RWANDAN GENOCIDE 

So  far  authorities  in  the  West  have  had  difficulty  link-  ing  Colonel  Gaddafi  to  the  bombings.  It  has  proved  even  more 
difficult to convict those suspected of the bombing 

Rwandan Genocide 
of Berlin’s La Belle discotheque in 1986, in which three 
“Priests, Doctors, and Teachers Turn Genocidal” people 
were killed. But Michael Steiner, the German offi- cial in whom the Libyan leader allegedly confided, faced a 
Book excerpt summons to give evidence after the revelation 
was made yesterday at the La Belle trial in Berlin. 
By: Mahmood Mamdani 
According to Allgemeine Zeitung, which published the 
Date: 2003 
leaked memo, Mr. Steiner visited Colonel Gaddafi in 
Source:“Priests, Doctors, and Teachers Turn Genocidal” 
February. When Mr. Schroder visited Washington a month 
is an excerpt published in Sources of the Western Tradition, 
later, Mr Steiner was there during a meeting with President 
edited by Marvin Perry, et. al., and published by Bush. Also 
present was the German ambassador, Jurgen 
Houghton Mifflin in 2003. Originally published in When 
Chrobog, who cabled an account to his bosses in Berlin. It 
Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and 
the is this memo that appears to have found its way to the 
Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University Press, 2001. 
newspaper and to La Belle victims’ lawyers. 
About  the  Author:  Dr.  Mahmood  Mamdani,  the  Herbert  Lehman  Professor  of  Government  at  the  Department  of 
Anthropology at Columbia University in New York, was 
SIGNIFICANCE 
In  later  years,  there  has  been  considerable  evi-  dence  that  Qaddafi’s  policies  and  attitudes  towards  the  West 
have  become  far  more  moderate.  In  addition  to  admitting  his  past  role  in  terrorism,  he  announced  that  his  country 
had  been  harboring  a  weapons  of  mass  destruction  (WMD)  program,  which  he  invited  for-  eign  experts to analyze 
and dismantle. 
Although  Qaddafi’s  vision  of  unity among Arab nations has not been realized, he is now considered a moderate 
leader  among  Arab  states.  In  August  2003,  Qaddafi  reached  an  agreement  with  the  United  States  and  the  United 
Kingdom  that  included  renouncing  ter-  rorism,  paying  restitution  to  the families of the Lockerbie bombing victims, 
and cooperating with international monitoring agencies to disarm any nuclear, chemical, and biochemical weapons. 
born  in  Uganda.  He  earned  a  Bachelor’s  degree  from  the  University  of  Pittsburgh,  an  M.A.  and an M.A.L.D. from 
Tufts  University  Fletcher  School  of  Law,  and  a  Ph.D.  from  Harvard  University.  He  has  been  the  A.C.  Jordan 
Professor  of  African  Studies  and  the  Director  for  the  Center  for  African  Studies  at  the University of Cape Town in 
South  Africa.  He  has  also  taught  at  the  University  of  Dar-es-Salaam  in  Tanzania  and  at  Makerere  University  in 
Uganda.  Mamdani  is  the  founding  Director  of  the  Centre  for  Basic  Research  in  Kampala,  Uganda  and  was  the 
President  of  the  Council  for  the  Development  of  Social  Research  in  Africa  (CODESRIA),  based  in  Senegal.  His 
particular  areas  of  interest  are  African  his-  tory,  politics,  and  international  relations.  He  is  the  author  of  numerous 
scholarly  works,  including  Iraq:  Collective  Punishment  in  War  and  Peace,  and  Good  Muslim,  Bad  Muslim: 
America, The Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. 
In March 2004, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair 
INTRODUCTION became the first Western leader in 
over two decades to 
Genocide is a crime unlike any other in that it has 
meet with Qaddafi. The destruction of thousands of 
as an aim the destruction of an entire nation, race, or 
pounds of Libya’s chemical weapons has continued 
ethnic group. It requires a detailed and 
well-thought-out under the supervision of international monitoring 
plan with the intent of complete annihilation of all 
indi- groups. Libya was also found to have an active nuclear 
viduals who are members of the target group, in an 
weapons program, and Qaddafi has cooperated with 
effort to cause the extinction of the undesired popula- 
international efforts to dismantle it. 
tion. In 1944, Raphael Lemkin, then advisor to the United States War Ministry, first coined the term in an effort to 
describe the occurrences at the extermination FURTHER RESOURCES 
and concentration camps under Hitler’s regime during 
Naden, Corinne J. Muammar Qaddafi (Heroes and Villains). 
