Genocide
According to Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as: (1) killing members of the group; (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (5) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. Genocide is a crime under international law whether committed in time of peace or in time of war.
Massacre
According to Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary massacre means: (1) the indiscriminate, merciless killing of a number of human beings or, sometimes, animals; wholesale slaughter; (2) an overwhelming defeat.
This could mean killing people of a particular group – ethnic, religious, racial or opposition, conveying the same meaning as in (1) above under genocide.
Examples from Rwanda
The killing in 1994 by Hutu extremists of moderate Hutu and Tutsi in the group opposed to the government of Habyarimana was categorized as genocide. It is the motive of deliberately killing people of a particular group – not the numbers killed per se – that defines genocide. The killing of Hutu in Rwanda and DRC since 1993 has been described as deliberate ‘revenge’ killing by Tutsi soldiers. Yet such deliberate killings as illustrated by those that have occurred in North West Rwanda home area of the late President Habyarimana, the massacre of internally displaced Hutu at Kibeho camp and those that have occurred in Eastern DRC of Hutu belonging to Rwanda and DRC have not been recognized as genocide. Similarly the mass and deliberate killing of Hutu by Tutsi in Burundi in 1972 was totally ignored by the international community including then Organization of African Unity (OAU). Reports trickling in by eyewitnesses or those who have heard stories from the perpetrators of these massacres confirm that the killing of Hutu – men, women and children – were deliberately committed.
During a mission to Kinshasa and Eastern DRC in January/February 2010, I heard shocking stories from eye witnesses who reported that soldiers of Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) were deliberately killing any Hutu – irrespective of age or gender – whether Rwandese or Congolese. The soldiers’ mission – disguised as hunting down rebels – was to eliminate Hutu and deliver a ‘Final Solution’ to the Hutu problem in DRC. There are also reports of plans to keep those Hutu in Rwanda down permanently by marginalizing, impoverishing and reducing their population numbers through forced birth control. Those who reported these stories are convinced that Tutsi actions constitute genocide. And yet the international community including the United Nations has kept silent, signaling double standards.
They felt very strongly that Hutu have been deliberately denied space in the media and international conferences including those at the African Union and United Nations to present their case. They believe that this unfair treatment has happened in large part because the analysis of Rwanda’s events has focused on the 1994 genocide leading to definitive but false conclusions that Hutu are barbaric and wild beasts as not to belong to the human race. They believe that it was against this background that RPA was allowed to enter DRC and hunt all Hutu down with the intent to eliminate them – Rwandese and Congolese alike
The international community needs to do something – and quickly – to end the suffering of Hutu who according to Rwandese authorities are treated as genocidaires when it suits them, intimidating them and thereby denying them the opportunity to exercise their inalienable human rights – like the right to development, reclaim their land and property and chose their representatives freely.