Enlisting the Tutsi as de facto rulers allowed the Belgians to develop and exploit an enormous network of tea and coffee plantations without having to install a contingent of Belgians on the ground. The Belgians appreciated the natural orderliness of this so much that they institutionalized the differences between Hutu and Tutsi in a series of administrative measures between 1926 and 1932. They issued identity cards, dividing everyone as either Hutu or Tutsi. Anyone who owned ten cows was automatically designated a Tutsi, so that the system was based more on caste than on ethnicity. Only Tutsi were worth educating, Hutu were too stupid to civil service jobs ,also reserved for the Tutsi. The very act of recording the ethnic groups not only made them more important but fundamentally changed their character. The Hutu and Tutsi designations were no longer amorphous categories; instead, they became inflexible. Europeans began to refer to them as ethnic differences. The elite, the Tutsi, were the immediate beneficiaries, and they played that superiority to its best advantage.
Initially, as
one influential Belgian colonial administrator, Pierre Ryckmans, wrote:
Among all the
problems, one finds a major factor for progress: hierarchy; an authority
that is orderly and strong enough to attain, with more or less efficacy,
all the elements of social order [corps social] .... Since we need chiefs,
let's make the most of the authority of those that exist; let us hasten
to put them at our service. (Pierre Ryckmans, "Le Probleme politique au
Ruanda-Urundi ," Societe BeIge d'etudes et d'expansion 23, no. 49, 1925,
60).
Enlisting the Tutsi as de facto rulers allowed the Belgians to develop and exploit an enormous network of tea and coffee plantations without having to install a contingent of Belgians on the ground. The Belgians appreciated the natural orderliness of this so much that they institutionalized the differences between Hutu and Tutsi in a series of administrative measures between 1926 and 1932. They issued identity cards, dividing everyone as either Hutu or Tutsi. Anyone who owned ten cows was automatically designated a Tutsi, so that the system was based more on caste than on ethnicity. Only Tutsi were worth educating, Hutu were too stupid to civil service jobs ,also reserved for the Tutsi. The very act of recording the ethnic groups not only made them more important but fundamentally changed their character. The Hutu and Tutsi designations were no longer amorphous categories; instead, they became inflexible. Europeans began to refer to them as ethnic differences. The elite, the Tutsi, were the immediate beneficiaries, and they played that superiority to its best advantage.
Also during the colonial period, the Belgian Catholic Church permitted only Tutsis to become priests. And enlisting the Tutsi as de facto rulers allowed the Belgians to develop and exploit an enormous network of tea and coffee plantations without having to install a contingent of Belgians on the ground. The Belgians appreciated the natural orderliness of this so much that they institutionalized the differences between Hutu and Tutsi in a series of administrative measures between 1926 and 1932. They issued identity cards, dividing everyone as either Hutu or Tutsi. Anyone who owned ten cows was automatically designated a Tutsi, so that the system was based more on caste than on ethnicity. Only Tutsi were worth educating, Hutu were too stupid to civil service jobs ,also reserved for the Tutsi. The very act of recording the ethnic groups not only made them more important but fundamentally changed their character. The Hutu and Tutsi designations were no longer amorphous categories; instead, they became inflexible. Europeans began to refer to them as ethnic differences. The elite, the Tutsi, were the immediate beneficiaries, and they played that superiority to its best advantage.
As one example some of the 'attitudes' that prevailed at the time: On 13 April 1944, King Leopold III ordered Paul-Emile Janson, the Minister of Justice, and Robert De Foy, the head of the Sûreté de l'Etat, the Belgian secret service, to draw up lists of 'suspect Belgians and foreigners.' Those on the lists were to be arrested, extradited or 'placed in concentration camps' as soon as national security required. (General State Archives Brussels (GSA) microfilm 2081/1, Minutes cabinet meeting, 8 May 1940.)
The prisoners were stowed in railway wagons bound for France . One victim later recalled: 'It took our train seven days to get from Brussels to Orléans. Under a torrid heat, locked up with 40 people, including women and children, in a hermetically sealed wagon where we had to stay day and night, we suffered from hunger, a lack of air and especially from thirst. We were left for 43 hours without receiving even a drop of water. We were submitted to the brutality of the soldier? accompanying the escort and in many stations we were almost lynced by citizens who had been led to believe that we were parachutists and spies. Many people died en route. (Quoted in J.Gérard-Libois and J.Gotovitch, L'An 40: La Belgique occupée. Brussels : CRISP, 1971, p.114.)