San Diego: Lucent Books, 2004. 
World War II. He endeavored to make a very clear dis- tinction between war crimes and the crimes against 
Web sites 
humanity perpetrated during the Holocaust of World The 
CIA World Fact Book. “Libya.” <http://www.cia.gov/cia/ publications/factbook/geos/ly.html> (accessed July 6, 
War II. Lemkin was the first to formalize the notion that genocide is not a war crime; its immorality renders 2005). 
genocide a crime against all humanity. War is amoral 

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RWANDAN GENOCIDE 
but characterized by religious dogma or political ideo- 
Tutsis. Also, many people were coming to the hospital 
to logical differences—different goals, very different out- 
hide. The extremist doctors prevented many of these people 
comes. If a group of persons, an entire race or culture 
from hiding in the hospital.” A medical doctor, a member of 
of persons, is systematically exterminated simply 
the hospital staff, directed the militia into the hospital at 
because they exist, it is considered a crime of the great- 
Kibeho and shut off the power supply so that the 
massacre est magnitude against humanity; it violates the funda- 
may proceed in darkness. Some of “the most horrific 
mas- mental belief that all humans have the right to exist and 
sacres occurred in maternity clinics, where people gathered 
to develop within their particular social systems. 
in the belief that no one would kill mothers and new-born babies.” “The percentage of doctors who became killers ‘par 
excellence’ was very high,” concluded African Rights on PRIMARY SOURCE 
the basis of extensive investigations. They included persons as highly qualified as Dr. Sosthene Munyemana, a gynecol- . . . 
[E]ven if we can never know the numbers of those who 
ogist at the University Hospital of Butare, Rwanda’s princi- 
killed, there is no escaping the disturbing fact that many 
pal teaching hospital. “A huge number of the most qualified 
did enthusiastically join in the killing. The genocide was not 
and experienced doctors in the country, men as well as 
simply a state project. Had the killing been the work of 
women—including surgeons, physicians, paeditricians, state 
functionaries and those bribed by them, it would have 
gynaecologists, anaesthetists, public health specialists and 
translated into no more than a string of massacres perpe- 
hospital administrators—participated in the murder of their 
trated by death squads. Without massacres by machete- 
own Tutsi colleagues, patients, the wounded, and terrified 
wielding civilian mobs, in the hundreds and thousands, there 
refugees who had sought shelter in their hospitals, as well 
would have been no genocide. We now turn to the social 
as their neighbors and strangers.” In a sector as small as 
underbelly of the genocide: the participation of those who 
Tumba, three doctors played a central part. Of these, one 
killed with a purpose, for whom the violence of the genocide 
was a doctor at Groupe Scolaire Hospital, and the other, and 
its target held meaning. . . 
 her husband, was the health director for Butare. “Two of the Like 
the middle class of which they were a prominent 
most active assassins in Tumba” were a medical assistant 
part, priests were also divided between those who were 
and his wife, a nurse. targeted in the killings and those who 
led or facilitated the 
Close on the heels of priests and doctors as prime 
killings. Here, too, there was hardly any middle ground. A 
enthusiasts of the genocide were teachers, and even some 
Lutheran minister recalled what the gangs told him: “You 
human rights activists. When I visited the National can have 
religion afterwards.” Explaining why he walked 
University at Butare in 1995, I was told of the Hutu staff and 
around with a club, the minister told a reporter: “Everyone 
students who betrayed their Tutsi colleagues and joined in 
had to participate. To prove that you weren’t RPF ‘Rwandan 
the physical elimination. Teachers commonly denounced 
Patriotic front, the Tutsi army’, you had to walk around with 
students to the militia or killed students themselves. A Hutu a 
club. Being a pastor was not an excuse.” Priests who had 
teacher told a French journalist without any seeming com- 
condemned the government’s use of ethnic quotas in edu- 
punction: “A lot of people got killed here. I myself killed 
cation and the civil service were among the first victims 
some of the children . . . We had eighty kids in the first year. 
