WAR CRIMES AND ATROCITIES (True Crime) (36 page)

Genocide In Rwanda

1994

Rwanda is a tiny country in Central Africa and is probably best remembered as being the subject of one of the most intensive killing campaigns ever to take place. In a period of 13 weeks after 6 April, 1994, as many as half a million people perished in a mass slaughter, almost three-quarters of the minority Tutsi population. At the same time, thousands of majority Hutus were also slain because they opposed the killing campaign and the forces that were in control of it.

RWANDAN HISTORY

Rwanda’s population is divided into two ethnic groups: the Hutus and the Tutsis. The Hutus make up the larger number and they are by tradition crop growers and farmers. Over the centuries, Hutus have attracted Tutsis from northern Africa to come and work in Rwanda and, for over 600 years, the two groups shared the same language, culture and nationality. Rwanda was first colonized by the Germans, but during World War I the country was taken over by the Belgians, who upset the balance of the community and caused a rift between the two groups. Using the strategy of ‘divide and rule’, the Belgians granted preferential status to the minority Tutsis because they were predominantly the landowners, while the Hutus mainly worked on the land. This thoughtless introduction of a class structure unsettled the stability of the Rwandan population. Proud of their new status, some of the Tutsis started to behave like aristocrats, which made the Hutus feel like the underdogs, and a political divide was formed.

To add to the already vulnerable situation, the Europeans introduced modern weapons and modern methods of war. Missionaries also came from Europe, bringing with them a new twist – they taught the Hutus to see themselves as the underdogs – which helped to inspire a revolution. With the backing of the Europeans, the Hutus chose to fight back, resulting in the loss of over 100,000 lives in the 1956 rebellion. Three years later the Hutus had seized power and were stripping the Tutsis of their land and control of Rwanda. Over 200,000 Tutsis retreated to neighbouring countries, where they formed their own army, the Rwandan Patriotric Front (RPF). The Tutsis trained their men and bided their time, waiting for the right opportunity to get their own back on the Hutus.

POLITICAL UNREST

After their initial delight in succeeding to take power and Rwanda’s independence in 1962, the inexperienced Hutus started to face turmoil within their own government. Tension built up and, all the while aware that the Tutsis might retaliate, the Hutus started to take repressive measures. In 1990, the RPF rebels seized the moment and attacked, forcing the Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana into signing an agreement that sanctioned the Hutus and Tutsis would have equal power. Hutus, however, fiercely opposed any Tutsi involvement in running the government and ethic tensions heightened. The situation was made even worse when a plane carrying Burundi’s president, Melchior Ndadaye, was shot down.

Aware that the fragile ceasefire that had been put in place in 1993 was about to crumble, the UN sent a peacekeeping force of around 2,500 multinational soldiers to try and stop the aggression that was building up. The Hutus, who had openly accused the Tutsis of assassinating their president, decided that the only solution was to annihilate the entire Tutsi population. In April 1994, amid ever-increasing threats of violence, the Rwandan president, Habyarimana and the new Burundi president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, held peace meetings with the Tutsi rebels. The final straw in the camel’s back took place on 6 April, when a small plane carrying the two presidents was shot down by ground-fired missiles as it approached Kigali airport. Their deaths plunged Rwanda into a frenzied state of political violence and the genocide began.

THE GENOCIDE

Just 24 hours after the plane was shot down, roadblocks started to appear on the roads around Kigali, manned by the Interahamwe militia. The Interahamwe (meaning ‘Those Who Stand Together’ or ‘Those Who Fight Together’) was the most important of the militias formed by the Hutus. Tutsis were immediately separated from the Hutus and literally hacked to death with machetes on the side of the road. Victims who could afford to pay were given the option of dying from a bullet. Specially organized death squads, working from carefully prepared lists, went from neighbourhood to neighbourhood in Kigali. Not only did they murder all the Tutsis, but they picked on moderate Hutus as well, including their prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The prime minister was protected by Belgian guards, who the Hutus arrested, disarmed, tortured and then murdered, which prompted the Belgians to withdraw the remainder of its UN troops – just what the Hutus wanted.

The violence spread like wildfire, moving from Kigali into the surrounding rural areas. Via the radio, the government urged Tutsis to congregate at churches, schools and stadiums, promising that they would make these safe places of refuge. Little did they realize that by gathering in large groups they actually made themselves easy targets. Surprisingly, some of the helpless civilians were able to ward off attacks by simply using sticks and stones – that is until the joint forces of the Rwandan army and presidential guard were brought in to wipe them out with machine guns and grenades. Against this kind of attack they had no defence. In just two weeks, by 21 April, it is thought that as many as 250,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered, making it one of the most concentrated acts of genocide ever witnessed by the world.

