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The Gikondo massacre was the mass murder of about 110 people of Tutsi identity, including children, who sheltered in a Polish Pallottine mission church in Gikondo, Kigali. The massacre took place on April 9, 1994 and was executed by Interahamwe militia under supervision of the Hutu presidential guard. The massacre was the first [1] absolute proof of a genocide discovered by UNAMIR during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
The Rwandan genocide began on April 6, 1994, after the plane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the president of Burundi on board was shot down while approaching the runway of Kigali International Airport, which is considered to have been the direct signal to start the actions planned beforehand. Both men were Hutus. Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militia began systematic, house-by-house searches for persons bearing Tutsi identity, who were then subsequently murdered using clubs and machetes. People living in the Gikondo neighborhood had fled to the Pallottine church in the hopes of finding shelter and to sit out the turmoil.
On the morning of April 9, 1994, two presidential guard soldiers and two gendarmes entered the church and began checking identity cards of the people gathered in the church. They ordered the few persons of Hutu identity to leave the church. One of the priests protested claiming that all of the people inside were Christian worshippers and the members of the Pallottine congregation, but was told by the gendarmes that "the church was harbouring inyenzi [cockroaches]" [2] and the gendarmes continued to examine identity cards. A presidential guard officer entered the church, telling soldiers not to waste their bullets since the Interahamwe would soon come with machetes.
Shortly after, about 100 Interahamwe militiamen came into the church and began to kill people, striking with their clubs and slashing with their machetes, hacking arms, legs, genitals and the faces of the terrified people who tried to protect the children under the pews. [2] Some people were dragged outside the church and attacked in the courtyard. The identity cards of the murdered ones were burned. The killing continued for two hours after which the whole compound was searched. The militia then left the church compound.
There were unarmed Polish UN observers in the church: Major Jerzy Mączka and Major Ryszard Chudy, who were supervising the implementation of the Arusha accords signed on August 4, 1993 on behalf of the UNAMIR. When the attack on the church began, Major Jerzy Mączka was in a garden near the church and tried to contact the UNAMIR headquarters in Kigali in order to direct some Belgian or Bangladeshi operational units to the church. Initially, all Motorola system channels were jammed with other calls for help. Eventually he managed to pass the report about the ongoing murders to UNAMIR duty officer, captain Godson Zowonogo. However the captain's response was negative – he argued that he had been informed about many similar events in the capital and that direct intervention of UNAMIR soldiers in all of these places was impossible. Major Mączka also tried to contact a duty officer of the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front who was stationed in Kigali.
The two Polish army officers along with the Pallottine priests and nuns began immediate first-aid dressing of the heavily wounded, separating them from the dead, who were dragged into two mass graves dug by trusted Pallottine workers. The job was very urgent due to the heat which would have accelerated the process of decomposition of the corpses. The wounded were carried back to the church, where Pallottine nuns provided them, in as far as possible, with water. On Major Mączka's directive, priests collected part of the half-burned identity cards of the dead so that they may be used to identify the buried corpses. Major Mączka also took pictures documenting the massacre.
In the afternoon of April 9, two International Red Cross ambulances with French medical teams and the chief ICRC delegate in Rwanda, Swiss Philippe Gaillard arrived. At the request of the two Polish army officers, two gravely wounded Rwandans were taken to hospital. They are believed to be the only persons who survived the massacre.
That same afternoon an UNAMIR armoured carrier arrived with Canadian Major Brent Beardsley and two other Polish army officers Major Marek Pazik and Major Stefan Stec, who filmed the aftermath of the massacre.
Another massacre took place a few days later in a private Pallotine chapel neighboring the church. About eleven Tutsi Rwandans including children who managed to survive the first attack on the church took refuge in the chapel, where Polish Pallotine Father Zdzisław gave them supplies necessary to survive. When Interahamwe members discovered that there were still refugees in the chapel, they burned it after dousing it in gasoline. No one survived.
The Gikondo massacre is under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. [3]
Roméo Antonius Dallaire is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire is a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 872 on 5 October 1993. It was intended to assist in the implementation of the Arusha Accords, signed on 4 August 1993, which was meant to end the Rwandan Civil War. The mission lasted from October 1993 to March 1996. Its activities were meant to aid the peace process between the Hutu-dominated Rwandese government and the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The UNAMIR has received much attention for its role in failing, due to the limitations of its rules of engagement, to prevent the Rwandan genocide and outbreak of fighting. Its mandate extended past the RPF overthrow of the government and into the Great Lakes refugee crisis. The mission is thus regarded as a major failure.
The Interahamwe is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development, the then-ruling party of Rwanda, and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. The Interahamwe, led by Robert Kajuga, were the main perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994, and the term "Interahamwe" was widened to mean any civilian militias or bands killing Tutsi.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu militias. Although the Constitution of Rwanda states that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, the actual number of fatalities is unclear, and some estimates suggest that the real number killed was likely lower. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi deaths.
