History of Rwanda

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Only covers individual sections of the country's history: The entire pre-colonial period is missing, the colonial period is only briefly presented, the period from 1960 to 1990 is again almost completely missing, as is the civil war at the beginning of the 1990s , including the period after 1994, the political development and involvement in the Congo wars are hardly described
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The history of Rwanda can be traced back to early modern times. Rwanda is one of the few states in sub-Saharan Africa that existed with roughly the same borders before the colonial era .

Early history

Replica of a historical royal palace in Nyanza

The Twa (" pygmies "), who still number tens of thousands of people today, were probably the earliest inhabitants of Rwanda. But almost nothing is known about their history. From the 15th century, the Kingdom of Rwanda existed in what would later become Rwanda.

Contrast Hutu - Tutsi

In the earlier perception of the Europeans , the Hutu people represented the bulk of the population, the Tutsi (in German earlier called Watussi warriors ) immigrated between the 14th or 15th century and, as a warlike people, had subjugated the Hutu. The Tutsi are a people with probably Nilotic origins. As a minority, they would have provided state and military power, while the Hutu would have worked as farmers. Even in pre-colonial times, there were repeated uprisings by the Hutu against the Tutsi minority they hated and felt that they were oppressed and exploited. This theory was favored by the racist ideas of the colonial scholars of the early 20th century.

In fact, the two societies of the rural Hutu and the cattle-breeding Tutsi probably existed side by side. In occasional land conflicts, the Tutsi were militarily superior to the Hutu, but otherwise there were hardly any points of contact between them.

Today's science, however, takes into account the many genetic and cultural similarities between Hutu and Tutsi. Many scientists today believe that the differences have been greatly exaggerated and are largely culturally constructed. They indicate that both groups live in the same area, speak the same language, marry one another and share cultural characteristics. Differences between the two groups are more defined by profession and social class than by ethnicity. Nevertheless, one can assume that even before the colonial era, there existed social differences between the two population groups that led to conflicts. These were reinforced by colonial legislation, but not caused.

In general, the Tutsi were the elite in the country and there have been numerous cases of individuals and families switching groups, indicating that Hutu and Tutsi are more like two different classes or classes (no castes, than weddings were common), but not tribes or ethnic groups, as it is usually represented in colonial literature, various reference works and the media.

Colonial times

German colonial administration

Rwanda was part of German East Africa under international law from 1890 through the Heligoland-Sansibar Treaty until the end of the First World War . The area was incorporated and controlled late in the German colony. In 1894, the German lieutenant, Count Gustav Adolf von Götzen, was the first European to stay at the Rwandan royal court for two months. The Africa missionaries White Fathers founded their first mission station in 1900. In 1907 the first German base was opened in Kigali . Richard Kandt became imperial resident in Rwanda. At no time were more than a dozen German colonial officials deployed in the area. At a colonial conference in Brussels in 1910, the borders of the Belgian Congo , British Uganda and German East Africa - which also included Rwanda-Burundi - were established. A popular uprising in the north was put down in 1911 by the German Schutztruppe and tribal princes of the Tutsi. The cultivation of coffee for export began between 1913 and 1914, as did the introduction of poll tax.

Belgian mandate

Postage stamp with "Belgian occupation of German East Africa" ​​for the Rwanda-Urundi area (1916)

During the First World War, Belgian troops drove the Germans out without significant resistance and occupied Rwanda and Burundi. After the end of the First World War , what is now Rwanda was transferred to Belgium as a League of Nations mandate .

For this reason, French had been the official Rwandan language since 1929. Kinyarwanda , English and French are now the officially used languages, because in October 2008 the government decided to switch from French to English for the country's schools and authorities. This should also be understood as a political signal, because Rwanda became a member of the (English-speaking) Commonwealth in 2009 .

In 1933, the Belgian colonial administration introduced racial classification in identity cards. After the dissolution of the League of Nations Rwanda in 1946 Trust Territory of the United Nations continue to be managed and Belgium. In November 1959 there was a peasant revolt of the Hutu against the Tutsi rule. The social tensions became evident. 10,000 people were killed, some displaced and around 150,000 Tutsi fled to the neighboring countries of Burundi and Uganda until the Belgian colonial rulers were able to restore order. A Hutu party, the Parmehutu (Parti du Mouvement de l'Emancipation des Bahutus), won the first local elections in 1960 with a landslide victory. The Tutsi who remained in the country were pushed into political insignificance.

independence

On January 28, 1961, all mayors and councilors were invited to a conference in Guitarama . Few knew in advance that a transitional constitution was to be adopted at this meeting. In the wake of the so-called “Guitarama coup”, a provisional parliament and a transitional president were elected to appoint an interim cabinet.

