In a message dated 7/9/00 9:29:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] 
writes:

> The Guardian 
>  Africans say UN must pay for genocide
>  Victoria Brittain
>  Friday July 7, 2000
>  
>  The Organisation of African Unity is demanding payment of "significant
>  reparations" to Rwanda by the countries that failed to prevent the
>  genocide of 1994, when 800,000 people are believed to have died.

   I don't think so.  The fact that the OAU failed to carry out its chartered 
mandate does not mean others should be blamed.  On the street this is called 
a shake down.
  
>  A special report released today for the July 10-12 opening of this
>  year's annual OAU summit parallels the requested reparations with the
>  $13bn Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after the second world war; at
>  today's value that would be more than £60bn.
>  
>  The uncompromising report names the United States and France in
>  particular, along with the UN security council as a whole, as guilty
>  parties who allowed "this terrible conspiracy to go ahead".
>  It is written by a team headed by two former African heads of state,
>  three former UN officials and a high court judge, and makes searing
>  criticism of "the international betrayal of Rwanda".
 
   Those responsible for the killings in Rwanda were Rwandans in the Rwandan 
government who planned and implimented the killings, and those Rwandans who 
took part in the killing of their fellow Rwandans.  Those targeted were  
Tutsi, Hutu with the wrong political views, and any other person on the wrong 
side of the lengthy Rwandan civil war.

  Some background:

PEOPLE 

Rwanda's population density, even after the 1994 genocide, is among the 
highest in Sub-Saharan Africa (230 per sq. km.--590 per sq. mi.). Nearly 
every family in this country with few villages lives in a self-contained 
compound on a hillside. The urban concentrations are grouped around 
administrative centers. The indigenous population consists of three ethnic 
groups. The Hutus, who comprise the majority of the population (85%), are 
farmers of Bantu origin. The Tutsis (14%) are a pastoral people who arrived 
in the area in the 15th century. Until 1959, they formed the dominant caste 
under a feudal system based on cattleholding. The Twa (1%) are thought to be 
the remnants of the earliest settlers of the region. About half of the adult 
population is literate, but not more than 5% have received secondary 
education. During 1994-95, most primary schools and more than half of prewar 
secondary schools reopened. The national university in Butare reopened in 
April 1995; enrollment is over 4,000. Rebuilding the educational system 
continues to be a high priority of the Rwandan Government.


HISTORY 

According to folklore, Tutsi cattle breeders began arriving in the area from 
the Horn of Africa in the 15th century and gradually subjugated the Hutu 
inhabitants. The Tutsis established a monarchy headed by a mwami (king) and a 
feudal hierarchy of Tutsi nobles and gentry. Through a contract known as 
ubuhake, the Hutu farmers pledged their services and those of their 
descendants to a Tutsi lord in return for the loan of cattle and use of 
pastures and arable land. Thus, the Tutsi reduced the Hutu to virtual 
serfdom. However, boundaries of race and class became less distinct over the 
years as some Tutsi declined until they enjoyed few advantages over the Hutu. 
The first European known to have visited Rwanda was German Count Von Goetzen 
in 1894. He was followed by missionaries, notably the "White Fathers." In 
1899, the mwami submitted to a German protectorate without resistance. 
Belgian troops from Zaire chased the small number of Germans out of Rwanda in 
1915 and took control of the country. 

After World War I, the League of Nations mandated Rwanda and its southern 
neighbor, Burundi, to Belgium as the territory of Ruanda-Urundi. Following 
World War II, Ruanda-Urundi became a UN trust territory with Belgium as the 
administrative authority. Reforms instituted by the Belgians in the 1950s 
encouraged the growth of democratic political institutions but were resisted 
by the Tutsi traditionalists who saw in them a threat to Tutsi rule. An 
increasingly restive Hutu population, encouraged by the Belgian military, 
sparked a revolt in November 1959, resulting in the overthrow of the Tutsi 
monarchy. Two years later, the Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement 
(PARMEHUTU) won an overwhelming victory in a UN-supervised referendum. 

During the 1959 revolt and its aftermath, more than 160,000 Tutsis fled to 
neighboring countries. The PARMEHUTU government, formed as a result of the 
September 1961 election, was granted internal autonomy by Belgium on January 
1, 1962. A June 1962 UN General Assembly resolution terminated the Belgian 
trusteeship and granted full independence to Rwanda (and Burundi) effective 
July 1, 1962. 

