How many perpetrators were there in the Rwandan genocide? An estimate

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes * This article emerges from my forthcoming dissertation entitled "The order of genocide: race, power, and war in Rwanda." I would like to thank Ben Valentino, Stephen Stedman, and Michael Mann for encouraging me to write this article. I also would like to thank Gerry Caplan, David Leonard, and Eric Markusen for comments on earlier drafts. Funding for the research and writing of this article comes from the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship program and from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship program. In Rwanda, the research depended on the generous permission of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Local Affairs and Administration to conduct fieldwork in the country. The figure of three million perpetrators has been cited to me in several formal interviews and informal conversations with senior government officials in Rwanda over the course of visits to the country in 1998, 2000, and 2002. See also Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1998), p 244, where the author quotes a former presidential adviser who cites the figure of three million perpetrators. Note that in addition to citing "hundreds of thousands" of perpetrators, Mahmood Mamdani also quotes as evidence of mass participation an RPF "political commissar" who claims the RPF faced a "criminal population" when it took power in 1994. Christian Scherrer claims that 40–66% of male Hutu farmers, 60–80% of the higher professions, and "almost 100%" of Rwanda's civil servants participated in the genocide. No substantiation is offered for the latter claim, and a German reference is offered for the former two. If properly calculated, those numbers would total more than a million perpetrators. Indeed, Scherrer also claims that "every fourth person in Rwanda's Hutu population" was "probably directly involved"—a number that would total about 1.25 million—and that "millions rendered themselves indirectly responsible" (p 126). Scherrer elsewhere claims that "About half the male Hutu farming population … must have been actively involved in the gang killings or the collective persecution of the victims" (p 115). Note that Des Forges also claims there were "tens of thousands" of perpetrators who chose to participate "quickly and easily" (p 2). These are in contrast to "hundreds of thousands" who participated "reluctantly." Jones refers to 25,000 perpetrators as a low‐end estimate and 100,000 as a high‐end estimate. According to the 1991 census, Rwanda had 2,813,232 citizens between 18 and 54. If, according to the census, 8.4% were Tutsi, then the adult Hutu population would have consisted of 2,576,920 persons. Because of population growth between 1991 and 1994, the actual number was higher, and some perpetrators were younger than 18 and older than 54. Still, the three million estimate would encompass the entire adult Hutu population. For the census figures, see République Rwandaise, "Recensement général de la population et de l'habitat au 15 Aout 1991: analyse des resultats definitifs," Kigali, April 1994, p 124. There are many examples of journalists and commentators quoted in news reports citing "ancient tribal hatreds" while the genocide occurred. For an example, see a very revealing exchange reproduced in Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp 355–356. For another example, see Roger Rosenblatt, "The killer in the next tent: the surreal horror of the Rwanda refugees," New York Times Magazine, June 5, 1994, p 40. For examples where commentators viewed the genocide as emerging from state "collapse" or "failure," see Eliane Sciolino, "For West, Rwanda is not worth the political candle," The New York Times, April 15, 1994 and I. William Zartman, "Introduction: posing the problem of state collapse," in I. William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), p 4. Indeed, there is a great deal of work done in this vein. For examples, see Jean‐Pierre Chrétien, The Great Lakes of Africa: Two Thousand Years of History, trans. Scott Straus (New York: Zone Books, 2003); Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers; and Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). Most human rights accounts of the genocide take this view and stress the factors cited in this paragraph. The best of these books is Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story. See also African Rights, Death, Despair, and Defiance, rev. ed. (London: African Rights, 1995); Article 19, Broadcasting Genocide: Censorship, Propaganda, & State‐Sponsored Violence in Rwanda 1990–1994) (New York: Article 19, 1996); and Jean‐Pierre Chrétien et al., Les Médias du Génocide (Paris: Karthala, 1995). With one exception, the definition of perpetrator that I use is consistent with the Rwandan government's definition of genocide criminals. Rwandan law lists four categories of criminals, and the difference between my definition and this law concerns the fourth category, which covers property crimes. My definition of a perpetrator excludes property crimes if the crime was not part of a physical attack on a civilian. The four categories in Rwandan law are as follows: Category one is for: "a) Persons whose criminal acts or whose acts of criminal participation place them among the planners, organizers, instigators, supervisors and leaders of the crime of genocide or of a crime against humanity; b) persons who acted in positions of authority at the national, prefectoral, communal, sector, or cell level, or in a political party, the army, religious organizations or in a militia and who perpetrated or fostered such crimes; c) Notorious murderers who by virtue of the zeal or excessive malice with which they committed atrocities, distinguished themselves in their areas of residence or where they passed; d) Persons who committed acts of sexual torture." Categories two is for: "Persons whose criminal acts or whose acts of criminal participation place them among perpetrators, conspirators, or accomplices of international homicide or of serious assault against the person causing death." Category three is for: "Persons whose criminal acts or whose acts of criminal participation make them guilty of other serious assaults against the person." Category four is for: "Persons who committed offences against property." Again, my definition of a perpetrator includes the first through third categories, but not the fourth. For the Rwandan government's definitions of genocide criminals, see Official Gazette of the Republic of Rwanda, "Organic law on the organization of prosecutions for offences constituting the crime of genocide or crimes against humanity committed since 1 October 1990," Kigali, September 1, 1996, p 15. For an overview of different definitions of genocide and for an extended discussion of the basis for my definition, see Scott Straus, "Contested meanings and conflicting imperatives: a conceptual analysis