This event led to the dismissal of the previous Tutsi king, Kigeri V , who was already out of the country at the time, and the proclamation of the Republic of Rwanda by the new government led by the Parmehutu. The Belgians were presented with a fait accompli, which, to the displeasure of the UN , led to the recognition of the new government by Brussels a few days later.

In March of the same year the UN reacted: In Rwanda an ethnic dictatorship of one party had been established and the developments of the previous 18 months had brought about the transition from one repressive regime to another. There is a risk that the Tutsi minority will be defenselessly exposed to abuse. The situation is pretty worrying.

On September 25, 1961 parliamentary elections were held, which the Parmehutu won with 77.7% of the vote. The women's suffrage was introduced to this election. In October the National Assembly elected Hutu Grégoire Kayibanda as President. On July 1, 1962, Rwanda officially became independent. At that time, 350,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were living abroad.

Juvénal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda from 1973 to 1994

In 1963 tens of thousands of Tutsi who had fled initially tried to regain power in the country. But this attempt was bloodily suppressed. Countless Tutsis were killed in a horrific civil war. In the years that followed, there were repeated massacres of the Tutsi who remained in the country. On July 5, 1973, the military carried out a coup under General Juvénal Habyarimana , who held elections in 1978.

In August 1988 there were systematic massacres of the Hutu population in neighboring Burundi by the Tutsi-dominated army. This led to massive flows of refugees to Rwanda. For the Rwandan state, this turned out to be a major financial and logistical problem, which was exacerbated by floods and the resulting homelessness of Rwandan citizens.

Recent history

Civil War and Genocide

It was not until 1990 that a Tutsi rebel army that had established itself on the border with Uganda challenged the Hutu government. The aim of the Tutsi was the return of the Tutsi refugees to Rwanda. In 1993, the UN Security Council decided to send a UN peacekeeping force under the leadership of Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire . In 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down under unclear circumstances .

In Rwanda, it was widely assumed that Habyarimana was the victim of an assassination attempt by Tutsi. However, there is serious evidence that Hutu extremists were responsible for the attack. The reason for this is, on the one hand, the fact that the topography around the airport area was firmly in the hands of the Hutu associations and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the rebel army of the later President Paul Kagame, hardly had a chance at that time move close to the airport. A decisive indication of an assassination attempt by Hutu himself is the fact that the pogroms began immediately after the death of President Habyarimana and were aimed specifically and exclusively against opposition Hutu on the one hand and against the Tutsi on the other. Because as early as 1990 these extremists formed under the protection of the ruling Hutu clique called Akazu . This Hutu clique did not want to share power with either other Hutus or the Tutsi, which became more and more difficult when, after the fall of communism , the West increasingly demanded free elections in the country, which is heavily dependent on development aid. As is often the case, this development aid reached less the common people than the ruling classes. In addition, President Habyarimana is said to have increasingly favored a policy of reconciliation between the two ethnic groups, which ran counter to the interests of the Hutu power circle.

The death of Juvénal Habyarimana, who had just returned from a trip to Tanzania, where he had agreed to Tutsi participation in power in an agreement, marked the start of the genocide of the Tutsi by the radical Hutu militias from April to June 1994 murdered at least 750,000 Tutsis and 50,000 moderate Hutu. The official Rwandan statistics speak of 1,074,017 dead, of which 951,018 were identified by name. The action was calls in the local radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines , views, articles from death lists in the newspaper Kangura supported and by the former party of the assassinated President, from akazu - Clan his wife Agathe Habyarimana was dominated. In several cases, those persecuted on the run sought refuge in churches and schools and were then handed over to the militia by Catholic priests and teachers. Hutu who refused to take part in the murders were also killed.

The genocide was dealt with from 2002 to 2012 by the so-called Gacaca courts .

New government

After the genocide, the Génocidaires forced large parts of the population to flee to neighboring countries, especially to Congo , where many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) competed to take care of the refugees, but were initially overwhelmed by the problem. The Génocidaires set up a tight regiment in the refugee camps and began attacks again on the Tutsi who now ruled Rwanda and related peoples in the Congo, namely the Banyamulenge . Many simple followers of the genocide wanted to return to Rwanda soon, but this would have deprived the Génocidaires of their protection in the crowd. That is why the Génocidaires, who were now being looked after by the NGOs like all refugees, tried to prevent the bulk of the population from returning. However, as the situation in the Congo became more and more tense, not least because of the attacks on the Banyamulenge, which defended themselves against the Génocidaires, the UN organized the repatriation of the refugees.