Gregoire Kayibanda, leader of the PARMEHUTU Party, became Rwanda's first 
elected president, leading a government chosen from the membership of the 
directly elected unicameral National Assembly. Peaceful negotiation of 
international problems, social and economic elevation of the masses, and 
integrated development of Rwanda were the ideals of the Kayibanda regime. 
Relations with 43 countries, including the United States, were established in 
the first 10 years. Despite the progress made, inefficiency and corruption 
began festering in government ministries in the mid-1960s. On July 5, 1973, 
the military took power under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Juvenal 
Habyarimana, who dissolved the National Assembly and the PARMEHUTU Party and 
abolished all political activity. 

In 1975, President Habyarimana formed the National Revolutionary Movement for 
Development (MRND) whose goals were to promote peace, unity, and national 
development. The movement was organized from the "hillside" to the national 
level and included elected and appointed officials. 

Under MRND aegis, Rwandans went to the polls in December 1978, overwhelmingly 
endorsed a new constitution, and confirmed President Habyarimana as 
president. President Habyarimana was re-elected in 1983 and again in 1988, 
when he was the sole candidate. Responding to public pressure for political 
reform, President Habyarimana announced in July 1990 his intention to 
transform Rwanda's one-party state into a multi-party democracy. 

On October 1, 1990, Rwandan exiles banded together as the Rwandan Patriotic 
Front (RPF) and invaded Rwanda from their base in Uganda. The rebel force, 
composed primarily of ethnic Tutsis, blamed the government for failing to 
democratize and resolve the problems of some 500,000 Tutsi refugees living in 
diaspora around the world. The war dragged on for almost two years until a 
cease-fire accord was signed July 12, 1992, in Arusha, Tanzania, fixing a 
timetable for an end to the fighting and political talks, leading to a peace 
accord and power-sharing, and authorizing a neutral military observer group 
under the auspices of the Organization for African Unity. A cease-fire took 
effect July 31, 1992, and political talks began August 10, 1992. 

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying President Habyarimana and the 
President of Burundi was shot down as it prepared to land at Kigali. Both 
presidents were killed. As though the shooting down was a signal, military 
and militia groups began rounding up and killing all Tutsis and political 
moderates, regardless of their ethnic background. 

The prime minister and her 10 Belgian bodyguards were among the first 
victims. The killing swiftly spread from Kigali to all corners of the 
country; between April 6 and the beginning of July, a genocide of 
unprecedented swiftness left up to1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead at 
the hands of organized bands of militia--Interahamwe. Even ordinary citizens 
were called on to kill their neighbors by local officials and 
government-sponsored radio. The president's MRND Party was implicated in 
organizing many aspects of the genocide. 

The RPF battalion stationed in Kigali under the Arusha accords came under 
attack immediately after the shooting down of the president's plane. The 
battalion fought its way out of Kigali and joined up with RPF units in the 
north. The RPF then resumed its invasion, and civil war raged concurrently 
with the genocide for two months. French forces landed in Goma, Zaire, in 
June 1994 on a humanitarian mission. They deployed throughout southwest 
Rwanda in an area they called "Zone Turquoise," quelling the genocide and 
stopping the fighting there. The Rwandan army was quickly defeated by the RPF 
and fled across the border to Zaire followed by some 2 million refugees who 
fled to Zaire, Tanzania, and Burundi. The RPF took Kigali on July 4, 1994, 
and the war ended on July 16, 1994. The RPF took control of a country ravaged 
by war and genocide. Up to 800,000 had been murdered, another 2 million or so 
had fled, and another million or so were displaced internally. 

The international community responded with one of the largest humanitarian 
relief efforts ever mounted. The U.S. was one of the largest contributors. 
The UN peacekeeping operation, UNAMIR, was drawn down during the fighting but 
brought back up to strength after the RPF victory. UNAMIR remained in Rwanda 
until March 8, 1996. 

Following an uprising by the ethnic Tutsi Banyamulenge people in Eastern 
Zaire in October 1996, a huge movement of refugees began which brought over 
600,000 back to Rwanda in the last two weeks of November. This massive 
repatriation was followed at the end of December 1996 by the return of 
another 500,000 from Tanzania, again in a huge, spontaneous wave. Less than 
100,000 Rwandans are estimated to remain outside of Rwanda in late 1997, and 
they are thought to be the remnants of the defeated army of the the former 
genocidal government and its allies in the civilian militias known as 
Interahamwe. 

With the return of the refugees, a new chapter in Rwandan history began. The 
government began the long-awaited genocide trials, which got off to an 
uncertain start in the closing days of 1996 and inched forward in 1997. The 
success or failure of the Rwandan social compact will be decided over the 
next few years, as Hutu and Tutsi try to find ways to live together again.