Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 327 - The Rwandan Genocide: Part 1

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Get tickets to our last live show of 2024: www.universe.com/events/lions-led…s-belfast-83V5QD Get the next episode in the series by becoming a Patreon supporter: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys If you want to support the show via a one time donation without using Patreon, you can PayPal us at [e-mail] Content Warning Over the course of only around 100 days, horrific acts of violence, a genocide long in the making but seemingly deployed overnight, swept through the nation of Rwanda. This is the story and history of the Rwandan Genocide. Part 1/4 Sources: Scott Straus. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda Scott Straus. Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention Scott Straus. Rwanda, RTLM, and Mass Media Effects. Jean Hatzfeld. Machete Season. Philip Gourevitch. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Alison Des Forges. Leave None to Tell The Story: Genocide In Rwanda. Roméo Dallaire. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Case Files. https://unictr.irmct.org/en/cases

Hey everybody, if you ever wanted to see us live but you missed the other shows, well, you have another chance. Me and the boys are hitting the road once again and the Lines Led by Dunkies podcast is coming live to Belfast at the OYE Music Center Saturday, October 26th. So get your tickets while they last. You can find the link in our show notes. So get them now. Do it. Hey everybody. Welcome to the lions led by donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, with me is Tom

and Nate. We do not have a cold open today boys. It felt improper. Right on time for the suffering we're about to have for this series. I have COVID, so I'm currently locked away at home, about to be subjected to four parts of this. Yeah. I thought it was five, so that's a little bit of silver lining I suppose. Oh Jesus is it? Fuck. No it's not five.

Good news everybody. That's what I mean. Yeah, you said four and it reminded me that Joe had confirmed that it was four. But yeah, I'm in the studio in London, ready to suffer. We blocked off two hours of time just in case for this episode and we said to ourselves, get ready to embrace the pain. Probably a minimal riffing zone. It's the way that it works Talk about hideous tragedies. Yeah. Yeah, I am in our Netherlands studio and this is I'm just trying to sound excited

Because we're talking about the Rwandan genocide and it's all downhill for beer This is the last yoke we're going to have. This is the last time we're going to smile for the next like eight hours. In keeping with Winesled by Donkey's tradition, I do have a list of cute animal facts available upon request for all involved. Not the listener, though. It's not up to you. You find your own animal facts. What do you guys know about the Rwandan genocide?

Well, I was a kid when it happened. I was about 10 and I remember it being reported in the news. But I don't really recall there being any... I mean, obviously this is from the perspective of a 9, 10 year old. But I recall there being like, call it ethnic conflict is how it was reported, but the severity wasn't reported. Just that bad things were happening and this was in the same era as the later phases of

the Balkan Wars, pre Kosovo, but post the initial huge conflict in the early, early 90s. And then like a year later, stuff started to come out that like a million people had been killed. That's how I recall it. And because I was living in America, there was a lot of pressure, I think on Clinton to do something, but also to not do something because what had happened in Somalia the year prior had basically, in my recollection, spooked the administration into like not intervening in things or at least in that phase of the Clinton administration. But then it became sort of a why did you not

do something and this is not meant to defend Clinton, fuck Clinton, but it's more like from a left-wing perspective, fuck Clinton. I'm not like the hate in servant Vietnam kind of guy, but I recall there being this very much stay away. No, we shouldn't get involved. And then a year later was like Oh, how could we not have done something? You know what I mean? Well, I have some good news for you Nate Yeah, that is mostly correct, but it is worse Oh, I'm sure I mean also bear in mind too that like there were other huge things that were happening in America at the time So think of it this way in 1994 and 1995

It was like ethnic conflict in Rwanda, ethnic conflict still going on in Bosnia, O.J. Simpson murders and Bronco chase and then initial trial, Oklahoma City bombing, Aum Shinriko, sarin gas attack on the Tokyo sub, you know what I mean? Like there were all these things happening and then a little later as stuff came into focus it was like, oh yeah, by the way, this was the biggest mass killing since World War II or since Cambodia, I believe. Tom, what do you know? Weirdly enough, I know the most of it from a book I read years ago about war photography. I think it's, I think it's called

years of strife or something like that. And there's a chapter about the Rwandan genocide. And I don't think I've ever had as harrowing an experience of reading firsthand accounts from photographers who were in Rwanda. Yeah. I read Jim Knocked Away's book Inferno, which is mostly just photos. I've met him a couple of times. He was really like, when I wanted to be a photojournalist, he was really an inspiration. And Inferno is basically an essay in the beginning and then nothing but huge glossy photos of stuff he's covered in everything from Northern Ireland through basically the Kosovo war or in Chechnya there's a lot in Rwanda and it is as

horrific as you can possibly imagine but the overwhelming majority of it is just like Mostly skeletal decomposing bodies and people with horrible scars from machetes or amputations Yeah, a lot of them children and that I feel like sets the stage in a lot of ways A lot of them children and that I feel like sets the stage in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, and I shouldn't have to do this, but I will anyway, if you for some reason skip the content warning and the show notes, this is going to be wall to wall awful shit from the time I start speaking to the time the series is over. I encourage you to listen to it anyway. I believe it is very important to learn about things like this, even if it makes you uncomfortable. I am wearing my wireless headphones because at some stage during the series I will have

to lie on the floor and let the guys talk because this is fucking miserable. With that, over the course of only about 100 days of horrific acts of violence, a genocide long in the making but seemingly deployed overnight swept through the nation of Rwanda. Armed mostly with machetes, the racist, fascist, extremist members of the Hutu power movement slaughtered around one million of their Tutsi neighbors as well as other Hutus who refused to go along with the campaign. The world, sworn to end genocide wherever it started, watched on, doing largely nothing, as a nation was put to the blade. While they were wringing their hands over definitions, people were hacked to death on their front lawns, inside churches, that were packed full of congregates, and then set on fire. And normal, everyday people were forced to take part, lest they watch their own family be next. First we have to acknowledge our sources for the series.