What made the genocide even more atrocious is the fact that it was aided and abetted by government officials, who even bribed the killers to do their dirty work. Local officials assisted in rounding up the victims, making suitable places available for the Hutus to carry out their slaughter. Men, women, children and babies alike, were killed in their thousands in schools and churches, in some cases the clergy conspired with the killers. The victims, already frozen by fear, had to bear the fact that they were being killed by people they knew – neighbours, fellow workers, sometimes even relatives by marriage.

The Interahamwe weren’t driven by drink, drugs or even mindless violence, but a fanatical dedication to fight for their cause. They were cold-blooded killers who were urged not only by the media, but also by their own government to wipe out the Tutsis. Participants were often given incentives, such as money or food, and were even told they could keep the land of any Tutsis that were killed.

The power of the radio was instrumental in spreading the killing frenzy. It is important to point out that one of the first things Africans buy when they get a job is a radio and even the poorest houses listen intently to catch snatches of government broadcasts. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the Hutus heard the voices coming through the radio to ‘kill, kill, kill the Tursi minority’, the Hutus responded and literally did as they were told.

One fact that is not widely publicized about the Rwandan genocide is that it was mainly directed at the young, male Tutsi population, fearing they were members of the RPF guerrilla force. However, as the days went by women and children were also victims. Survivors later told stories of being raped either by individuals or gangs, sometimes using sharpened sticks or gun barrels. Sometimes they were sexually mutilated, or they were forced to marry to become nothing more than sex slaves.

THE
 
MASSACRE
 
IS
 
OVER

The killing didn’t stop until July when the RPF finally managed to capture Kigali, causing the collapse of the government. They declared a ceasefire and as soon as the Hutus realized that the RPF had been victorious, an estimated two million fled to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). It wasn’t until the killing stopped that the UN troops and aid workers arrived to try and restore the basic services.

Why was it that as the killing intensified, the rest of the international community deserted Rwanda? Erratic media coverage while the genocide was taking place conveyed the false notion of two ‘tribes’ of African ‘savages’ mindlessly killing each other as they had done for many years. As a result, there was little public pressure in the West for governments to intervene. Controversy has raged ever since over the role of foreign governments and the UN in allowing the genocide to proceed. It wasn’t until 7 April, 2000, the sixth anniversary of the massacre, that Belgium’s prime minister apologized for the international community’s failure to intervene. He told a crowd of thousands at the site of a memorial that, ‘A dramatic combination of neglicence, incompetence and hesitation created the conditions for the tragedy’.

At the beginning of the First Congo War in 1996, many Tutsi refugees returned to Rwanda, which instigated the start of the long-awaited genocide trials. The UN formed the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and in September 1998, they issued their first charges on genocide.

In Rwanda itself, approximately 120,000 people were jailed on allegations of having taken part. Many have since died due to the appalling conditions and overcrowding in the jails. By the end of April 2000, about 2,500 people had been sent to trial and of these about 300 received death sentences.

Three journalists from Rwanda went on trial in 2001 for war crimes, because they were the voices behind the radio broadcasts that urged the Hutus to kill. This is reminiscent of the Nazi editor, Julius Streicher, who was sent to the gallows at Nuremberg in 1946.

HAS A LESSON BEEN LEARNED?

The scars of the genocide and the subsequent reprisals will probably always stay with the Rwandans, and even worse it could provoke another round of mass killing. With the economy badly damaged and little hope of a quick recovery, many Tutsis still feel that the only way to rebuild their lives is to repress the Hutus. The Hutus, who once again feel downtrodden, because they have been labelled ‘guilty’ for the last massacre, feel that no one cares about what happens to them under the latest Tutsi-led government. Extremists on both sides believe that the only solution is complete annihilation of the other side, and many believe they are preparing for another slaughter. It appears despite all the pain and suffering, the Rwandans have not learned an important lesson – that violence simply doesn’t pay.

Part Seven: 21St Century – The War Crimes Continue

Saddam Hussein’s Regime

1974–2003

Although the Iraqi people have suffered the atrocities inflicted by the US military, possibly the greatest threat to them over the years has been Saddam Hussein’s regime. For over two decades he has terrorized, killed, tortured and raped the Iraqi people and their neighbours. Under his regime it is fair to say that many hundreds of thousands have died as a direct result of Hussein’s actions, a vast majority of them being Muslims. He has used a wide range of torture methods, including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings and electric shocks, leaving many of his victims dead or with permanent physical and pschological damage.

It has been estimated that during Hussein’s 1987–88 campaign of terror against the Kurds, as many as 100,000 were killed and 2,000 of their villages destroyed. The use of chemical agents, such as mustard gas and nerve agents, have resulted in some 30,000 Iraqi and Iranian deaths. Possibly the worst attack was the one on Halabja which resulted in approximately 5,000 deaths.

