Juvénal Habyarimana

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Juvénal Habyarimana (1980)

Juvénal Habyarimana (born March 8, 1937 , † April 6, 1994 in Kigali ) was President of Rwanda from 1973 until his death .

politics

As defense minister , he overthrew his cousin Grégoire Kayibanda on July 5, 1973 . During his 20-year dictatorship , he favored the Hutu ethnic group , to which he himself belonged. He also supported the Hutu majority in neighboring Burundi against the Tutsi government. He was leader of the party Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement (MRND). A rebellion against the Rwandan government began in the early 1990s when rebels from the Tutsi-dominated RPF crossed the border from Ugandacrossed. In addition, radical Hutu extremists formed against Juvénal Habyarimana.

Juvénal Habyarimana was married to Agathe Habyarimana , whose influential clan , Akazu ("little house") called, was considered by many to be the real center of power in Rwanda until 1994.

assassination

Habyarimana was killed together with his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira and the army chief Déogratias Nsabimana when their plane was hit by two rockets on April 6, 1994 shortly after 8 p.m. while approaching Kigali airport . Immediately after Habyarimana's death, radical Hutu began a systematic genocide of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu , in the course of which at least 800,000 people were killed.

The originator of the downing of Habyarimana's plane is unknown. In 2006 there were allegations by the French investigative judge Jean-Louis Bruguière that the later President Paul Kagame (RPF) had the plane shot down. Its chief of protocol, Rose Kabuye , was arrested in Germany in November 2008 on the basis of a French arrest warrant. In January 2012, a report by French examining magistrate Marc Trévidic came to the conclusion that President Habyarimana's plane had been hit by a Hutu missile in 1994. The attack on Habyarimana would have served Hutu extremists as a pretext for the genocide. Witnesses also later testified that the airport's approach lights had been switched off while the presidential plane was approaching.

The Prime Minister of the transitional government, Jean Kambanda , later reported that he had tried to find out the background to the shooting while in exile. According to him, Mobutu Sese Seko , the Zairean president, advised Habyarimana not to fly to Dar es Salaam on April 6th. Mobutu had received a tip to this effect from a senior French civil servant who committed suicide on April 7th. It is true that the French presidential adviser on African affairs, François de Grossouvre , actually died of suicide on that day.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Why Rwanda said adieu to French , theguardian.com, January 16, 2009
  2. ↑ Senior Rwandan officially arrested on BBC News , November 10, 2008 (English)
  3. ↑ What sparked the Rwanda genocide diepresse.com, January 11, 2012.
  4. ↑ Linda Melvern: Rwanda. The genocide and the involvement of the western world. Hugendubel, Kreuzlingen et al. 2004, ISBN 3-7205-2486-8 , p. 160.
  5. ↑ Melvern, p. 303
personal data
SURNAME Habyarimana, Juvénal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Rwandan politician, President of Rwanda (1973–1994)
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1937
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 1994
Place of death near Kigali , Rwanda