The Order of Genocide, Race, Power and War in Rwanda by Scott Strauss, as well as his academic paper Rwanda and RTLM Radio Media Effects. We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. Stories from Rwanda by Filip Gorovic. Leave None to Tell the Story by Alison DeForge, and finally Machete Seasoned by Jan Hatsfeldt. I think of these academically, Strauss's work is the best, but for the readability of a narrative, even if it is kind of written like it's like court proceedings, because turned

into them Alison Deforge's work is probably the best for that. I should start with something of a disclaimer though not a warning exactly because it's kind of implied here. Yes this series is going to deal with mass human misery of all kinds throughout every episode. Secondly this is not going to be an in-depth look at the UN response or lack thereof. We will talk about it, but there's only so many times I can say a bunch of people talked to one another in a room and then did nothing. If I talked about the UN response, it would be me doing that for an entire episode.

So we will cover the UN response. It's not going to be as painfully in-depth as some people might like, but it's because it can literally be explained in a much shorter way that saves us all a lot of time. Now the narrative of the Rwandan genocide is generally thought that way that every period of history is thought of when it involves a country that most people have never heard of, a culture and a history they do not want to understand, but they insist that they do in order to sound knowledgeable. You know that ancient tribal violence brought to the modern day goes back so far, you know,

it's complicated. I fucking hate when people say that. Yeah, it's like, especially when it comes to like ethnic conflicts in, I suppose in the nineties would have been called the third world, although we have much better language to describe developing countries right now. It's that kind of combined mythical savage violence thing where it's like, we don't want to understand, we don't care about really understanding and it's much easier to say that like, oh well these people hate each other for things that happened thousands of years ago. Yeah, that's my opinion as well. It's never true for anything ever. No conflict is so intractable or so steeped

in history that it's impossible to understand. It's a fucking cop out. It's a cop out. No matter what situation you're using this for, if you're using it for a conflict going today, it's a fucking cop out. It's also worth pointing out that ancient tribal hatreds would be as far from accurate as possible in this situation because the Oh, yeah, we'll talk we'll talk about that exaggeration of divisions amongst ethnic groups in Rwanda is a byproduct of belgian colonization And belgium didn't colonize sub-saharan africa until the latter half really the latter quarter of the 19th century so belgium

Punching above its weight in terms of being horrible, in terms of tiny country that ruined a huge, huge swath of the world, or rather, if not ruined, damaged and underdeveloped and contorted because of when you look at what they did in the acquisition of what became the Congo Free State and then the Belgian Congo, but similarly the colony of Mulekulien, which means a thousand hills in French, which is the French language name for Rwanda. It's like rinse and repeat. And the Belgian approach is particularly cruel and cynical. Tiny countries punching above their weight, making the world worse. Portugal is like, it's so painful to be ignored. But we have to talk about Belgium in this case. And so in this regard, when this genocide was unfolding in 1994, 1995, the conflict

in the ethnic tensions, the racial supremacy violence that was taking place had its origins really in the modern incarnation, had its origins in 1880s. This is all a very modern invention, and it's interesting that you say ethnic and race a few times because there wasn't one. And I'll tell you why. The best anyone can tell, the people known today as Hutus and Tutsis moved into the African Great Lakes region thousands of years ago. As they settled, they quickly assimilated largely into one people,

as much as they were ever markedly different. The Hutus being the majority, intermarried with Tutsis. Their cultures melded together, they developed a single language, and generally followed the same belief structure. This turned into a highly complex and powerful kingdom, the Kingdom of Rwanda. Now Now in effect, if there was ever a cultural or ethnic divide amongst them, it disappeared. And this is the story of most ancient peoples when they eventually move next door to one another or move into the same plot of land. This is how societies are created. There was no, as anybody can tell, ethnic or racial difference. There was one main

divide though, class. Yeah, I was gonna say exactly that. The divide was between the farmers, the Hutus, and the cattle herders, the Tutsis. This divide meant that Tutsis, the minority, held more power and social standing due to having the wealth of being the kings of cattle, and thus they controlled the government and were the kings. However, this class system was not fixed. It was not a caste system. Not all Hutus were poor farmers and not all Tutsis were rich cattle drivers.

A Hutu could buy enough cattle to branch the divide and become a Tutsi. While a Tutsi could lose their cattle in one way or another and be forced to go and work the land, therefore becoming a Hutu. This system allowed the Kingdom of Rwanda to become very powerful, very stable, and very orderly in this region in this period of time. Though I should point out here, like all kingdoms, countries, whatever, this system did eventually become harder and harder to advance through, as more people worked their way up into being cattle owners. This upper class realized that if everybody could do it, it's hardly an upper class,

so they progressively made promotion into tootsiedom harder and harder, a timeless case of pulling the ladder up behind you. So eventually the class system did morph into a much more rigid, caste-like system, with promotions and demotions becoming rarer and rarer. And since class turned caste, this was all based on wealth and property, in this case cattle, soon the people who would once routinely marry outside their own group became more insular. Because as this is always the case, if you marry within your own group, you don't have to share the wealth.

Effectively, right? But there's no evidence to suggest that these two people saw themselves as different people. It was much more like nobility seeing common folk. As I understand it, two majority languages in what is now Rwanda, and both Hutu and Tutsi people speak these languages, there's not the kind of ethnic or linguistic divisions because it's a much smaller area and it had been more homogenous for a while than, say, for example, what's now the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is an enormous country. because it's a much smaller area and it had been more homogenous for a while than say, for example, what's now the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is an enormous country and

the borders- Unfortunately, these two countries have problems. Put it this way, the Democratic Republic of Congo at the mouth of the Congo River is basically on the Atlantic Ocean. I can't recall if the DRC actually has Atlantic Ocean frontage, but it's between Congo Brazzaville and Congo Kinshasa, it's basically on the Atlantic. Whereas the extent to which the African Great Lakes region, that part of the Congo, Lake Kivu, that area where there has been more modern recent conflict, because in a large part of the Rwandan genocide,

but for other reasons as well. Oh yeah, we'll talk about that at the end of the series. Basically is not particularly far removed from the Indian Ocean. So DRC is an enormous country with lots and lots of different ethnic groups and languages. There's four majority languages, but there's way, way more. Rwanda is not the case. That's not the case at all. Rwanda has one major unifying language known as Kirwanda, and of course, eventually French.

