Filip Reyntjens: Massacre of Tutsi 1990-92 was “Rational Response” by Habyarimana Government to RPF Rebels

Between 1990 and 1992, over 2,000 Tutsi civilians were killed in a number of massacres that were perpetrated by the government of Rwanda at the time – mainly in the north-west of the country, but also in the southeastern region of Bugesera.

However, writing in January 1994, Filip Reyntjens, the ethno-racist academic from Belgium’s University of Antwerp, defended the government of Juvenal Habyarimana against the accusations. He has not relented ever since.

The mass targeting of Tutsi civilians didn’t just happen in the three months of 1994. Documented facts show the pattern going back years.

On 8 October 1990, one week after the beginning of hostilities between the RPF rebels and the FAR government troops, soldiers from the FAR murdered at least 65 Hima patrolists in Mutara region, northwest Rwanda.

In the second act of mass murder in mid-October 1990, 348 civilians were killed in 48 hours in Kibilira commune in Gisenyi province.

The local officials incited the population under the fabricated story that Tutsi had come to exterminate Hutu. The burgomaster declared that people should ‘continue working’. 

Two years later, Léon Mugesera would deliver racist speeches in Kibilira and the neighbouring Gaseke commune. One of the local government agents (conseiller) directing the slaughter would later confess to international investigators that he had followed the attackers to guarantee their security. The same Tutsi families in the same commune would fall under attack again in March 1992, at the same time as the massacre in Bugesera, and again in December 1992.

On 10 January 1993, the burgomaster of Kibilira said that the programme announced by Leon Mugesera had not changed and would resume when the international investigators (who were in Rwanda in January 1993) had left.

Between 25 January 1991 and 4 February 1991 (three years before the genocide against the Tutsi), a massacre was carried out against a group of Tutsi known as Bagogwe. 

At least 1,000 Tutsi were killed in a series of brutal attacks in several sectors of the north-west of the country, in the prefectures of Gisenyi and Ruhengeri. Confirmed accounts reveal that President Habyarimana himself presided over the meeting that organized the massacre of the Bagogwe.

In March 1992, the authorities organized the killing of several hundred Tutsi in Bugesera, a region located to the southeast of Kigali. 

Genocide convict Hassan Ngeze, editor of Kangura, visited the area several times prior to the massacre and spread tracts and rumours about the danger of the Inyenzi. On 3 March, Radio Rwanda issued a warning that Tutsi were going to kill Hutu; in particular, Hutu leaders in Bugesera. At that time, Ferdinand Nahimana was director of the Rwandan Office for Information (ORINFOR), where he supervised Radio Rwanda. 

A clear pattern characterizes the massacres in Kibilira, of the Bagogwe, and in Bugesera, as follows. Fabricated stories are spread, stating that Tutsi have killed or plan to kill Hutu; ideologues are present at massacre sites to give speeches or animate meetings; ‘trustworthy’ burgomasters are enlisted to call meetings with the conseillers; young people and interahamwe are dispatched to hunt, pillage and kill. 

In comes Flemish constitutional lawyer Filip Reyntjens, who had begun working for Juvenal Habyarimana in 1974. The latter had taken over government in a coup back in July the previous year.

Reyntjens moved up the trust-ladder to be key advisor by 1988. When the RPF/A launched a liberation struggle on 1 October 1990 to bring sanity to a country consumed with ethnic divisionism, Reyntjens formed a major part of the supremacist platform that defended Habyarimana in Brussels, the EU capital.

On 1 January 1994, Reyntjens published “L'Afrique des grands lacs en crise; Rwanda, Burundi, 1988-1994”.

In the book, Reyntjens writes that these massacres of Tutsis in Bugesera, Bigogwe and other regions were linked to the war; constituted a rational response to attacks by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) on the part of a population that felt threatened; and constituted a response to RPF attacks by the government and the local authorities in a context of war, insecurity and political uncertainty. (Read Pages 84-98)

It shouldn’t therefore come as a shock to anyone when Reyntjens comes up with a “research” purported to show that 80% of Rwandan leaders are Tutsi.

It is a continuation of his desire to see a Rwanda of pre-1994. Reyntjens would like a duplicate of the racist legacy that is informed by the never-ending Belgian feud (Wallons vs Flemish conflict) into the Great Lakes context.