of genocide," Journal of Genocide Research, Vol 3, No 3, 2001, pp 349–375. Again, there is a large volume of work on this question, but the point I am making is that most scholars dispute the notion that Tutsi formed a race and many doubt that the Tutsi formed a contiguous ethnic group with a common ancestry. As indicated earlier, when Europeans colonized this region of Africa in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they imposed racial categories on identities that were previously more fluid. They also elevated the importance of the Hutu/Tutsi cleavage, as opposed to other identity‐based cleavages, such as clan, affiliation with the monarchy, region, and so forth. Moreover, Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi speak the same language and, by the time of the genocide, many Hutu and Tutsi had intermarried, such that the notion that "the Tutsi" formed a bounded, biologically related ethnic or racial group is probably false. Estimates of the number of victims in the Rwandan genocide vary. The figure I cite is from Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, pp 15–16. RPA stands for the Rwandan Patriotic Army, which was the armed wing of the RPF. Although I have never seen this specific estimation in print, I have frequently heard this calculation during interviews with government officials and with Tutsi survivors in Rwanda during field trips in 2000 and 2002. Bruce Jones uses this logic in his analysis of the size of the perpetrator population (2001, p 41). In theory, if one had a representative sample of the perpetrator population, and an average was taken of how many victims each killed, then a calculation of the number of perpetrators based on the number of victims would make sense. As of now, such data do not exist. These statistics were the latest available when I conducted field research in Rwanda in 2002. According to government statistics, by June 2002, 7,211 detainees had been judged, of whom 1,386 had been acquitted. Rwanda's law for prosecuting genocide crimes includes a provision for reduced sentences if suspected perpetrators confess and plead guilty to their crimes. See Official Gazette of the Republic of Rwanda, "Organic law," pp 16–18. For further details on these points, see my forthcoming dissertation. After the RPF won the civil war and ended the genocide in 1994, some two million Rwandans fled the country as refugees. An estimated 1.2 million went to the Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire), and the remainder went principally to Tanzania. In late 1996, the new, RPA‐dominated Rwandan army invaded Congo to destroy the refugee camps there because, among other reasons, the behavior of exiled leaders in those camps posed a security threat. Rwandan government forces ultimately succeeded in that effort: the camps were broken up and many refugees returned home. However, many refugees fled westward—that is, deeper into Congo—and Rwandan government forces followed them there. In fact, Rwandan government forces went on to spearhead an insurgency in Congo that ultimately toppled the Congolese government in May 1997. A little more than a year later, the newly imposed Congolese leader, Laurent Kabila, fell out with his Rwandan backers and there began a second and more complicated war in Congo that lasts to the time of my writing this article (July 2003). During the first Congo war (1996–1997), Rwandan government forces killed a large number of Rwandan exiles and refugees. The exact number is not known, nor is it likely to be known, but estimates range from 10,000 to 200,000. Moreover, there remain an untold but significant number of exiles who continue to fight the current Rwandan government from Congo or who remain in Congo as refugees. Not all of Rwandans killed or exiled in Congo were perpetrators, but some were. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that those who had the greatest responsibility in the genocide had the greatest incentive to fight and the fewest incentives to return to Rwanda. The counts are based on the last administrative list printed before the genocide that I could find: République Rwandaise, "Annex a l'arrêté présidentiel No 251/03 du novembre 1975," Journal Officiel, No 22, November 15, 1975. This decree lists 143 communes, 1,489 sectors, and 6,213 cellules, where the average number of sectors per commune is 10.4 and the average number of cellules per commune is 43.5. At least two communes that existed in 1994 were not listed in this decree—Kacyiru and Kicukiro—and so I have added 21 sectors and 87 cellules to the total listed. For these calculations, I use the following ratios: 44 cellules per commune and four cellules per sector. Note that I have weighted the results to reflect varying sampling ratios in each prison where I interviewed. The government's official report on the genocide lists 154 communes where genocide occurred. However, this is a technical impossibility because that many communes did not exist in Rwanda in 1994. See République Rwandaise, "Dénombremement des victimes du génocide." In addition to Giti, those communes where I calculate that genocide did not occur include Kiyombe, Muvumba, Kivuye, Cyumba, Mukarange (Byumba), Kigombe, Kinigi, Butaro, Nkumba, Cyeru, and Kidaho (Ruhengeri). The communes are: Tare, Rushashi, Musasa (Rural Kigali), Nyakinama, Nyamugali, Nyamutera, Ruhondo (Ruhengeri), Gaseke (Gisenyi), Tumba, Kinyami, and Rutare (Byumba). I identify these communes on the basis of my field research and a government document that lists the number of victims in every commune. The 11 communes that I list here existed in 1994 and had less than 2% of all genocide deaths per prefecture in the report. See République Rwandaise, "Dénombremement des victimes du génocide," pp 41–176. The main basis for this assertion concerns events in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where many perpetrators were killed or where many remain. For more on that point, see note 23. As for the other uncounted populations—namely, Rwandans in Rwanda who are genocide perpetrators but who are not in prison and perpetrators who were killed in Rwanda either during the genocide or after—those numbers are impossible to estimate with any accuracy. But based on my observations in Rwanda, I would argue that the sum of these two uncounted populations is in the tens of thousands. For details on these latter points, see notes 23 and 30. Note that these estimates are weighted to reflect variations in my sampling. As has been claimed in interviews conducted with Rwandan government officials and as cited in Mahmood Mamdani (Citation2001, p 7). According to the census, Rwanda had 2,813,232 citizens between 18 and 54 in 1991. If, according to the census, 8.4% were Tutsi, then the Hutu population would be 2,576,920 individuals, of which 48.7% were active men. Thus, the total number of active adult Hutu men would be approximately 1,255,960. For the census figures, see République Rwandaise, Recensement général, pp 74, 124.