But that isn't there yet. Everything I've ever seen in sort of like modern professional or international journalism from Rwanda is all in French. So that's Belgium, etc. Kind of similarly in Europe, it's very, very rare even today in the places that monarchies exist where a noble person would marry a commoner and this became similar in Rwanda between Hutus and Tutsis. The Tutsis began marrying other Tutsi families so they could share the wealth rather than have to spread it out further and then bring up the commoner along with it. In the middle of all this a system akin to kind of serfdom began, tying Hutus to the land. And this is when the colonial period begins, and this is where all of this gets real bad.

We've talked a lot on this show before about the scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference and how the European powers divide everything amongst themselves, so we're not going to talk about it again. But what you do need to know is Rwanda and the Great Lakes region itself was handed over to the Empire of Germany. With the entry of Europeans into the stage came the idea of castes being a distinct race. Germans saw the ruling Tutsis as a different people, and since they were so powerful over others, they saw them as a superior race of that to the Hutus. After all, why else would they be in charge?

We're in charge of this colony because we're racially superior? This might sound like a shoehorn thing, but the point I want to make is that you will find this often is the case when you see the downstream effects of European colonialism. I promise you I'm not being flippant here, but if you ever have noticed that some of the deep lore around Mormonism kind of reads like 1820s sci-fi, it's because it kind of is. It's a product of its era. And similarly, these divisions are products of late 19th century race science, eugenics, the kind of notions of like deterministic physiognomy and things like that. And it's everywhere. And it's got a longer shelf life, if you will, because of the way that it was reified into power structures in these countries,

for the purposes of colonial exploitation. But then when colonial elites became the ruling elites afterwards, or were deposed in conflict, you can see what I mean? Like this stuff stuck around. It has this like old timey 1880s racism because that's what it is. Yep. They developed an institute that essentially a system of almost like ethno-determinism and they like exported it to Africa, central America, to Asia. You know, when you look at like people like Lobrozo who was an Italian psychologist in the 1920s, like he did a study on criminality and physiognomy. And

essentially it has a lot of crossover with tattoos and stuff, but that stuff was just directly applied to existing social structures around the world. So like, oh, these people are ruling because they're this quote unquote ethnicity. Yeah. And that's exactly what this kind of turns into. Like, the Germans saw that they were clearly the natural-born leaders of the territory over what must be their lessers. So that's how they ran the colony, leveraging the Tutsis, who would obviously love to remain in power, and in fact only become more powerful than they'd ever been under colonialism. They, in effect, helped streamline the Germans' exploitation of themselves by being leveraged as a colonial middleman.

And while the Germans laid the groundwork for the caste divide to become a pseudo-ethnic one, the real divide came when the Belgians took over after WWI and then after the concept of eugenics began to sweep through Europe, which then trickled down into European colonies. GOOSE Once again, I am proven right that Belgium is the most evil country in Europe. METEBOR Belgians brought with them so-called quote anthropologists to measure the skulls and noses of Hutus and Tutsis to, as they believe, scientifically differentiate between the two races of Rwandans.

This fundamentally turned the caste system into this fake ethnicity and made it concrete. And this was further reinforced when Belgian authorities, this is going to be very ominous later, introduced identity cards to all Rwandans in the 1930s with each card labeled with your measured ethnicity. Your card would clearly state if you were a Hutu or a Tutsi. Now somewhat interestingly here, the Tutsis themselves were aware this was bullshit. But also when you're like, oh 1920s and 30s Belgian anthropologists and

genetic researchers are coming to Rwanda with measuring tools. It's like you could invent a floating neon sign that follows you around saying pervert alert. Yeah. I was about to say somewhere in the dark heart of London, Tony Blair is just absolutely rock hard at this idea. He heard ID cards and he was all on board. I don't know if there's a more nefarious title of like European anthropologist in Africa in the 1900s

I feel like Tony Blair is actually Directing all of his resources to getting Wikipedia to delete this entry from Historical examples of ID cards. He's just like don't let them know about actually I counter this with Tony Blair is probably a huge fan the Rwandan Patriotic Front He's certainly a huge fan of Paul Kagame. I'm sure yeah Yeah, he's the leader of the RPF because Paul Kagame has allowed and Blair emphatically supports this even if he won't come out saying it the idea of ending free asylum in the United because Rwanda's is relevant in the United Kingdom right now because the fact that under the Tory party they

Rwanda is relevant in the United Kingdom right now because of the fact that under the Tory party they basically have made it illegal to claim asylum in the United Kingdom. And they were trying to enact a policy where if you applied for asylum, you couldn't apply legally, but if you came to the UK illegally, because there's no legal way to get here and you can only apply for asylum on the shores of the United Kingdom, you would be deported to Rwanda while your asylum case was being decided. And if it was refused, you would be returned to your home country. And if it was accepted, you would be granted asylum in Rwanda, your asylum case was being decided. And if it was refused, you would be returned to your home country. And if it was accepted, you would be granted asylum in Rwanda, a place people are granted asylum from on a regular basis because it's a dictatorship.

We will talk more about Paul Kagame in the final episode. I promise. I know that it's very early on, but it's one of those things where, without derailing it, just saying that like what has happened, what happened in the scramble for Africa, what happened when Belgium took over from the Germans after World War I? What happened in the aftermath and then subsequently after independence and then in the Rwandan Civil War genocide has massive reverberations today. Yeah.

Like I was saying is like the Tutsis knew it was bullshit, but as Rwanda was entrenched further and further into empire, the ruling Tutsis did not want to tell their new European bosses Rwanda's actual history, knowing it would shatter how the Europeans looked at them as a separate superior race fit for ruling. Instead, they told Europeans the history they wanted to hear. And this will become important because this is now like enshrined as Rwandan history and it is not true. One is that Tutsis framed themselves as they were mentally superior.

