganda launched a civil
war under the banner of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and the Hutu
began to worry about losing power. Under pressure from Western
governments, Rwanda, which had been a one-party state since
independence, allowed other parties to form.
The parties created organizations for young people. The
ruling Hutu party, the National Republican Movement for Democracy
and Development, called its youth wing the Interahamwe (pronounced
inter-a-hahm-way), which means ""those who attack together. ''
Interahamwe has since entered the Rwandan lexicon as a word used
loosely and interchangeably with ""militia. ''
The Rwandan Army provided the Interahamwe with the arms and
training that turned it into a military organization. As the rebel
Patriotic Front advanced, the militia focused on Tutsi as targets.
Soon every Tutsi was seen as a rebel supporter, as were moderate
Hutu.
With support from elements of the army, the militia launched
what was tantamount to the final solution in April after President
Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, died in a mysterious plane crash.
Within hours, the killings started.
Militia recruits peasants
The militiamen who came to Kibuye were from other parts of
the country, Micomyiza and other residents said, a pattern that has
been reported throughout the country. Then, the militia recruited
peasants.
The message was a simple one -- all Tutsi were supporters of
the Patriotic Front and if the Front won the war, all Hutu would be
killed.
Micomyiza got dragged into the butchery.
""It was just a way of protecting myself,'' he said.
But why had he even passively taken part?
""I come back to the question of freedom and liberty,''
Micomyiza said. ""If I had been free I wouldn't have picked up that
club. ''
GRAPHIC: Photo: Rwandan children scramble for loose beans at a food distribution
center Saturday at a refugee camp near Goma, Zaire; Associated Press
