World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [89]
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In October 1990 a Tutsi-led rebel army calling itself the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPF) invaded Rwanda from neighboring Uganda. According to Gourevitch, most Rwandan Tutsis had no idea that the RPF even existed. But to mobilize support for himself, Habyarimana declared all Tutsis in Rwanda to be RPF “accomplices,” and Hutus who did not accept this view were branded “Tutsi-loving traitors.” Hutu extremists and Hutu youth militias “promoted genocide as a carnival romp. Hutu Power youth leaders, jetting around on motorbikes and sporting pop hairstyles, dark glasses, and flamboyantly colored pajama suits and robes, preached ethnic solidarity and civil defense to increasingly packed rallies.” Other Hutus “drew up lists of Tutsis, and went on retreats to practice burning houses, tossing grenades, and hacking dummies up with machetes.”
Meanwhile, “freedom of the press,” ironically encouraged by Amnesty International, led to the enormous influence of a newspaper called Kangura—“Wake It Up”—which billed itself as “the voice that seeks to awake and guide the majority people.” The Kangura, launched in 1990, was edited by Hassan Ngeze, a diabolically effective Hutu supremacist with a knack for appealing to the ordinary Hutu. On one occasion another newspaper ran a cartoon depicting Ngeze on a couch, being psychoanalyzed by “the democratic press.” The cartoon showed the following exchange:
Ngeze: I’m sick Doctor!!
Doctor: Your sickness?!
Ngeze: The Tutsis . . . Tutsis . . . Tutsis!!!!!
Ngeze was apparently delighted; he ran the cartoon in his own Kangura. In his most famous article, “The Hutu Ten Commandments,” published in December 1990, Ngeze called on Hutu women to “guard against the Tutsi-loving impulses of Hutu men”; declared all Tutsis “dishonest”; and urged Hutus to have “unity and solidarity” against “their common Tutsi enemy.” The Hutu Ten Commandments were widely circulated and phenomenally popular. The eighth and most frequently quoted commandment said, “Hutus must stop having mercy on the Tutsis.”
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In 1993, President Habyarimana signed a peace accord with the RPF. Hutu Power leaders cried treason, branded Habyarimana an “accomplice,” and called for the extermination of the entire Tutsi population: for being sympathizers of the RPF—and just for being Tutsi “cockroaches.” Ngeze added his voice. In Kangura, he warned the United Nations Assistance Mission to stay out of the way and urged Rwandans: “[L]et’s kill each other. . . . Let whatever is smouldering erupt. . . . At such a time a lot of blood will be spilled.”
In the spring and early summer of 1994, Hutu Power began broadcasting nationwide calls for the slaughter of Rwanda’s Tutsis. In Gourevitch’s words, “Hutus young and old rose to the task.” In just one hundred days, ordinary Hutus killed approximately eight hundred thousand Tutsis, mostly with machetes:
Neighbors hacked neighbors to death in their homes, and colleagues hacked colleagues to death in their workplaces. Doctors killed their patients, and schoolteachers killed their pupils. Within days, the Tutsi populations of many villages were all but eliminated, and in Kigali prisoners were released in work gangs to collect the corpses that lined the roadsides. Throughout Rwanda, mass rape and looting accompanied the slaughter. . . . Radio announcers reminded listeners not to take pity on women and children. As an added incentive to the killers, Tutsis’ belongings were parceled out in advance—the radio, the couch, the goat, the opportunity to rape a young girl. A councilwoman in one Kigali neighborhood was reported to have offered fifty Rwandan