They came to these lands from outside and took them from the unwashed backward masses of Hutus and turned them into what they saw in front of them. The Europeans just kind of shrugged and said, yeah, sounds about right, we trust you. Love a good creation myth. Imagine how important it's going to be later when Tutsis propagate the fact they're not from Rwanda. Yeah, the very first thing that came to mind is like,

hey guys, is this like an oral history or are you codifying this? Are you writing this down? Are you printing it? Are you teaching it in schools? Yep. Because it's about to get bad, yeah, it's just, yeah. Yeah. And I need to point out here, that is not true. That did not happen. No, of course not. Of course not. But it's one of those things where, once again, it's like through the lens of European race science of the time, this is commendable.

This is something to be, this is a creation myth or a nation-state establishment myth that would grant you esteem. Yeah. While doing this, the Belgians ran their colony much the same way the Germans had, indirectly through their chosen Tutsi rulers, which of course only reinforced Tutsi supremacy and dominance. Tutsis were obviously okay with this arrangement and now had a total monopoly, not only in economics but probably more importantly, force. It was up to them to brutally repress the Hutus on behalf of the Belgians. And now they're also the government as well, like they're the colonial administrators for the Belgians.

They're allowed to pass whatever laws and regulations they wanted. So the few Hutus that were in positions of power, no matter how minor, were kicked out. They were banned from higher education and most facets of public life away from their own caste slash race. And as the Belgians centralized Rwandan society, they introduced like cash-based taxes and began eliminating old power structures in place of new quote-unquote modern-looking colonial ones, the Tutsis were the face of all of it. If the Hutus didn't pay their taxes, didn't follow the law, didn't do anything else in line with colonial authorities, they wouldn't be answering to a white guy.

It would be a Tutsi acting on their behalf. The Belgians empowered the Tutsis to be their administrators and didn't much care how they did it, as long as the taxes were paid. This is kind of like the force public in the Congo Free State. It's pretty much like that. Yeah. Without, I will say less psychotic. Well, also the force public wasn't the government. They were the security state. And they were the kind of security auxiliaries. But I mean I think in terms of the primary contact point of the colonial force and often violence being a locally recruited one is absolutely the same.

What are we doing guys? We're establishing state monopoly on violence. The Belgians didn't care as long as crops were planted, taxes were paid and their goals were met. They thought whatever made those ends meet was worth it. As Strauss puts it quote, under colonial rule, the idea of race became the central determinant of power. As a consequence, race became a symbol of oppression and race in this situation means Hutus and Tutsis. By the end of World War II Belgium was forced at least somewhat allow Hutus to enter the political process through a combination of

Catholic Church lobbying, don't give them a round of applause if you're listening, they'll come up later, along with like other kind of lobbying which made the Catholic Church though made huge inroads into the country and they were very entrenched in the Hutu community specifically I mean most of Rwanda eventually becomes Catholic but they make a lot of inroads into the Hutu community specifically so they lobby on behalf of Hutu political rights. Oh god, so many of the worst people you hate to see showing up. You haven't even begun to hate the Catholic Church in the context of this series yet, I promise.

The Catholic Church, the Belgians, the Germans, like. The French are coming later if it makes you feel better. Oh fuck yeah. They eventually lobbied to make Rwanda a UN trustee state, under Belgian supervision, rather than a colony. The UN kind of forced basic reforms on the Belgians, and these of course pissed off Tutsis, who remember had been told for generations that they were the superior ruling class. As they pushed back against Belgian reforms, it only solidified Belgian resolve to implement

them while simultaneously turning this newly empowered Hutu political class more and more anti-Tutsi and anti-Belgian as continued oppression by both of them pushed them to further extremes. Oh no, no. And as democratic reforms via, like, for instance, voting were introduced, like Hutus were allowed to vote for certain things, it did not take long for victories to show up because remember, Hutus are the majority. So whenever you allow them to vote, they're going to win. And the Belgians had a Rwandan king who was reformed by the king Rudahinya III. He wasn't super, I mean, he's still a king.

How reformed might a king be? But in the context of this story so far, good guy, I will say, he abolished the traditional land holding and cattle system. He cut out the very foundation what started the caste system. He abolished the serfdom system that had been in place, he named several Hutus to positions in the administration, they allowed Hutus to be allowed into secondary schools, and then they began to conduct limited elections for an advisory government council.

Now these changes were hardly revolutionary, but they were just enough and not enough simultaneously, so they created problems. The Tutsis were getting scared of losing power, while the Hutus were rightfully pissed that they were still second class citizens. And independence is fast approaching. The King died in 1959, leaving power to his conservative-minded brother Kigeli, who quickly went to work trying to undo everything his brother had done. Of course, this quickly got violent as conservative Tutsis attacked Hutu chiefs, who insisted

on this wild thing called basic human rights. This spiraled as Hutus fought back, refusing to go back to how things had once been. In the midst of all this, growing for years was this new concept, Hutu nationalism, which in this context, despite of everything I just said, was ethnic nationalism, fully embracing the ideas that these were two wholly different, separate people. Through the chaos, the muck, and the mire of colonialism and Tutsi aggrandizement, European and Tutsi fantasy had become Rwandan and therefore Hutu reality. Tutsi and Hutu nationalists effectively went to war against one another, with the Hutu majority coming in on top after a large spat of horrific violence. The Hutus goals were to drive the Tutsis from the north of the country,

which had long been the Tutsi stronghold, forcing thousands of them into resettlement elsewhere, both inside and outside of Rwanda. Those Tutsis in turn struck back, leading to Hutu reprisal attacks on Tutsis still in Rwanda, creating a feedback loop of killing. Eventually, Belgium sent soldiers in to stop the violence, but they went further and they decided to force reform on the Tutsi government. In what would become known as the Hutu Revolution, they replaced half of civil service and government workers, which was a job previously only available to Tutsis, with Hutus. With these changes in place by the 60s, with free-ish elections and a non-Tutsi dominated government to oversee them, it meant victory after victory for the Hutu

Nationalist Party, the Parmen Hutu Party, led by Gregoire Kayabanda. After this, a popular vote abolished the Tutsi monarchy and a year later in 1962, Rwanda became independent. Though it did not mean the violence had ended and it did not mean a free, fair, or democratic Rwanda would rise out of the ashes of colonialism. Kayabanda was now president and the Tutsi raids over the border and his security forces' constant reprisals against Tutsis within Rwanda's borders did not stop. However, like many wannabe dictators given an opportunity, he took it, framing the Tutsis

as a whole, not just the ones under arms or the former elites that were hoping that they would be able to retake the government as a threat to the state. Using that as a pretext, he wrapped his hands firmly around the throat of the country and seized power for himself. His party, the Parmenhutu, became the only legal one. During future elections, his name would be the only one that would appear on the ballot. Kiibanda also kept all the trappings of the Belgian colonial state in place, complete with repression systems that had once been used against his own people, and instead turned them on the Tutsis.