Those who arrived
in the South of France were rounded up in Franco-Belgian concentration
camps. A German report written three months later states that in Antwerp
alone 3,000 suspects were arrested. The majority of them were Jews, about
400 were (non-Jewish) German citizens and 50 were Flemish-Nationalists.
Many prominent Flamingants were gaoled, including the former Aktivist leader
August Borms. (German Records of Alexandria, 501/102, Wehrmacht Administration
Activity Report nr. 7, 4 Aug. 1940, p. 49.)
Late on the
evening of 20 May, the first German Panzers rolled into Abbeville at the
Franco-Belgian border. French soldiers immediately massacred 21 Belgian
prisoners that had not been expatriated yet, including the Canadian, the
Dutch grandmother, a German Catholic monk, a Hungarian Jew, a Czech Jew,
a Communist Brussels town councillor and the Flemish politician George
Van Severen and his deputy. Most were shot, but others, including the grandmother,
were savagely stabbed to death with bayonets.
Thousands of civilians imprisoned by the Belgian authorities in France were released by the Germans in the course of the following weeks, including a large number of Jews. They were the only Jews ever liberated by Hitler's army. The Wehrmacht allowed them to return to Belgium . However, 3,537 Jews who had entered Belgium from abroad were kept imprisoned and send to murdered in Auschwitz. They were the only Auschwitz victims who had been arrested on the order of a Western government.
After the war, the Belgian authorities refused to investigate the matter of the deportations. (Nor did anyone ever investigated ,a story worthy in itself , how and on whose orders the Belgian secret service had assisted Heydrich before the war.) Belgium never apologized for what happened, it even refused to repatriate the bodies of the 21 victims in Abbeville. Unlike Cardinal Verdier of Paris , the Belgian Cardinal Van Roey never protested against the persecution of the Jews . Worse, he disbanded the Katholiek Bureau voor Israel , an Antwerp Catholic organisation that tried to help the fugitives. (Max Vanden Berg to Mgr. Kerkhofs, 21 Sept. 1942, in Maxim Steinberg , L'Etoile et le fusil: La traque des juifs, 1942-1944, Brussels,1986. vol. II, p. 201.)
In a later letter to Adolf Hitler Leopold’s wife, Lilian in fact wrote that Leopold was “loyal to the Führer.” (Albert De Jonghe, De laatste boodschap van Kiewitz namens koning Leopold III voor Hitler, 15 juni 1944; Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, LXV, 2 ,1987, pp. 274-300. pp. 299-300.)
On 19 November, King Leopold was received on the Obersalzberg. Hitler pampered his guest. The Gestapo even provided call-girls. According to Leopold, the very first thing the Führer said when he welcomed him was: 'I have a very great respect for you and for your dynasty, because your father has always treated Germany justly.' (Leopold III to Willequet, 22 Nov. 1976, in J. Willequet Albert Ie", Roi des Belges: Un portrait politique et humain. Brussels , 1979., p. 172.)
On 7 June 1944, one day after D-day, the landing of the Allies on the beaches of Normandy, Hitler ordered King Leopold III deported to Germany with his wife and children to Hirschstein, a medieval castle in Saxony. Though Hirschstein Castle was a 'comfortable and well furnished' dwelling, Leopold asked Hitler to be lodged somewhere else, 'preferably in the Alps .' He next was transferred to a villa on Lake Sankt-Wolf gang in the Austrian Alps east of Salzburg . Since this was close to Gau/ Salzburg . Where Ernst Schäfer led one of the biggest institutes in the ‘Ahnenerbe’, it is possible that this is where the ‚race-scientist’ and Leopold became known to each other. In fact Leopold an his family might wel have seen “Secret Tibet” the at the time verry popular by Ernst Schäfer.
In 1938-39 Ernst Schäfer had led a much publicized expedition to Tibet on a quest to investigate the origins of the Aryan race. I furthermore could confirm that if notting else...Schäfer was part of the research for Heinrich Himmler’s pet theory that Jews were the primitive relatives of Hottentots in Africa . "The racial similarities between the Hottentots, the North Africans, and the Near Eastern peoples are unmistakable. Among the Jewesses it is noticeable that they have very well-developed bottoms which could be linked to the fat bottomed lineage seen amongst Hottentots and bushmen." (Michael Kater, Das Ahnenerbe der SS, 1935-1945, 1974, p. 207)
Other activities in regards to Schäfer by the end of the war related to Jews and Muslims who had lived side by side in the Caucasus region. The result was an ethnic pastiche that dumbfounded SS killing squads. Who was Jewish? Who wasn't? And what physical traits set those who “had to be killed” apart from all others? In search of answers, Himmler issued orders for a study commanding zoologist Ernst Schafer, to head a military and scientific mission to the Caucasus known as Special Command K. (Letter from SS Schaefer to SS Wolfram Sievers, Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, 17.08.1942, NS 21/42).
