Belgium’s Role in Rwandan Genocide

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“The Tutsi notables, who had come to believe in the superiority the Belgians attributed to them, became tools of the colonial administration, responsible for assigning forced labour and punishments.

Only Tutsi children had access to education.

The colonisers and missionaries unpicked the fabric of the Rwandan nation, even issuing identity cards that recorded the bearer’s ‘ethnicity’.

A revolt by smallholder farmers, directed not against the Belgian colonial administration but against Tutsi notables and officials. This ‘social revolution’ was supported by the colonial regime’s top-ranking official.

Independence, declared in 1962, was presented as a victory for ordinary people. The Tutsis’ huts were burned, and 300,000 fled into exile.

Until 1990 the Belgians supported the Hutus, in the belief that the ethnic majority was also the political majority.

When war broke out on the Ugandan border in October 1990, Belgium failed to support the Rwandan government against the army of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR), made up of Tutsi refugees who had fought in the National Resistance Army ... Munitions already paid for were not delivered, and the expected military support never arrived...

On 14 April 1994, when foreign minister Willy Claes told UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali that Brussels intended to withdraw its peacekeepers and encourage other countries to do the same, there were no objections in Belgium to a decision that effectively abandoned Rwanda to the executioners.”

Colonial powers entrenched ethnic divisions

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