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Published April 19, 2004
Close examination reveals greater complexity than previously thought
Allan Stam spent a week in the prisons of Rwanda two summers ago, interviewing accused murderers about their participation in the 1994 mass killings that rocked the eastern African nation from April to October. Somewhere between 200,000 and 1 million Rwandans - no one knows for sure what the true number is - died at the hands of their countrymen in those few months.
A Rwandan survivor in Bisesero, which was the scene of more violence than in many other areas, and where victims resisted their killers, which was unusual, according to researcher Allan Stam, who took this photo in 2002.
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Stam remembers that many of the prisoners he talked to, like the Hutu man charged with killing his mother, wife and two daughters, were still unrepentant.
"I asked him, 'How did you do it?' and he said, 'I bludgeoned them with a club.' His wife was a Tutsi, and he said he was told to do it," Stam said.
April 6 marked the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan killings. In a new study, Stam, Associate Professor of Government, and Christian Davenport, a colleague at the University of Maryland, have compiled and analyzed the results of 10 independent investigations into the mass murders. Although often characterized as a genocide led by the dominant Hutu ethnic group against the minority Tutsis, the killing spree actually appears to have been a more complicated reality, conclude Stam and Davenport in the study.
"Depending upon which data you look at, it's possible to conclude that a majority of the victims might have been Hutus," Stam said, explaining that several different agencies were charged with documenting the tragedy. Differences in methodology and timing among these investigations appear to have resulted in different counts of the number who died.
"There simply weren't enough Tutsis in Rwanda to account for all the reported deaths. That means either the scale of the killing was smaller than has been reported, or equally likely, that a huge number of Hutus were caught up in the violence as victims," Stam said.
The study also shows that the killings began with a small cadre of Hutu militiamen, but quickly cascaded in a widening circle, with Hutus and Tutsis playing the roles of both attackers and victims. "Taken altogether, it looks more like politically motivated mass killing than genocide," he said. "Both Hutus and Tutsis opportunistically used the killings to settle long-standing political, economic and personal scores."
That conclusion does not necessarily mean that the Hutus didn't have a genocidal agenda. It does suggest, however, that the United States and other nations considering intervention were looking at a much more complicated military and political situation than is sometimes assumed.
"If you can't identify a good guy, then you have to be prepared to occupy and administer the country yourself," said Stam. "And we didn't have the political will to do that. No one did."
Stam and Davenport have shared their work, including an animation depicting the day-to-day spread of the killings, with prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda based in Tanzania as well as the Center for Conflict Management at the National University of Rwanda in Butare; and the Minister of Justice in Kigali, Rwanda.
"It's extremely important that we get the details right, not only for the criminal prosecutors trying to make their case, but also to advance the work of truth and reconciliation," Stam said. "Ultimately, we need to know what happened for the victims' sake. Unless we set the record straight, it will be as if many of the killings never happened, and that would be a travesty."
By TAMARA STEINERT
OTHER FINDINGS FROM THE RWANDA STUDY
- Militia troops conducted most of the killings early on. A wide variety of individuals participated in the middle period. By the end, soldiers, police and government officials played a predominant role.
- Members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, some of whom are in the current Rwanda government, were directly and indirectly responsible for far more deaths than is generally understood.
The study, which was supported by a National Science Foundation grant, is summarized at www.genodynamics.com.
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