With the direct intend therefore to oversee experiments, the Institute for Military Scientific Research was born. Financing was to come directly from the Waffen-SS. Schafer in turn had promptly named his old SS colleague, Bruno Beger, as the deputy leader of the mission and placed him in charge of the "racial exploration of the Caucasian tribes." ("Personalaufstellung fur das geplante Unternehmen," 18.08.1942, National Archives Washington DC (NARA), RG242, T81/131, 164290-164292; Sievers to Reichssicherheitshauptamt, 20.08.1942, NARA , RG242, T175 1 34).
Led by Ernst Schafer Himmler had supplied the institute at "castle Mittersill" with everything it needed: money, plenty of gasoline vouchers, vehicles, and a dozen or so workersconcentration-camp prisoners and forced laborers from Russia. These were ethnic Germans who had been uprooted against their will and put to work in the Reich.Original documents that evidence this are "Urlaubschein Nr. Verlangerung. Der Umsiedler Evert, Maria," 10.05.1944, NARA , RG242, T81 1 1321 166106; Aufstellung der am 24. Marz 1944 in SchloG Mittersill eingetroffenen 15 Bibelforscherinnen," NARA , RG242, T811132/166107;"Forderungsnachweis: 1.10-31.10.1944," 01.11.1944, NARA , RG242, T81 1 1321 166138; "Forderungsnachweis: 01.08.-31.08.44," 01.08.1944," BA, R135/12, 166145.
The latter two documents record the use of concentration-camp prisoners. Transporting human heads all the way from the Soviet Union would be extremely troublesome. A more practical solution was to find subjects in the extensive network of German concentration camps. In this way, Bruno Beger could personally select the victims and perform a first set of racial measurements while the individuals were still alive. When this was done, camp guards could murder the subjects in a tidy manner, making sure that they did not damage any bones. And although Beger insisted vociferously after the war that he knew nothing of this plan until it was too late to save the victims, he may possibly have been aware of it from the start. (Prof. Walter Wuest to Prof. Dr.Hirt, 06.02.1944, Politisches Archiv des Auswaertigen Amt Berlin (StAMchn), Stanw. 34.878/75; Wuest to Wolfram Sievers, 16.03.1944, StA Mchn, Stanw. 34.878/75).
Bruno Beger picked 115 individuals from the prisoners assembled in front of Block 28 at Auschwitz. He wrote to Schaefer that he chose Jewish prisoners-men, women, and children alike-. from across Europe: Greece, Germany, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Norway. The majority came from the northern Greek city of Salonika, where the SS had only begun deporting Jews on March 15,1943. At least five of them were teenagers. Beger was particularly pleased to have found them at Auschwitz. Beger to Schafer, 24.06.1943, NARA T 81/128/151545).
Back at ‘Schloss’ Mittersill, Beger toiled away on the Jewish skeleton project. In the mid-spring of 1944, Himmler himself chose to pay a visit to Mittersill. He arrived quite suddenly on May 12, without giving any advance warning (Wolfram Sievers to Grau, 07.12.1944, BA, NS 21/329.
When Schafer arrived to greet Himmler, the two men headed off on a tour of the castle. Himmler seemed pleased by what he saw, remarking with genuine interest on the institute's racial work. Later in the evening, Schafer accompanied Himmler on a stroll along the castle walls at Mittersill. Schafer later told his wife that the SS chief had paid them a visit in order to size up Mittersill as a possible hiding place for the end of the war. Tucked away in the Austrian Alps, the castle must have seemed an appealing lair. And around the same time, Wolfgang Sievers ordered the staff at Mittersill to destroy all correspondence, photograph: and other materials related to "the matter Auschwitz ”. (Wolf-Dietrich Wolff to Bruno Beger, 19.02.1945. BA, NS 21/909).
Schafer (according to a 1949 testimony), in the final days of the war, had erased the official record of his deeds as thoroughly as he could. He carefully burned incriminating documents at Mittersill and destroyed other key pieces of evidence, including the plaster casts of the Auschwitz prisoners, which could have been used to identify the victims. ("Zeuge Dr. Schafer," 07.11.1962, StA Mchn, Stanw 34878/18).