It's the general theory of that, like, in the vacuum of the withdrawal of colonial power, and this happened kind of replicated all around the world. In the aftermath and ensuing civil wars once, if a power structure or government is established with relatively low levels of violence after the withdrawal of colonial power, the general theory goes that whoever gets into power first will just replicate the structures of the colonial administration in just against an internal enemy. So like, whoever loses the civil war will be subjected to the methods of colonialism, but internally. That's exactly what the Parmen Hutus did for sure. Tutsis were discriminated against in

the workplace, in education, and their origin story that was propagated to secure their power, i.e. their enlightened outsiders who brought order to the chaos was turned against them as Kiibanda and the Hutu nationalist movement and others framed as like you don't even you're not even fucking from here like why should we ever let you have power or a place in our society you're not from here you have no claim to it however this did not mean all was well and this Hutu dominated dictatorship the one-party state began to form factions, the North and the South. Kiibanda favored the South of the country and grew more and more detached from the Northern faction which turned out to be a huge fucking error.

Because most Hutu soldiers were from the North and the Northern faction leader Yuvinal Habyarimana was also the head of the army. So he launched a bloodless coup in July of 1973, taking over and forming the Committee for Peace and National Unity. Alright, I did say the coup was bloodless, but Kiibanda and his inner circle were arrested, thrown into a pit and allowed to starve to death, which is technically a bloodless death. Technically, yeah. They're doing like no true Rwandan but sugar in his porridge.

Under Hab Yare Mana, Rwanda remained a one party state, just with new trappings. He formed a new political party, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development, and all other parties were outlawed. Membership was mandatory for everyone, along with a membership fee, which is paid directly to him. Ay bro, you got that membership fee? You know, I greased my palm a little bit. Yeah, it's easy to secure the bag if everybody has to just give you their lunch money. Yeah. Habiarimana was from the north of the the country and his political ideology could best be described

as fluid. He would be whatever you needed him to be, whenever you needed him to be it. Though that didn't mean he didn't also hate Tutsis, but his hate was more practical in nature. The government violence against Tutsis had made Rwanda something of a regional pariah as tens of thousands of Tutsis fled Rwanda into neighboring countries, namely Congo, then named Zaire, and Uganda, which pissed off those countries to the point they didn't really want to do business with the Rwandan government.

Yep. Habiarimana believed, at least for a time, that the anti-Tutsi discrimination, violence, all that would need to stop so Rwanda could form regional partnerships. I know that sounds really grim, but that's literally the nicest thing anyone in the Rwandan government is going to do for Tutsis in a very long time. Yeah, and it's also like the geopolitical predicament that a newly independent country finds themselves in is being newly established and having to navigate relationships with bordering countries doing trade because no country exists in a vacuum and can provide everything. But also,

you know, as will be prescient in this series when you have a newly formed government, there will be a certain amount of exits from the country as people who do not align with the current state or essentially be the right Rwandan and have to go somewhere else. You don't want the Congo then called Zaire or Uganda, turning around and saying like, no, you deal with them. Yeah. I mean, they have massive refugee populations within their borders. And like, so obviously they're unhappy with Rwanda, meanwhile the best habiari mannequin offers like, why don't we let them go to college? I don't think that's gonna undo the predicament that we have sir.

Yeah, like, but it's, you know, something that will come up, I suppose, is a bit prescient, is like, the levels of like, internal refugees within Rwanda getting bottlenecked pretty much. And the fuck I just realised what I just said. Fuck no. Jojo, do you want to hit me with an animal fact? Let me give you an animal fact. Okay this one isn't cute as much as it is like weird. There are reports of elephants finding humans sleeping under trees and the elephant thought they were dead. People have been woken up by elephants gently stroking them with their trunk and in some cases they try to cover them with branches and sticks as a burial. People waking up to elephants burying them alive.

Oh that's incredible. Now another thing Habiyari Mana did was fundamentally change how the state was administered with reform and this effectively turns Rwanda into a police state. Now this is from Human Rights Watch. At this time Rwanda was divided into 10 prefectures. 14 of each would have included sub-prefectures, administrative units without much political importance. Below them were communes, the essential building blocks of the administration.

Numbering 145 in 1991, the communes ranged from populations of less than 30,000 for the smallest and over 100,000 for the largest, with most counting between 40,000 and 50,000. The head of the commune, the Burgomaster, was of course ranked below the prefect or the sub-prefect, but he exercised more immediate and pervasive power over the ordinary people than his superiors did. In a style that harkened back to pre-colonial and colonial era, the Burgomaster held court one or more times per week, receiving ordinary people who brought him their grievances and gave thanks for help received.

He determined the use of land that belonged to the commune or was temporary under its control. He mediated conflicts over property, settled family disputes, found places in secretary schools, dispensed political advice, and even judged a substantial number of cases that were in principle should have been taken to court. In accordance with communal council, he hired and fired employees of the commune, including the commune policemen who were at his personal command. And they also intervened in personal decisions of local schools, health centers, and development

projects. Each commune submitted monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports of birth, death, and movement of people in and out of the commune. The Burgomaster kept agents of the Secret Service informed of any suspicious person seen in his district. He was the ultimate authority at the local level. He was clearly and directly the President's man out in the hills because nominally responsible to the Minister of the Interior, the Burgomasters were all personally named by Habyarimana.

