Hassan Ngeze | |
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Born | [1] | 25 December 1957
Occupation(s) | Journalist, terrorist |
Criminal status | Incarcerated in Mali |
Criminal charge | conspiracy to commit genocide, genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide; complicity in genocide; and crimes against humanity (persecution, extermination and murder) racism (ICTR-97-27-1 on 10 November 1999) [1] |
Penalty | Life imprisonment, [1] reduced to a 35-year prison term (28 November 1997 by the ICTR Appeals Chamber) [2] |
Date apprehended | 18 July 1997 |
Hassan Ngeze (born 25 December 1957) is a Rwandan journalist and convicted war criminal best known for spreading anti-Tutsi propaganda and Hutu superiority through his newspaper, Kangura , which he founded in 1990. [1] Ngeze was a founding member [1] and leadership figure in the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), a Rwandan Hutu Power political party that is known for helping to incite the genocide. [3] [4]
Ngeze is best known for publishing the "Hutu Ten Commandments" in the December edition of Kangura in 1990, which were essential in creating and spreading the Hutu supremacist ideology that led to the Rwandan genocide. During the genocide, Ngeze served as an organizer for the Impuzamugambi militia, and is alleged to have personally supervised and taken part in torture, mass rape, and killings of Tutsis.
Ngeze was born in Rubavu commune, Gisenyi prefecture, in Rwanda. He is a Muslim, of Hutu ethnicity. [5] In addition to working as a journalist in 1978, Ngeze allegedly also earned money as a bus driver. [6] By 1990, he was without training or experience in journalism. [7]
Ngeze was the Editor-in-Chief of the bimonthly Kangura magazine, [1] which was initially intended as a counterweight to the popular anti-government newspaper Kanguka, and was financed by high-level members in the ruling MRND party of Hutu dictator Juvénal Habyarimana. Ngeze and his magazine had extensive links to the Akazu, the network of officials surrounding the President and his wife; this group included supporters of Hutu Power and the architects of the Rwandan genocide.
In December 1990, Ngeze published the Hutu Ten Commandments (sometimes called the Ten Commandments of the Bahutu) in Kangura, which made disparaging remarks about Tutsis in general and Tutsi women in particular. [8] With the Hutu Ten Commandments, Ngeze revived, revised, and reconciled the Hamitic myth (Tutsis were considered by the Europeans to be a "Hamitic race" superior to the "Negroid" populations of Sub-Saharan Africa based on their having more Caucasoid facial features; that is, the idea that the Tutsis were foreign invaders and thus should not be part of the Hutu-majority country) and the rhetoric of the Hutu revolution to promote a doctrine of militant Hutu purity. The "Hutu Ten Commandments" were essential in creating and spreading the anti-Tutsi feeling among Rwandan Hutus that led to the Rwandan genocide.
In 1993, Ngeze became a shareholder and correspondent for the newly founded Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which was largely a radio equivalent of Kangura. He was interviewed approximately eight times on RTLM. [9]
During the Rwandan genocide, Ngeze provided RTLM with names of people to be killed in his prefecture, [10] which were broadcast on air. He was interviewed by RTLM and Radio Rwanda several times between April and June 1994, and in these broadcasts called for the extermination of the Tutsis and Hutus in opposition to the government. At the same time, Kangura published lists of people to be eliminated by the military and the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi militias during the genocide.
Ngeze fled Rwanda in June 1994 as the country fell to the RPF. He was arrested in Mombasa, Kenya on 18 July 1997, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In 2007, the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR reversed some of his convictions, but confirmed others. It also changed his life sentence to one of 35 years' imprisonment. The charges of "aiding and abetting the commission of genocide in Gisenyi prefecture; direct and public incitement to commit genocide through the publication of articles in his Kangura newspaper in 1994; aiding and abetting extermination as a crime against humanity in Gisenyi prefecture" were upheld. [2]
On 3 December 2008, he was sent to Mali to serve his sentence of imprisonment.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955 in order to adjudicate people charged for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of international law in Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994. The court eventually convicted 61 individuals and acquitted 14.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred between 7 April and 15 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.
