The 1994 Rwandan genocide has often been described as the fastest killing spree of the twentieth century, taking up to a million victims in a mere 100 days. One of the key drivers of the murders was fear: fear of an actual army in jackboots and fatigues encroaching by the day, but also fear of their allies on the ground, the so-called fifth column. In the first case, the fear was obviously justified: a Tutsi rebel army had invaded four years earlier and seemed poised to overthrow the Hutu-dominated government. Now newly uncovered evidence suggests another motivator – fear of Tutsi civilians – was also justified.
Several confidential documents from the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) provide chilling evidence that Tutsi civilians worked hand-in-hand with Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) to commit crimes against Hutus in 1994. The evidence from these documents is bolstered by lengthy interviews with individuals who witnessed these operations.
The ICTR documents refer to RPF’s abakada or civilian cadres and the ‘loyal population’ assisting the RPF in committing massive human rights abuses across the country. Abakada were Tutsi technocrats recruited before, during and after the genocide. They became the interface between the RPF on the one hand, and UN agencies, NGOs, human rights investigators and journalists on the other. The cadres played a crucial role in Rwanda’s statecraft and propaganda system after the genocide. Full Story