Freedom of worship was also restricted, as Hussein’s regime curbed their religious practices, including a ban on communal Friday prayer and funeral processions. His oppressive government policies have led to as many as 900,000 Iraqis, mainly Kurds, fleeing to the north of the country to avoid having to renounce their Kurdish identity or lose their property.

During his regime it is also estimated that as many as 400,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, unnecessarily died of either malnutrition or disease. The Oil-for-Food Programme, which was established by the United Nations in 1995 and terminated in late 2003, was intended to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to rebuild its military. However, Hussein’s regime blocked the access of international workers, who were supposed to ensure the correct distribution of the supplies. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, coalition forces uncovered military warehouses which were full of supplies that had never reached their intended destination – the Iraqi people.

Saddam Hussein’s regime has also been known to carry out frequent executions. For example, in 1984 4,000 prisoners were killed at Abu Ghraib prison; 3,000 prisoners were killed at the Mahjar prison from 1993– 98; 2,500 prisoners were executed between 1997 and 1999 in what has been described as a ‘prison cleansing programme’; 122 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/March 2000; 23 political prisoners were executed at Abu Ghraib prison in October 2001; and at least 130 Iraqi women were beheaded between June 2000 and April 2001.

THE ANFAL CAMPAIGN

One of the worst campaigns mounted by the regime of Saddam Hussein was the anti-Kurdish Anfal campaign in 1988. This was a ‘cleansing’ campaign aimed at the Kurdish population, who are considered to be the world’s largest nation who do not actually possess a state of their own. Their territory is divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, with as many as 4 million Kurds being concentrated in Iraq.

When Hussein came into power, it appeared to bode well for the Kurds, especially when his Ba’ath Party made an agreement with the Kurdish rebel groups. This agreement granted them the right to use and broadcast their own language, as well as giving them a considerable amount of political independence. However, it wasn’t long before the agreement began to break down, when the Ba’ath Party started to evict Kurdish farmers, replacing them with poor Arab tribesmen and women. In March 1974, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) retaliated, which sparked off a full-scale war. Villagers were forcibly removed from their homes and eventually 130,000 Kurds fled to Iran.

It was these refugees, the Barzani tribespeople, who would fall prey to one of the worst cases of genocide of male members of a population the world had ever seen. In 1983, the Iraqi security forces started to round up all the males of the Barzani tribe from four refugee camps near Arbil. Just as dawn broke the soldiers stormed into the camps, taking captive all the male members of the tribe, including an old, mentally deranged man who was usually tied up for his own safety and a preacher who was on his way to the Mosque to call for morning prayer. The soldiers broke down doors and searched every house. In fact, they searched everywhere – inside chicken coops, water tanks, refrigerators – anywhere that it was possible someone could be hiding. Women cried, desperately hanging onto their sons, as the soldiers rounded up any males over the age of 13 and took them away to face their final fate. None of these men were ever seen again. The women pleaded with the soldiers not to take their men away, as Saddam Hussein had already hinted what he intended to do to the Barzani tribesmen. This earlier operation foreshadowed the techniques that would be used on a much larger scale during the Anfal campaign.

In March 1987, Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, was appointed secretary general of the Ba’ath Party of the northern region, which included the Kurdish dominated area. He had a reputation for brutality and following the Iraqi’s army control of the Kurdish insurgents, he took the matter into his own hands. His new campaign of terror became known as ‘al-Anfal’ (The Spoils), which took place between

23 February and 6 September, 1988. The campaign was broken down into eight different stages, with seven of them directly targeting areas controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which had been founded in 1975 by Jalal Talabani.

Al-Majid amassed around 200,00 soldiers, supported by air attacks, against a poorly-matched few thousand Kurdish guerillas. They went to work rounding up all the villagers, regardless of gender or age, and transported them to detention centres, where they were subjected to gendercidal selection. Any adult or teenage males (those considered to be of fighting age) were separated from the remainder of the community. Small children were allowed to stay with their mothers, while the elderly or infirm were taken away to separate living quarters.

The men were divided into smaller groups and hustled into large rooms or halls, which soon became grossly overcrowded. Beatings were almost routine and after several days of inhuman treatment, they were trucked out of the centres to be killed in mass executions. Many of the prisoners were lined up in front of pre-dug mass graves and shot from the front. Others were made to lie down in pairs next to mounds of fresh corpses, before they too were killed. Others, who had been bound together, were made to stand on the edges of the graves and shot from behind so they fell face-first into the pits. When they had finished their killing spree, the soldiers used bulldozers to roughly cover the graves of literally thousands of Kurdish males. Some of the men did not even make it as far as the ‘slaughter stations’. they were simply lined up and shot at their point of capture, by firing squads.