Also known as Hamid Karzai's governors in Afghanistan. It's very funny too because once again the German influence from the early days of Rwandan colonization is just there. Just, you know, they found a way to make it eternally German. What if a Belgian was German? What's very interesting here is they've created an administrative police state. Every single commune was divided into sectors. Each of those had chosen representatives who answered to the burgomaster. Those population sectors were in turn broken down into smaller cells, each one with their own appointed leader.

Each of these reported to the Burgomaster. Hab Yaremana's idea was pretty obvious. He wanted every tiny little detail of Rwandan life to be directly controlled and overseen in every possible manner by an ever growing system of managers who went from the lowest level being a guy who oversaw a group of 10 families until it got all the way up to the president. All I can say is this is fundamentally, how do you phrase it? It feels so much more ominous knowing what's coming that the lists were already prepared and that this wasn't like, this wasn't in the 30s or the 40s.

This is... We're in the 80s now Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This was this was within our lifetimes So have you are Imana, you know is doing this until his death in 1994 You know what? I mean? Like this is this is so contemporary that like it's gonna feed directly into what's going to happen Well, what's interesting about have your Imana is at this point, he's doing this to create a police state, of course. He has a system of snitches in place, everybody snitching on one another, going to the burga master who he hired, but it made them very easy to mobilize.

You'd send simply a request to a commune like, hey, get all your adult men, let's go, like, we need to do something and He used these people as unpaid labor to complete infrastructure projects plant crops and all these other things Also, ironically as a side note here heb-yari mana is staunchly anti-communist Just like Mobudu se se seko. I love I love friends of America in Sub-Saharan Africa in former Belgian colonies You know what they do good things. Well, I'm being ironic in case you are not following I'm being ironic Mobutu Sese Seko piece of shit

Also, he comes up later I mean they do share a border and like I said that that the conflict and the resulting violence is very much related To the region which the borders don't correspond to any of those boundaries of peoplehood. We'll put it that way He used this to do like corvée labor Effectively and another thing he did to discriminate against Tutsis Also when you organize an entire country like this You know who and where who Tutsis and Tutsis live and you can can give to see the shit jobs to do which is what he normally did and he planned what I the easiest way to describe it is like chaos affirmative action. In the modern day we call this Malaysia but that's a story for a different day.

What he did was he instituted a strict quota system in place for government jobs Which was the flip side of how other governments use it? Which is like no there only can be this many tootsies like we can't use this to actually empower them We have to use it to discriminate against this basically That's just like Jewish quotas at Ivy League schools and elite institutions in America like pre 1950s and 60s Like this is very we didn't have it in the same, it wasn't done into the same severity, but this is absolutely a thing. The reason why, for example, the City University of New York system was so popular amongst Jewish students in academics was that they were considered really good schools that they didn't have quotas, whereas like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, those schools all did. Only a small number of Jews were allowed in because they're like they might corrupt the you know

Protestant white people with jazz or some shit. Yeah, Henry Ford stuff our favorite topic. This one was like, okay Yeah, we'll hire Tutsis in government jobs, but they only can do these shitty government jobs and there only could be five of them Yeah in Malaysia, it's basically this but for people they call booming putera or ethnic male is like we have affirmative action for the majority So there aren't there aren't too many Chinese people working here. Yeah, that's pretty much what they did. But also even against Hutus from areas that Habibari Mana did not like. He used this as a mechanism to shift power bases from the south of the country to his own northern part.

By the mid-1980s, Habibari Mana's home prefecture of Gisunyeni provided the office holders for one third of all government jobs and virtually every leader of the army in security services. The same went for government resources, which makes sense when you know that the entire government is from like two specific places. They are going to funnel all of the money in that direction. Same thing happens in Afghanistan, except instead of it going into establishing the state it's just going into heroin trafficking in Kandahar because it's on the car's eye. Economics is important.

It sure is. It sure is. How else can the Midwestern tradition of being addicted to heroin continue? Victor Boots smiling down from Russia because well actually that would imply Russia's in heaven. Victor boot smiling up from Russia. I listen, I've become, I am so full of synthetic opiates that I am become spiritually Midwestern. I am dying on my ass with COVID during this episode. You listening at home, I'm suffering for you, but spiritually by talking about the Rwandan genocide, but physically as well. Once the MRND, which is Rumiheb Yaremana's main party, is firmly established, mobilization took on an added aspect, glorifying the party and its leader.

He's attempting to create a personality cult. In addition to the work days, people were obligated to participate in weekly sessions called animation. These were propaganda meetings complete with poetry, music, and dance, quote, created to honor Habibahri Mana and the MRND. It's really funny because the MRND just sounds so benign. It literally translated from French, it would just mean like National Revolutionary Movement for Development.

That's exactly what it means. It sounds like that was like USAID or something. It's like, oh wait, also slightly sinister. But it's one of those things where it's like, oh, I'm sure they're not. That's not a problem. And then it's like they're singing and dancing for for a heavier amount. Apparently they're doing fucking like love ins for how great the leader is and how bad our ethnic enemies are.

And a lot of it had to do with hating tootsies for sure. That's always an underlying part of MRND politics. Propaganda teams of singers and dancers competed for honors in regular competitions, often dressed in costumes bought by contributions from the party faithful, where Wondons proclaimed their loyalty to Habiyarimana, wore his image on pins, and posted his picture in houses or places of business. Habiarimano had the loyalty of the pretty much every Hutu walk of life, from the army to the police to the growing number of business owners because he had birthed Rwanda's first middle class so to speak.

Another thing he had support of arguably the most powerful institution of the entire country was the Catholic Church. Oh here we go. Probably the most powerful institution of the entire country was the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church literally acted as a functionary of the state. Most Rwandans were still illiterate, for the most part, so priests would tell them about any orders or policy changes from the government during mass in church. Can't wait for a guy called Seamus, so Seamus who got moved between six parishes for being a paedophile to be complicit in the Rwandan genocide. Tom, Tom, hold that thought.

In any historical tragedy disaster, there's always an Irish guy on both sides. Irish guy in brackets good, Irish guy in brackets bad. SEAN Inside of you there are two Irishmen. SEAN There's like Irish guy who's in the UN contingent trying to stop the genocide, and there's Irish guy who's in the Interaham way. ALICE Yeah. SEAN Like, I hate that I fucking knew this was gonna happen. I like, why?

