The Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda lasted for 30 years not 100 days
Jean-Luc Galabert
“ Genocide ” Charge in Rwanda , U . N . Plans to Assist Refugees ; “ Rwanda Policy of Genocide Alleged ” ; “ Batutsi : Are They Victims of Genocide ?” ; “ Véritable génocide au Rwanda ” ; “ Sommes-nous complices d ’ un génocide ?” 1
1 These headlines appeared respectively in The Times on February 3 and 16 , Washington Post and Times Herald on February 16 , Tribune de Lausanne on February 12 , Pourquoi pas on February 7
These headlines do not date from 1994 , but from 1964 . The word genocide had been on the front pages of the international media three decades earlier , to designate the attempted extermination of Rwanda ’ s Tutsi population . Thirty years is a short time , barely more than a generation . How can we explain the astonishment and the difficulty of almost all journalists , intellectuals and politicians in the West to qualify as genocide the 1994 cataclysm ? We must admit that the acts of genocide perpetrated in the early 1960s were the object of a successful campaign of denial which continues to affect the world ’ s understanding of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi .
Denial was the condition for the maintenance in power of governments that pursued , with impunity , a policy of " ethnic " apartheid for three decades in which the deliberate massacre of a part of their population was always a foreseeable political option .
From the outset , the Parmehutu party that took power in Rwanda with the support of the Belgian authorities and the country ’ s highest Catholic hierarchy established anti-Tutsi violence as its major principle of political action . In November 1959 , to hasten its takeover of the country , this party organized a campaign of violence and looting of the property of Tutsi families in the regions where the party was well established . Faced with this situation , the Belgian authorities placed the country under a state of emergency and entrusted the reins of the country to Colonel Guy Logiest .
Fully empowered , the new master of Rwanda took up the cause of the rioters , dismissed the Rwandan administrative staff and replaced them with Parmehutu militants , encouraged the exile of Tutsi families abroad , organized the deportation of hundreds of them to retention zones inside Rwanda , banished the King of Rwanda from the territory , set up an exclusively Hutu Rwandan army , and in a climate of terror managed the process that led to the seizure of power by Parmehutu . The ultimate objective was to oversee the independence of the country under the control of a party and a president endorsed by the colonial power , Belgium .
Several archival documents show that , as early as 1960 , the Belgian administration envisaged the possibility of a genocidal drift by Parmehutu , which would soon control all the wheels of power in Rwanda . In a Belgian Security report of 9 December 1960 , exhumed by the historian Léon Saur , an intelligence agent passed on the following note to Guy Logiest : “ A member of Parmehutu declared to me that in the event of an attack by Tutsis from outside , the Hutus would first kill all the Tutsis living in the country ”. 2
Exasperated by the lack of reaction from his superior , the author of this note added in the margin , “ The Special Resident has been briefed on this kind of thing . What does he do about it ? Will he do anything about it ? Do we have the right to know ? Or does all of this disappear into the abyss of his unalterable self-confidence ?” In fact , Guy Logiest was perfectly aware of the danger brought to his atten-
2 December 1960 7th and 8th Mission report addressed to the Resident of Rwanda in Kigali , December 9th 1960
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