After troubled times, Paul Kagame, a member of the Tutsi minority , has been ruling since 2000 . He was also confirmed in office by the Hutu in a referendum in 2003. The control of the country is now clearly held by the Tutsi under the leadership of the RPF , which had waged the struggle for supremacy from Uganda in 1990. The so-called Interahamwe , guerrilla fighters of the Hutu, who are working against them from the Democratic Republic of the Congo , are trying to install the old MNDR regime and thus redistribute power in the Hutu sense. Since Major General Paul Kagame took office in April 2000, some Interahamwe rebel leaders have returned from the Congo and surrendered.

Rwandan militias have been fighting since 1998 in the Second Congo War in neighboring Congo, in which armed forces from various other countries are also involved. The Rwandan militias are accused of mass murder there. Control over raw materials such as gold and diamonds available in the Congo and coltan , which is essential for the construction of cellular phones , are a major reason for the fighting.

In 2008, diplomatic tensions erupted between Rwanda and Germany, which resulted in Rwanda completely disconnecting diplomatic relations from November 2008 to January 2009. The trigger was the arrest of Kagame's chief of protocol, Rose Kabuye, at Frankfurt Airport. A European arrest warrant has been issued against them because of their role in the civil war.

In the first official results, Paul Kagame was confirmed as president in the 2010 presidential election with over 90 percent approval. The legitimacy of the election was criticized in advance because of repression against the opposition.

See also

literature

  • Reinhart Bindseil : Richard Kandt and the indirect colonial rule in Rwanda. In: Ulrich van der Heyden , Joachim Zeller (ed.): “… Power and share in world domination.” Berlin and German colonialism. Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-024-2 .
  • Reinhardt Bindseil: Rwanda and Germany since the days of Richard Kandt. Encounters and common journeys. Historical outline of the German-Rwandan relations with a biographical appraisal of the former German imperial residents. = Le Rwanda et l'Allemagne depuis le temps de Richard Kandt. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-496-00983-7 .
  • Roméo Dallaire , Brent Beardsley: Shake hands with the devil. The failure of humanity in Rwanda. Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York NY 2005, ISBN 0-7867-1510-3 .
  • Rudolf Decker: Rwanda. Death and hope in the land of a thousand hills (= encounters and impressions 1). Hänssler, Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-7751-2709-7 .
  • Alain Destexhe: Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Pluto, London a. a. 1995, ISBN 0-7453-1042-7 .
    (Destexhe only recognizes the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1916, the Holocaust in Europe from 1941 to 1945 and the Rwanda genocide in 1994 as genuine genocides in the 20th century)
  • Philip Gourevitch : We want to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. Reports from Rwanda. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8270-0351-2 .
  • Richard Kandt : Caput Nili. A sensitive journey to the sources of the Nile. Reimer, Berlin 1904 (reprint of the 6th edition, Berlin 1921. Landesmuseum, Koblenz 1991, ISBN 3-925915-26-5 (= publications of the Landesmuseum Koblenz. B, 38)).
  • Christian P. Scherrer: Ethnicization and Genocide in Central Africa. Genocide in Rwanda, civil war in Burundi and the role of the world community. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-593-35748-8 .
  • Hildegard Schürings: Rwandan civilization and Christian-colonial rule (= research series: Education and society in an international context 10). Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-88939-410-8 (also: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 1991).

Web links

Commons : History of Rwanda  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reyntjens Q: A Dubious Discourse on Rwanda. African Affairs , 1999, 98 (1) ISSN  0001-9909
  2. ↑ Le Rwanda va devenir bilingue , jeuneafrique.com, December 14, 2008
  3. ^ Rwanda , thecommonwealth.org
  4. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , p. 438
  5. ↑ Black Apartheid: Soldiers from the small state of Burundi murdered tens of thousands of Hutu insurgents. - Der Spiegel (September 5, 1988 edition)
  6. ↑ UN claims Rwanda is abetting Congo rebels - The Independent
  7. ↑ Diplomatic relations between Germany and Rwanda again - Deutsche Welle ( Memento of the original dated November 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( Dead link )  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dw-world.de
  8. ↑ TAZ: 100 percent is democracy too