Why? SEAN If only John DeLorean had been allowed to smuggle that cocaine and make the fucking DeLorean factory thriving and create more jobs in Ireland. Granted this was in Northern Ireland. If only that had happened then Irish guys wouldn't have to go join the Interra Homelay. No, it's because like, we had such a surplus of priests because they couldn't stop touching kids and rather than you know, putting them in prison we just sent them to Rwanda? SORRY! The Archbishop of Kigali would wear a pin of Hebyarimana's face on his vestments while

saying mass and most importantly probably than just wearing some flair, he was on the MRND's central committee. Now for the first decade or so of Hebiari Mana's rule, Rwanda was doing much better than it had been before. Sure, he was winning re-election with the standard 99% of the vote and shit, which Paul Kagame literally just did before we started recording this, but for the first time infrastructure was booming, its economy overtook its neighbors, its GDP skyrocketed, riding the wave of a strong coffee crop, which was its main export, to the tune of 75% of Rwanda's

total exports. Foreign donors dumped money on the country, seeing its rule as stable, even if it was cartoonishly corrupt. Really the only people making money anywhere any of this development money was going as well was like two state employees which were skimming everything off the top before it could go anywhere. For the vast majority of Rwandans, Hutu or Tutsi, they were still desperately poor. None of this had benefited them. Then Rwanda got hit with a one-two punch. Coffee, the price of coffee crop, plummeted, tanking literally their entire economy and forcing

them to take austerity measures to pay back their loans. And then a drought swept through the countryside, which destroyed their food crops. Hab-Yarimana took the revolutionary step of responding to these problems by simply ignoring them and hoping they would go away. That's the revolutionary, you know, spirit, just like ignore something until it goes away. Yeah. Now obviously, with all of this fact, Habiyarimana's style of government, the discrimination against Tutsis and the Southern Hutus led to a constantly expanding population of exiles numbering around 1 million living in camps just across the border in Zaire and Uganda.

The Rwandan government didn't see anything wrong with this actually. They told anyone that had any questions if someone left the country, they were disloyal and a threat to the state. So in 1983, they banned them from ever returning, saying the country was simply too overpopulated for them to come back. Because one thing to bear in mind was Rwanda's population increased sevenfold between when I believe when the Belgians took over and by the 90s. And so imagine one seventh of your population living outside your borders because conditions are so bad. That's like the UK has has about 70ish million people, that's like if there were 10 million Brits living abroad.

All in southern Spain. Yeah all in Spain and then also in the places we don't talk about in the Philippines. What is Benidorm if not a refugee camp for Britons? Meanwhile in Uganda, this is where things are to take a stark turn. Many of these Rwandans joined Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army to fight against Ugandan President Milton Obote who had just retaken over from Idi Amin. Museveni, unlike Amin and Obote, treated these Rwandans as brothers, and soon his army and resulting government would be fucking full of Rwandan exiles, most of them Tutsi.

Soon this cadre of military trained, well connected and seasoned exiles returned to the main exile political opposition groups, one of these was the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity, which at this point these groups are mostly ideological. They just talk about politics, they have intellectual ideas of helping Rwandan refugees, but then all these war veterans show up. They rename it the Rwandan Patriotic Front and it would be led by the Ugandan Army's second in command, Fred Ririg Yema and his Chief of Intelligence, Paul Kagame. The RPF was explicitly militant with the goal of invading Rwanda from Uganda and deposing

Habiarimana. Using their connections with the Ugandan military, they began building a core of Tutsi war veterans who in turn would give military training to anybody in the Tutsi refugee population who was willing to take it. Of course they would have full and open access to the resources of the Ugandan military. Traditional force multiplier if you will. Now Museveni knew all of this was happening and he pretty much only stopped short of officially accepting and supporting them, but everybody knew he was doing it.

And this was by no means done in secret. Rumors in Rwanda of a coming RPF attack were very well known. In fact, the commander of the border region asked Habiyarimana for reinforcements because he heard about it and Habiyarimana gave none of them. That is because, and while this is not confirmed, it is heavily suspected by many people from the Rwandan government and historians that Habiyarimana knew the attack was coming and wanted it to come. The RPF and dissident opinion within the country as well, like dissident Hutus, were becoming so strong against him that his reign was beginning to bridge the Hutu-Tutsi divide in a classical example of the unifying theory of fuck that guy.

A real external threat, a Tutsii external threat would allow him to brutally crack down on every kind of descent and Center Hutus back on to him. So on October 1st 1990 thousands of RPF rebels stormed over the border including fully half of all Rwandans in Ugandan military service at the time. However, things began to, let's say, go badly very quickly. The RPF leadership devolved into a bickering mess, and then Ryugu Yemo was shot by his own aid during an argument. He was replaced, of course we all know now, Paul Kagame.

Did Paul Kagame have something to do with this? We don't know, but from what we know about Paul Kagame today, it's very possible. While the RPF's main force is being held back only around 45 miles from Kigali, Kigali exploded with gunfire. Bombs went off, people were shot in the street, and Habyarimana quickly blamed on the RPF, but the RPF was nowhere inside Kigali. He had pulled a false flag. I'm not talking about the Alex Jones kind This is a real no shit false flag attack with evidence and people said that they helped plant it

The attack within the capital was Habiyarimana's doing and before the smoke even settled his security forces were arresting and before the smoke even settled, his security forces were arresting thousands of people while putting out already prepared statements saying the RPF's invasion was only able to succeed due to the fact it had been helped by Rwanda's civilian Tutsi population every step of the way. The Rwandan government simultaneously put out requests for aid to France, Belgium, and Zaire, which all quickly responded. French paratroopers were rushed to the scene and stopped the RPF's advance, which, despite spending half of their time screaming at one another, was still rapidly advancing towards Kigali. Both the Belgians and the Congolese soldiers left soon afterwards,

but the French didn't. By acting as if the capital was under threat, the Habiyarimana government had secured foreign backing that ensured his survival away from the RPF. After this, it was only a matter of time before the RPF was slowly pushed back towards the Ugandan border. And this is where we see the first example of what would happen in a few short years. In the village of Kibira, of what would happen in a few short years. In the village of Kibira, located in Gisunyeni, Habiarimana's home prefecture, local government officials encouraged Hutus to turn on their Tutsi neighbors, accusing them of aiding the enemy. The local station of the Rwanda National Radio parroted this, saying that the Tutsis had been seen fighting alongside the RPF and then were returning to the village when the war

had started to not go their way. The radio insisted Tutsis would lay down and wait until an unknown date in the future and rise up and kill Hutus and topple the government, unless they were stopped. Using the top-down micromanagement style of mobilization that had been put in place for cheap labor and control, local leaders rapidly rallied townspeople to kill their neighbors. For many, they were given no choice. A farm tool wielding government actors showed up to their door with hundreds of people at their back, and the implication was very clear. If you didn't want to kill the Tutsis, you must be on their side.

