OTTAWA | Thirty years after the genocide in Rwanda, retired lieutenant general Roméo Dallaire deplores that the international community has chosen to ignore the lessons of the conflict.
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During those 100 fateful days in 1994, 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in this small East African country, amid widespread indifference from states around the world.
Worse, the role of certain Western countries, such as France, remains nebulous and controversial.
Close eyes
Even today, the international community too often allows conflicts to flare up by remaining on the sidelines, without worrying too much about the fate reserved for innocent civilians, from Ukraine to Gaza and Burma, notes the one who led the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Rwanda.
“I find that the international community is even more guilty today than it was 30 years ago, for its inability to find the leadership and the courage to intervene, prevent or participate in conflict,” slice Roméo Dallaire, in a telephone interview.
At 77 years old, Lieutenant General Dallaire has regained a certain serenity, thanks to years of therapy. He found the love of his life, remarried and settled facing the river near Kamouraska, in Bas-Saint-Laurent.
Photo Marie-Claude Michaud, provided by Roméo Dallaire
He offers this discussion from his studio where he is working on his many projects, including his fourth book, which was published this week, entitled The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey, the French translation of which is forthcoming.
Chasing the ghosts of Rwanda and finding peace is the effort of a lifetime after helplessly seeing the horror up close.
The horror
From the start of the genocide, the United Nations withdrew most of its troops instead of sending the reinforcements requested by Mr. Dallaire, who decided to stay with a few hundred peacekeepers and around ten Canadian officers.
Thousands of Rwandans fled the genocide to take refuge in neighboring countries.
Archive photo, AFP
Without the mandate or the resources to stop the massacres, he still managed to protect more than 30,000 Tutsis.
“No one came to help us,” he remembers. There was no oil in Rwanda, there was no strategic interest. The human being didn’t count. They were pretty upset about it. »
A Tutsi refugee waits in the rain in a camp under French protection at the end of June 1994.
Archive photo, AFP
In his opinion, little has changed, which is why a certain “resentment” persists in him when he observes the state of the world.
“We are still facing genocide scenarios today, whether in Burma or Gaza, terrible civil wars, and no one wants to help. It hasn’t changed. Human beings don’t count in that. It is the interests of each country that count,” he laments.
Victims tend to wounds caused by shrapnel and machete blows in a Red Cross tent in May 1994.
Archive photo, AFP
Remember
Every five years, Roméo Dallaire meets with the dozen of his Canadian officers sent to the front during the genocide. This year, the meeting will take place in Quebec.
The general says he is “concerned” that this may be a last meeting with his comrades in arms.
“We are losing troops,” says Roméo Dallaire, who specifies that suicide and illness caused by post-traumatic shock have claimed victims among his former close collaborators.
“They were the only reinforcements from around the world who came to help me during the genocide. They were the backbone of the headquarters,” he recalls.
The origins of the conflict between the two ethnic groups
Before the colonial period, which began in 1884 under Germany, then Belgium, the Tutsis, especially breeders, occupied the top of the social ladder, even if they were a minority, the Hutus being mainly peasants.
Ethnic conflicts began in the late 1950s, during decolonization. The Hutus wanted to drive the Tutsis from their socially favorable position. Tensions escalated after the country gained independence in 1962. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis took refuge in neighboring countries to escape the violence.
In the 1980s, these refugees demanded to return home to Rwanda, but President Juvénal Habyarimana refused. In the early 1990s, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), created in 1988 by Tutsi refugees, launched attacks.
Hate and propaganda
What followed was a hate propaganda operation launched against all Tutsis in Rwanda, whom the government accused of being accomplices of the RPF.
In 1993, a fragile peace agreement was signed, but meanwhile Hutu extremists were preparing a campaign to exterminate Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
When the plane carrying the president of Rwanda was shot down by a rocket on April 6, 1994, it was the beginning of the genocide.
Source: UN
Canada, a big talker…
Canada’s presence in UN peace missions has been reduced to nothing in recent decades.
Right now he is 69e contributing country, with only 47 members deployed, according to UN data, out of more than 75,000 personnel.
This low participation of our peacekeepers distresses retired Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, who assures that the country’s international reputation has taken a hit.
Emasculated
“All I hear from Canada, from everyone, is: “Ah yes, Canada, big talkers, but little doers”.
“People don’t mind telling me. We have almost reached a level of insignificance,” he insists.
The Trudeau government had, however, promised to reconnect with peace missions, after the Harper years, during which the diplomatic corps was “emasculated”, according to Roméo Dallaire.
“We no longer have any sense of initiative. We are reluctant to take risks. »
One hundred days of massacre
April 6, 1994
The plane of President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, is shot down.
April 7
The first machete killings of Tutsis began in the capital, Kigali. They quickly spread throughout the country with militias of Hutu extremists, who drag part of the population with them.
April 10
The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front responds with an offensive towards Kigali.
April 9 to 16
Westerners evacuate the country.
April 21th
The UN reduces the presence of its peacekeepers from 2,600 to 270 men.
By the end of May, the majority of massacres had already been committed.
4th July
The Rwandan Patriotic Front takes the capital and overthrows the genocidal regime in place.
July 17, 1994
End of the conflict. According to the UN, 800,000 people were killed. Two million Hutus also fled the country during this month.