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda is a book by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire of the Canadian Forces, with help from Major Brent Beardsley. It was first published by Random House Canada in September 2003.
Théoneste Bagosora was a Rwandan military officer. He was chiefly known for his key role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In 2011, the sentence was reduced to 35 years' imprisonment on appeal. He was due to be imprisoned until he was 89. According to René Lemarchand, Bagosora was "the chief organizer of the killings". On 25 September 2021, he died in a prison hospital in Mali, where he was being treated for heart issues.
Opération Turquoise was a French-led military operation in Rwanda in 1994 under the mandate of the United Nations. The "multilateral" force consisted of 2,500 troops, 32 from Senegal and the rest French. The equipment included 100 APCs, 10 helicopters, a battery of 120 mm mortars, 4 Jaguar fighter bombers, 8 Mirage fighters, and reconnaissance aircraft. The helicopters laid a trail of food, water and medicine enabling refugees to escape into eastern Zaire. Opération Turquoise is controversial for at least two reasons: accusations that it was an attempt to prop up the genocidal Hutu regime, and that its mandate undermined the UNAMIR. By facilitating 2 million Rwandan refugees to travel to Kivu provinces in Zaire, Turquoise setup the causes of the First Congo War.
The assassination of presidents Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira in the evening of April 6, 1994 was the proximate trigger for the Rwandan genocide, which resulted in the murder of approximately 800,000 Tutsi and a smaller number of moderate Hutu. The first few days following the assassinations included a number of key events that shaped the subsequent course of the genocide. These included: the seizing of power by an interim government directed by the hard-line Akazu clique; the liquidation of opposition Hutu politicians; the implementation of plans to carry out a genocide throughout the country; and the murder of United Nations peacekeepers, contributing to the impulse of the international community to refrain from intervention.
The failure of the international community to effectively respond to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been the subject of significant criticism. During a period of around 100 days, between 7 April and 15 July, an estimated 500,000-1,100,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi and moderate Hutu, were murdered by Interahamwe militias.
The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the country's government, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war arose from the long-running dispute between the Hutu and Tutsi groups within the Rwandan population. A 1959–1962 revolution had replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic, forcing more than 336,000 Tutsi to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. A group of these refugees in Uganda founded the RPF which, under the leadership of Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, became a battle-ready army by the late 1980s.
Mbaye Diagne was a Senegalese military officer who served in Rwanda as a United Nations military observer from 1993 to 1994. During the Rwandan genocide he undertook many missions on his own initiative to save the lives of civilians.
Sometimes in April is a 2005 American made-for-television historical drama film about the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, written and directed by the Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck. The ensemble cast includes Idris Elba, Oris Erhuero, Carole Karemera, and Debra Winger.
Kangura was a Kinyarwanda and French-language magazine in Rwanda that served to stoke ethnic hatred in the run-up to the Rwandan genocide. The magazine was established in 1990, following the invasion of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and continued publishing up to the genocide. Edited by Hassan Ngeze, the magazine was a response to the RPF-sponsored Kanguka, adopting a similar informal style. "Kangura" was a Rwandan word meaning "wake others up", as opposed to "Kanguka", which meant "wake up". The journal was based in Gisenyi.
On the evening of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as their jet prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda; both were killed. The assassination set in motion the Rwandan genocide, one of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century.
Stefan Steć was a major of the Polish Armed Forces. In 1994, he served as a peacekeeper in the UNAMIR forces in Rwanda under general Roméo Dallaire. For his dedication in saving lives during Rwandan genocide at the risk to his own, he was awarded the Cross of Merit for Bravery by Polish President Lech Wałęsa. He died at the age of 40 due to complications from posttraumatic stress disorder.
Colonel Luc Marchal is a retired officer of the armed forces of Belgium. He is known for being the senior officer in the Belgian peacekeeping contingent during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, as well as the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) sector commander for the capital Kigali.
Valérie Bemeriki is a Rwandan convicted war criminal and radio entertainer. Bemeriki was one of the main animatrices of Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which played a significant role in promoting the genocide against the Tutsi.
Jean-Baptiste Habyalimana was a Rwandan academic and politician who served as the Prefect of Butare and was killed during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He was the only Tutsi prefect at the time of the genocide, and also the only prefect belonging to the Liberal Party. He had resisted the genocide.
The Nyamata Genocide Memorial is based around a former church 30 km (19 mi) south of Kigali in Rwanda, which commemorates the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. The remains of 50,000 people are buried here.
Belgium-Rwanda relations refers to the international and diplomatic relations between Belgium and Rwanda. Belgian relations with Rwanda started under the League of Nations mandate, when the modern day countries of Rwanda and Burundi were governed as Ruanda-Urundi. As the colonial power, Rwanda's relationship with Belgium has been significant throughout the country's history, even after independence.