And if you're on their side, you must support the RPF, and all RPF supporters must die. This slaughter was seen as self-defense. Hundreds were killed, thousands were driven from their homes, and Hutu mobs that conducted the pogrom stole property from the fleeing Tutsis left behind. This is a point-for-point rehearsal of what will happen in a few years. This is just a taste of what's to come. With the RPF driven largely back across the border, the Habibaharimana government latched on to the idea that he believed would save him and his rule.

The Tutsis were to blame for everything. Soon, even more extreme versions of this political ideology would bubble to the surface and take root in Rwandan political circles. This had been there the entire time, but now they were given oxygen by a weak government, led by a man willing to harness racial hatred for political gain and secure his rule as things began to go sideways. This was known as the Hutu Power Movement, and that is where we'll pick up next time. I am not excited for this.

Nor should you be! Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff reading this now. I realize that I thought I was aware of the larger circumstances, but was not at all. And so I think that sense of foreboding, I mean, you know what's coming, but like, the degree to which it feels as though so much was set in motion long before it's just like it always is yeah and i should point out here i said something that this was seen as an act of self-defense all genocides by the genocide heirs which is a term that

we now know because of the rwanda genocide they always see it as a form of self-defense all genocide is framed as a form of self-defense and All genocide is framed as a form of self-defense. And this is why you see it now in this village massacre. This is what's gonna happen across the entire country. The only reason that is even possible is because of the system put in place to make mobilization possible of everyone. There's a few missing pieces that we don't have yet, which we'll talk about in part two. And part two is gonna get grim. Sorry. Yeah, can't wait. So excited. Well, this is the mental health podcast for guys. Where three guys get together and improve their mental health.

Yeah. Check it with your homies. How are they doing? How are you doing? After listening to this podcast, Google, like, I don't know, puppies playing with ducks? Ducklings? I've learned that's a genre of Instagram video recently and it always cheers me up. Try that. I will say something. I think I've mentioned this before because I have dad brain and I forget when I've told stories, but I want to say 1980, there was this poll. This is used in journalism schools, an example of they polled newspaper editors of what was the most consequential photo of 1980. And they po pulled readers and newspaper editors selected a photo from Cambodia of someone who had been hanged and was being

beaten their body was being beaten with a chair and newspaper readers selected a baby with a puppy. Give the readers what they want. Yeah, yeah. After listening to this, everybody has to go and look at pictures of babies with puppies. If you don't like babies or puppies, I don't know what to do for you. I have a baby. I think if I had a puppy, I would probably... The poo in places that shouldn't be contingent in my life would go up even higher.

I just want a puppy. Like, my neighbors all have puppies, and I get to play with them all the time. People in the Discord know that the business next door to the studio, its owner has two dogs, and she asked if I minded if they just wandered around the yard because we share a walled-in area. And I was like, no, that would be great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah, I don't have any puppies, I don't have any dogs, but I think when we finally get settled in Switzerland, we might eventually get a dog when our daughter is old enough that it's not super... well, it's not super dangerous, but also it's more along the lines of like there's more mess and

gross contingent things that happen when babies put everything in their mouths so yeah I'll just wait a little while but excited for that so yeah you know what I'm good but I know it's coming I know there's four parts and we've only gotten through one and this is just prologue so uh oh. It's the good episode. This one's bad Anyway fellas that is the Rwandan genocide part one you have other podcasts plug those other podcasts This feels very inappropriate to be like hey listen to my show You know what here's my funny podcast you should listen to here's your sales pitch Listen to my show it has nothing to do with the Rwandan genocide

It's like having it like a like a Casper mattresses ad break in the middle of something about the killing fields in Cambodia. So I edit Trashfuture, I'm a cast member of Trashfuture, a podcast about why the tech industry is bad. I'm also the co-host and producer of What a Hell of a Way to Dad, a podcast about why you shouldn't join the army, but also mostly now about being a dad, because my co-host and I are in fact parents. And not together, we're not married, we don't have kids together, but we both have kids. Oh, that would be cute. Yeah. If Francis and I were married and have kids, two kids at this point, I am the producer also of kill James Bond, a very funny movie podcast

hosted by three very funny people. You should listen to it. Beneath skin glue factory. I can barely talk because I have a COVID riddled body. Come to the live show in Belfast, 26th of October, the OEM music center, tickets available on ticket master. And by the time this comes out, we might be announcing a nother live show. Or Tom will be in a sanitarium because Ms. Rona wrecked havoc on him. Oh, I not only do I have COVID, I also have a mobile ECG machine attached to me for 24

hours. So I have this like dangling cables and COVID. So I feel like, you know, in quake three, when they like turn you into one of the machine things. I have nothing bad happening right now than a horrible sunburn that I inflicted on myself. This is the only podcast that I host and if you like what we do here consider supporting us on Patreon just five dollars a month. Gets you everything multiple different bonus episodes every month. Gets you discord access. Gets you first dibs on live show tickets which you can find the link for our next live show in Belfast in the show notes. It gets you first dibs on merch. It gets you a jar full of Tom's COVID cough,

which will be mailed to you in the mail. Thanks. I don't know how to close this episode. See you on episode two. It gets worse. It always gets worse. Yeah. Watch videos of puppies and babies and we'll talk to you next week.