Thus although it is not known if King Leopold III who lived nearby at the end of the War ever visited Schaefer at Mittersill. Earlier when Princess Juliana of the Netherlands married in 1937-- when she and her husband planned to spend ten days of their honeymoon at Mittersill; they ended up lingering for six weeks, thus at least according Royals most close to Belgium; the place must indeed have been worth visiting.
On 7 June 1944, one day after D-day, the landing of the Allies on the beaches of Normandy , Hitler ordered King Leopold III deported to Germany with his wife and children to Hirschstein, a medieval castle in Saxony . Though Hirschstein Castle was a 'comfortable and well furnished' dwelling, Leopold asked Hitler to be lodged somewhere else, 'preferably in the Alps .' He next was transferred to a villa on Lake Sankt-Wolf gang in the Austrian Alps east of Salzburg . Since this was close to Gau/ Salzburg . Where Ernst Schäfer led one of the biggest institutes in the ‘Ahnenerbe’, it is possible that this is where the ‚race-scientist’ and Leopold became known to each other. In fact Leopold an his family might wel have seen “Secret Tibet” the at the time verry popular by Ernst Schäfer.
The person whom Schäfer hired to help him with this, was Akeh Bhutia seen on the left below (in 2002), holding the certificate proving his work for Schaefer. Bhutia further confirmed that Schäfer bought corpses of Tibetans while they were being prepared to be buried (see picture on the right).
The picture on the right is from the Schäfer expedition archive held in the German Bundesarchive Koblenz. (N15/U1/36) Below Schäfer’s co-worker Bruno Beger pictured while making racial meajurements on Tibetans. Both pictures below are as available from the German Bundesarchive Koblenz, 135/KB/15-081 and 135/KB/15/083.
Below, Ernst Schaefer walking next to Himmler plus between then in the background Bruno Beger; the two available copies of the above foto can be seen at 1) Headquarters United States Forces European Theater, Military Intelligence Service Center, 12.02.1946, NARA, RG238, M1270t27; and 2) German Bundesarchive Koblenz, BA, R135 144, 164287-164288:
As a general background I should ad that unlike colonial museums, expositions, or education, new as it was in the 20th century, the control of film was potentially more available to anyone. In fact motion pictures, unlike the Musée du Congo belge or universal expositions, could present partial views of the colony as opposed to being expected to present “total” pictures, and whereas museums and expositions sought authenticity in their presentation, moving pictures did not have to do so to the same degree because they themselves were seen as somehow inherently authentic. The administration continued to control filming in the Congo after World War II through supervision and control of funding. Film crews had to fill out a “Request for Authorization” to film in the colony, subject to review by the Governor General. Here, the Ministry of Colonies also intervened in filmmaking to promote and defend Belgian colonialism at the United Nations where it had to give reports to the Trusteeship Council on Ruanda-Urundi. So that according to Pierre Fannoy, the administration sought to counter the “blacks”, “Arabs” and others in foreign countries who they believed were working to undermine Belgian rule by spreading false rumors and creating negative propaganda. (Fannoy, c. 2 May 1957, liasse Film “Razzias” de Pierre Fannoy, portefeuille 65 Infopresse, AA).
The Ministry of Colonies in Brussels and the government of the Belgian Congo in Leopoldville sought to hide their film propaganda effort from the Belgian public. A Vice Governor of the Belgian Congo wrote to the Minister of Colonies that the film Ruanda-Urundi 1949 was adequate for the United Nations Trusteeship Council yet not suitable for the general public in Belgium. Why? “In the manner in which it is put together, this film does not hide at all its goal of propaganda. . . . Now it is exactly necessary to avoid making the public feel too much this governmental will to publicity.” (Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Décolonisation et indépendance en Afrique centrale,” in Hubert Deschamps, Histoire générale de l’Afrique noire, vol. 2 (Paris: P.U.F.,1970/71).
