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Holá, Barbora; Smeulers, Alette --- "Rwanda and the ICTR: facts and figures" [2016] ELECD 1512; in de Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Smeulers, Alette (eds), "The Elgar Companion to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 44

Book Title: The Elgar Companion to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Editor(s): de Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Smeulers, Alette

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784711696

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Rwanda and the ICTR: facts and figures

Author(s): Holá, Barbora; Smeulers, Alette

Number of pages: 33

Abstract/Description:

Rwanda, a small state located in Sub-Saharan Africa, became notorious in 1994, when media outlets were filled with shocking stories and pictures depicting ‘acts of genocide’ being committed in ‘the country of thousand hills’. Rwanda already had a troubled history of violence between the Hutu majority (85 per cent) and the Tutsi minority (14 per cent) when on 1 October 1990 the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the military branch of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), invaded the country from the neighbouring Uganda and a civil war between the RPF and the Hutu-dominated Rwandese army started. During this war many atrocities were committed on both sides but maybe even more significantly, Rwandese society became more polarized by propaganda of political hardliners and some local media were frightening the population with messages full of threats and animosity against the Tutsi. In December 1990 for instance the newspaper Kangura published the Ten Hutu Commandments, a notorious example of anti-Tutsi propaganda spread by Hutu extremists, and in June 1993 the Radio-Télevision Libre des Milles Collines (RTLM) started broadcasting its hate messages. On 4 August 1993 a peace agreement was signed in Arusha, Tanzania. Two months later the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) established a peacekeeping operation under the name of United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to ensure the fair and peaceful implementation of the Arusha Accords. Meanwhile political and social tensions between Hutu and Tutsi were slowly rising.