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Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was a Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993, to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the Rwandan genocide that took place from April to July 1994, and has been described by some scholars as having been a de facto arm of the Hutu government.
Simon Bikindi was a Rwandan singer-songwriter who was formerly very popular in Rwanda. His patriotic songs were playlist staples on the national radio station Radio Rwanda during the war from October 1990 to July 1994 before the Rwandan Patriotic Front took power. For actions during the April 1994 genocide against Tutsi, he was tried and convicted for incitement to genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2008. He died of diabetes at a Beninese hospital in late 2018.
Georges Henri Yvon Joseph Ruggiu is a Belgian radio presenter who worked for Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which played a significant role in promoting the genocide against the Tutsi. Like the station's other broadcasters, Ruggiu incited violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu over the air. He had become involved in Rwandan politics just two years before the genocide.
The Akazu was an informal organization of Hutu extremists whose members contributed strongly to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A circle of relatives and close friends of Rwanda's then-president Juvénal Habyarimana and his influential wife Agathe Habyarimana, they were also called the Zero Network, for their goal of a Rwanda with zero Tutsi.
Félicien Kabuga is a génocidaire and Rwandan businessman who played a major role in the run-up to the Genocide of the Rwandan Tutsis. A multimillionaire, he was closely connected to dictator Juvénal Habyarimana's Hutu nationalist MRND party and the Akazu, an informal group of Hutu extremists who helped lead the Rwandan genocide.
The Impuzamugambi was a Hutu militia in Rwanda formed in 1992. Together with the Interahamwe militia, which formed earlier and had more members, the Impuzamugambi was responsible for many of the deaths of Tutsis and moderate Hutus during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
Tharcisse Renzaho is a Rwandan soldier, former politician and war criminal. He is best known for his role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
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.
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was a convicted génocidaire and politician associated with the Hutu Power movement. A high-ranking civil servant, Barayagwiza served as policy director within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the time of the Rwandan genocide. He has been described as one of the "masterminds" of the genocide.
The Coalition for the Defence of the Republic was a Rwandan far-right Hutu Power political party that took a major role in inciting the Rwandan genocide.
Ferdinand Nahimana is a Rwandan historian, who was convicted of incitement to genocide for his role in the Rwandan genocide.
Hutu Power is a racial and ethnosupremacist ideology that asserts the ethnic superiority of Hutu, often in the context of being superior to Tutsi and Twa, and that therefore they are entitled to dominate and murder these two groups and other minorities. Espoused by Hutu extremists, widespread support for the ideology led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide against Tutsi and their family members, the moderate Hutu who opposed the killings, and Twa who were deemed traitors. Hutu Power political parties and movements included the Akazu, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic and its Impuzamugambi paramilitary militia, and the governing National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development and its Interahamwe paramilitary militia. The theory of Hutu people being superior is most common in Rwanda and Burundi, where they make up the majority of the population. Due to its sheer destructiveness, the ideology has been compared to historical Nazism in the Western world.
The "Hutu Ten Commandments" was a document published in the December 1990 edition of Kangura, an anti-Tutsi, Hutu Power Kinyarwanda-language newspaper in Kigali, Rwanda. The Hutu Ten Commandments are often cited as a prime example of anti-Tutsi propaganda that was promoted by genociders in Rwanda following the 1990 invasion by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and prior to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The chief editor of Kangura, Hassan Ngeze, was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2003 by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment.
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.
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During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women and children were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) handed down the first conviction for the use of rape as a weapon of war during the civil conflict, and, because the intent of the mass violence against Rwandan women and children was to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular ethnic group, it was the first time that mass rape during wartime was found to be an act of genocidal rape.
Ananie Nkurunziza was a presenter (animateur) on the Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, which played a significant role in promoting the Rwandan genocide. Like the station's other broadcasters, Nkurunziza incited violence against Tutsi and moderate Hutu on the air.