of the massacres. In all, 105 priests and 120 nuns, at least 
There are twenty–five left. All the others, we killed them or a 
quarter of the clergy, are believed to have been killed. But 
they have run away.” African Rights compiled a fifty-nine- 
priests were not only among those killed, they were among 
page dossier charging Innocent Mazimpaka, who was in the 
killers. Investigators with the United Nations (UN) 
April 1991 the chairman of the League for the Promotion 
Center for Human Rights claimed “strong evidence” that 
and Defence of Human Rights in Rwanda (LIPRODHOR) 
“about a dozen priests were actually killed.” Others were 
and simultaneously an employee of a Dutch aid organiza- 
accused of “supervising gangs of young killers. . . “ 
tion, SNV, with responsibility for the genocide. Along with How 
could it be that most major massacres of the 
his younger brother, the burgomaster of Gatare commune, 
genocide took place in churches? How could all those insti- 
he was charged with the slaughter of all but twenty–one of 
tutions that we associate with nurturing life—not only 
Gatare’s Tutsi population of 12,263. Rakiya Omaar pointed 
churches, but schools and even hospitals—be turned into 
out that “several members of human rights groups are now 
places where life was taken with impunity and facility? 
known to have participated” in the killings, refuting “the 
Medicins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), a med- 
notion that an independent civil society—of which the edu- 
ical charity, pulled out of the University Hospital in Kigali after 
cated and the political opposition were the backbone— its 
patients kept disappearing. The British Medical Journal 
resisted the project of genocide.” quote testimony of Dr. 
Claude-Emile Rwagasonza: “The 
That victims looking for a sanctuary should seek out 
extremist doctors were also asking patients for their iden- 
churches, schools, and hospitals as places for shelter is tity 
cards before treating them. They refused to treat sick 
totally understandable. But that they should be killed 
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without  any  let  or  hindrance—even  lured  to  these  places  for  that  purpose—is  not  at  all  understandable.  As  places  of  shelter 
turned into slaughterhouses, those pledged to heal or nurture life set about extinguishing it methodically and deliberately. 
That  the  professions  most  closely  associated  with  valuing  life—doctors  and  nurses,  priests  and  teachers,  human  rights 
activists—got embroiled in taking it is prob- ably the most troubling question of the Rwandan genocide. 
SIGNIFICANCE 
Rwandan  president  Juvenal  Habyarimana  (a  Hutu)  died on April 6, 1994, when members of the Tutsi extremist 
group  the  Rwandan  Patriotic  Front  (RPF)  shot  down  his  plane.  On  the  same  day,  the  RPF  assassinated  the  Hutu 
prime  minister  of  Rwanda,  Agathe  Uwilingiyimana.  In the ensuing four months, the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi 
population  claimed  the  lives  of  somewhere  between  5,000  and  1.3  million  individuals.  Although  there  is  lack  of 
agreement  on  the  exact  death  toll,  there  is  universal  consensus  that  the  systematic  extermination  of  the  Tutsi 
population  in  Rwanda  represented  the  single  largest  example  of  geno-  cide  in  the  era  after  the  Cold  War.  As 
horrendous  as  the  fact  of  the  genocide’s  occurrence,  in and of itself, what is even more incomprehensible is the fact 
that  the  geno-  cide  was  perpetrated  not  just  by  the  prevailing  political  regime,  but was enthusiastically participated 
in  by those commonly believed to preserve and protect life: clergy, medical practitioners, human rights activists, and 
teach-  ers.  Compounding  the  tragedy  was  the  ennui  of  most  of  the  “civilized  world”:  the  genocide  was  either 
watched  from  the  comfort  of  living  rooms  across  the  globe,  with  little  concerted  public  outcry,  or  remained 
undermen- tioned by the media or the national powers. 
The  development  of  the  Hutu-Tutsi  climate  of  strife  and  hatred,  in  many  ways a metaphor for modern terrorist 
in-and-out group theories, had its origins in Rwanda in the thirteenth century. The Tutsi popula- tion, which make up 
about  15  percent  of  present-day  Rwanda,  migrated  into  the  country  from  the  Kenyan  and  Tanzanian  grasslands  of 
the  north  and  progres-  sively  dominated  the  prevailing  Hutu  population  (about  85  percent of present-day Rwanda). 