Although the aim of the al-Anfal campaign was to cleanse the Kurdish population of its males, thousands of women, children and elderly people perished as well. Mass executions of women and children were known to have taken place at a site on Hamrin Mountain, between the cities of Tikrit and Kurkuk. Those who did not die in the executions were trucked off to resettlement camps, where conditions were both squalid and insanitary, resulting in the death of thousands more, the majority of whom were children.

The infrastructure of the Kurdish population was almost destroyed by the al-Anfal massacre. By the time the genocidal frenzy was over, 90 per cent of the Kurdish villages and more than 20 towns and villages had literally been wiped off the map.

APPALLING TREATMENT

In August 1988, with the al-Anfal campaign coming to an end and many months of vicious chemical attacks on civilian populations, the UN Sub-committee on Human Rights voted to condemn Iraq for its human rights violations. It is blatantly obvious that the influence of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship affected all levels of Iraqi society, whether through the influences and actions of the Ba’ath Party or the Iraqi army and security forces. Hussein’s use of strong patriarchal control over ministers and senior party officials led to their loyalty and subservience to their leader, resulting in the unthinkable terror and cruelty that existed during his term of power.

How does Saddam Hussein defend his treatment of the Iraqi people? By arguing that he had to use powerful methods in an effort to unite such a large and diverse nation as Iraq, that had Kurds in the north, Sunni Muslims in the middle and Shi’ites in the south. When asked by a very nervous reporter why Hussein had used such extreme measures under his regime, he simply replied, ‘Of course. What do you expect if they oppose the regime?’

END OF HIS REGIME AND CAPTURE

In 1998, Saddam Hussein failed to conform to the requests of UN weapons investigators, which instigated the issuing of the Iraq Liberation Act, authorizing the removal of his regime. The USA tried its hardest in 2002 to try and topple the Iraqi leader, but Hussein kept insisting that he didn’t possess any weapons of mass destruction. In March 2003, the USA led the war on Iraq to try and oust Hussein and to end his regime once and for all.

On Sunday, 14 December, 2003, the toppled leader was found hiding in a tiny dirt hole by the American Special Forces. His accommodation was a far cry from his former palaces of unadulterated luxury. When he was discovered, he was sitting among filth and squalor, surrounded by rubbish, plastic bags, empty bottles, rotten fruit and just one broken chair as furniture.

Hussein and his 11 top known associates (dubbed ‘Saddam’s Dirty Dozen’), faced preliminary charges on July 2003 before an Iraqi Special Tribunal, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The actual trial started on 19 October, 2005, in Baghdad, and Hussein was charged with killing 148 people in Dujail, following an attempted assassination on him when he visited the village. On 5 November, 2006, the tribunal reached its decision and Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging. On top of this it is thought that he will be charged with further atrocities against the Iraqi people. Below is a list of his alleged crimes that will be raised by the tribunal.

1974

Five known, and possibly many more, Shia religious leaders are killed.

1970–2003

After the discovery of 270 mass graves, Hussein faces being charged with killing tens of thousands people.

1982

Following a failed assassination attempt on Hussein, 148 people were killed in the village of Dujail.

1983

About 8,000 male members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe were arrested and deported to southern Iraq, but no trace of them has ever been found.

1988

Up to 182,000 people were killed or died from cold and hunger when Hussein attempted to depopulate Kurdish regions. About 5,000 people were killed in a chemical attack on the village of Halabja in just one day.

1990

When Iraq was invaded in 1990, hundreds of citizens of Kuwait were rounded up and tortured. 700 oil wells were set alight, which polluted the Persian Gulf.

1991

In the aftermath of the Gulf War thousands of people died when Hussein’s regime suppressed uprisings by Kurds and Shias.

hussein on trial

The trial of the dethroned Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was flawed right from the start with lawyers and witnesses being murdered, judges dismissed because they were deemed to be biased, and considerable outside political interference. The trial began on 19 October, 2005, and the following day a defence attorney was kidnapped and later killed. On 8 November a lawyer for a co-defendant was killed. The trial reconvened on 28 November and on 4 December one of the five trial judges stepped down. Defence lawyers walk out of the court the following day when they are denied the right to challenge the trial’s legitimacy. On 7 December, Saddam refused to attend court proceedings and on 21 December claimed that he had been tortured by Americans whilst being held in detention. The chief judge, a Kurd, resigned on 15 January, 2006 and another Kurd is named to replace him. On 21 June another lawer for Saddam Hussein is kidnapped and killed. Hussein goes on hunger strike and is force-fed through a tube and on 23 July he is hospitalized. The first trial is adjourned on 27 July and the new trial does not reconvene until 21 August.