Court Watch Tracking Current Developments in International Law
ICTR Convicts Former Rwandan Mayor for Crime of Extermination
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted Grégoire Ndahimana, former mayor of Kivumu commune, Kibuye prefecture, of the crime of extermination. The ICTR’s November 17, 2011 ruling holds Ndahimana responsible in the killing of up to 2,000 Tutsi refugees in the early days of a three-month killing spree in 1994 that left at least 800,000 dead. The United Nations (UN) definition of extermination includes “the infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.” Colluding with the local priest, Ndahimana played a key role in the planning and implementation of the mass killing of Kivumu’s Tutsi minority in the parish church.
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The ICTR was established in 1994 by UN Security Council Resolution 955, to investigate and bring to justice those responsible for the genocide carried out by Hutu mobs and state actors in the spring of that year. The ICTR sits at Arusha, Tanzania, and functions in very much the same manner as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugo- slavia.
Rwanda lies between Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Congo, in central Africa. Between April and July, 1994, Rwanda saw one of history’s most horrific terror campaigns, which stemmed from a class struggle aggravated by colonial rule. Histori- cally, the Tutsi and Hutu labels have referred to eth- nic differences, but in reality, Rwanda’s factions are not ethnically different. The distinction recognizes that Tutsi cultivated the land, while Hutu remained hunter-gatherers for centuries. As agriculture be- came prevalent and nomadic life waned, Tutsi as- sumed the noble ranks of a feudal system, while Hutu took their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Under Belgian colonial administration
following World War I, the distinctions were exac- erbated, as Belgians concluded that the taller Tutsi were more closely related to white Europeans, and therefore superior. Benefits were lavished on Tutsi until 1959, when they began to agitate for independence from Brussels.
In 1961, the Belgians left Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, but encouraged the Hutu majority to revolt against their Tutsi lords. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were forced to flee, and the Hutu reversed the dis- crimination they had suffered under Belgian rule.
By 1990, thousands of Tutsi refugees had built an Army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In Oc- tober of that year, the RPF invaded from Uganda, which was still dominated by Tutsi, setting off a civil war. A cease-fire was signed in Arusha on Au- gust 4, 1993. By the following spring, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, and his Burundian counterpart had fashioned a conclusive peace agreement. Before they could implement the accords, an airplane carrying both leaders was shot down over Kigali. Their April 6, 1994 assas- sination was blamed on the RPF, and was used by propagandists to encourage Hutu to harass, round up, and kill their Tutsi neighbors. By the time the RPF took Kigali in July, nearly a million Tutsi lay dead.
The Kibuye Church Massacre
Kibuye prefecture sits on a hill above picturesque Lake Kivu, situated between Rwanda and its western neighbor, Congo. In April 1994, the Ki- vumu commune was home to 50,000 Hutu and some 6,000 Tutsi. A week after Habyarimana’s assassination, the power structure of the com- mune eradicated the Tutsi minority; by July, not a single Tutsi remained alive. On April 12, at the behest of the local Roman Catholic priest, Father Athanase Seromba, the local police rounded up
ILSA Quarterly » volume 20 » issue 3 » February 2012
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