By  the  fifteenth  century,  Tutsi-dominated  clans  became  chiefdoms.  By  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
sociopolitical  and  economic  divisions  between  the  Hutus  and  the  Tutsis  had  reached  a  point  where  the  pastoralist 
Tutsis  held  virtually  complete  domination  over  the  agricul-  turally  based  Hutus.  Tensions  and  strife  escalated over 
time, and were significantly exacerbated with the arrival of the Belgians in Rwanda in the early part of the 

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twentieth  century.  The  Belgian  colonialists  systemati-  cally  “fed”  the  Hutus  the  propaganda  (called  the  Hamitic 
Hypothesis)  that  the  Tutsis  were  the  cursed  “Caucasian”  descendents  of  Ham,  who  was considered to be the son of 
Noah.  Throughout  the  first  three  decades  of  the  twentieth  century,  the  Belgians  strove  to  institutionalize  the  belief 
that  the  Tutsis  were  superior  (as  they  were  con-  sidered  Caucasians,  rather  than  native  Africans,  which  the  Hutus 
were  stated  to  be).  To  further  emphasize  their  assertions,  the  Belgians  gave  preference  to  the  Tutsis  in  the 
educational and public sectors. 
In  1959,  Rwanda experienced a “Social Revolution,” wherein the economically powerful Hutus, led by Gregore 
Kayibanda,  proposed  the  segregation  of  the  Hutu  and  Tutsi  populations.  This  occurred  just  after  Rwanda  became 
independent  of  Belgian  colonial  rule.  The  growing  cultural  tensions  between  the  Hutu  and  the Tutsis, worsened by 
the  impositions  of  colonial  rule,  effectively  set  the  stage  for  the  genocide  that  would  take  place  in  1994. Although 
there  was  a  period  of  stability  during  the  1970s  and  1980s,  largely  as  a  result  of  a  robust  economy  in  Rwanda, 
tensions  began  to  simmer  began  Hutus  and  Tutsis  at the start of the 1990s when the economy of Rwanda collapsed. 
When  the  Tutsi  extremist  group  called  the  RPF  (Rwandan  Political  Front)  attempted  a  coup  during  their  1993 
uprising,  the  Hutus, driven by both fear and small group psychology, became so fearful of a shift in polit- ical power 
(from  Hutu  domination  to  a  return  to  Tutsi  domination)  that the governmental powers were easily able to create the 
massive backlash that became the Rwandan Tutsi genocide of 1994. 
 In  a  manner  analogous  to  the  Nazi  genocide  of World War II, the well-organized leaders were able to create an 
atmosphere  of  fear  and  hatred  that  had  the  result  of  mobilizing  the  common  people,  as  well  as  members  of  the 
educated  elite—doctors,  priests,  teach-  ers,  human  rights  activists—to  enthusiastically,  will-  ingly,  or  even 
reluctantly, commit atrocities against friends, colleagues, and neighbors, as well as strangers. 
FURTHER RESOURCES Books Mamdani, Mahmood. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide 
in Rwanda. Princeton University Press, 2002. Perry, M., Peden, J.R., and T.H. Von Laue. Sources of the Western 
Tradition. Volume II. 5th ed.. Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 
Mamdani,  Mahmood.  Good  Muslim,  Bad  Muslim:  America,  the  Cold  War,  and  the  Roots  of  Terror.  Academic  Literature, 
Pantheon Books, 2004. 
Perry, M., Peden, J.R., and T.H. Von Laue. Sources of the Western Tradition. Volume II. 5th ed. Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 
 
RWANDAN GENOCIDE 
Web sites 
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwan 
Frontline: Who Were The Organizers. “Special Reports: The 
da/reports/dsetexhe.html> (accessed July 2, 2005). Rwanda 
Crisis.” <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/rwanda/reports/prunierexcerpt.html> (accessed July 2, 2005). 
Frontline: The Crime of Genocide. “Never Again: The World’s Most Unfulfilled Promise.” <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ 
pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/genocide/neveragain. Frontline: The World’s Most Wanted Man: Genocide and War 
html> (accessed July 2, 2005). Crimes. “Special Reports: 
The Crime of Genocide.” 
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