Colonial films
as a whole portrayed white supremacy, except for a few films at the very
end of the colonial period. As elsewhere in Belgian discourse surrounding
Africans and the Congo, films transmitted a subtle racism by comparing
or likening Africans to animals. To be portrayed helpless and in need of
assistance made Congolese appear in need of colonial rule, and therefore
the portrayal of Africans as animal-like helped justify Belgian rule in
Africa. Considering the power of the moving picture we see again here an
ideological message being touted as objectively true. Misinformation in
the service of
a state project
can lead to powerful disillusionment; the impact after World War I of government
wartime propaganda in Germany comes to mind: “The news that the [German]
government was seeking an armistice—that, after all the fanfares of victory,
the war was in fact lost—[had] a universally shattering effect.” (Gordon
A. Craig, Germany 1866-1945, Oxford Univ. Press, 1978, p.397).
It was intriguing to me that the desire to promote imperialism did not diminish as a result of the lessons learned from propaganda during either World War I or World War II. Even after two severe occupations, both of which were buttressed at least in part by German state wartime propaganda, pro-imperialists in Belgium continued—with few exceptions—to openly and eagerly mobilize the population to maintain the overseas empire. Yet among the three pillars of Belgian empire, it appears that private companies and missionary groups were significantly less eager to do so and it was the Belgian state that led the way in popularizing the empire, indicating it had the greatest stake in the status quo after 1908.
These were the facts as they were known to me around the time I visited the Holocoast Museum in Mechelen 1999, when what led to a new investigation in to dead of Lumumba (see below) was all over the press in Belgium that time:
Apparently with knowledge by the then King Baudouin I, the by 1999 well known, Patrice Lumumba was arrested on 1 December and imprisoned in Thysville. On 4 January 1961 then,Lumumba managed to smuggle a political statement out of prison. The Belgians, he wrote, 'have corrupted some of our countrymen; others they have bought; they have contributed to the distortion of the truth and the besmirching of our independence.' On 17 January, Lumumba was flown over to the Katanga in a Belgian DC 4, together with two other prisoners, the Congolese Minister of Youth and the Speaker of the Senate. (RAB K, Weber to Lefébure, 19 Oct. 1960)
During the six-hour flight, the three men were severely abused. The plane arrived at Elisabethville shortly before five o'clock in the afternoon. From the airport, they were brought to a house on the outskirts of Elisabethville . There, they were tortured for four hours by Katangese policemen while Belgian officers looked on. Later that evening, the three men were thrown in a car and driven to a place in the bush some 50 kilometres from Elisabethville, where they were executed by Katangese soldiers under Belgian command. On 9 February, a Belgian plane flew a second load of Congolese politicians to their death. This time the destination was Bakwanga in Kalonjï s 'Kingdom of the Kasai .' During the four-hour flight, the prisoners had been almost literally kicked to pieces. One of them had his jaw beaten to bits; it was dangling loose from his head. He had also been blinded. The six died a horrible death at the hands of Kalonji. Thanks to the Congo 's next strongman from 1961 to 1997 Joseph-Desire Mobutu, the Belgian royal family retained its huge stake in the former colony.
What had happened is that (much earlier the same year the Schäfer’s were asked to leave), on 4 January 1959, riots erupted in Leopoldville after the Force Publique, the colonial army, banned a meeting organised by Joseph Kasa-Vubu, a local politician. However in Stanleyville (today Kisangani), the capital of the East Province, a charismatic and ambitious young radical, Patrice Lumumba, had organised his own party, the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) and promptly was put in jail. Following this the Rwanda Governement already, orchestrated pogroms against Tutsis that year resulting in thousands of casualties, which the Belgian administration notably failed to prevent. An estimated 300,000 Tutsis fled the country as refugees, mainly to Burundi and Uganda.
Also in 1959
a new definition of Rwandans emerged. In a pastoral letter "in the name
of love," Catholic Bishop
Andre Perraudin grouped Rwandas into "races."
The report
of the international commission of inquiry on the November 1959 unrest
in Rwanda also clearly noted: "The Belgian authorities exercised a decisive
impact on the evolution of unrest – in certain chiefdoms, in the north
of Rwanda , practically no Tutsi household was saved.."
On 9 July 1960, following deliberations between Minister Eyskens, Baudouin and Paul Gillet, the Governor of the Société Générale, Belgian soldiers were flown to Elisabethville (today Lubumbashi), even though there had been no troubles there yet. It was sending 10,000 paratroopers and other soldiers to the Congo to 'evacuate' all Europeans who wanted to leave because of ‘danger’. Ten days later, Belgian paratroopers stormed the port of Matadi . The Belgians also attacked the barracks of Kolwezi, the Katangâ s mining centre, killing 13 soldiers of Lumumba's army, while Tshombe (backed by the SG) proclaimed the independence of the Katanga. Lumumba called on the United Nations and the United States for help. On 14 July 1960, the UN Security Council decided to send UN troops to the Congo to restore order.
In light of my investigation that followed (2000, now updated in 2003) I herewith have to stress that I do not see ‘King Baudouin I’ in any way influenced by his father once he married Fabiola (who became an important aspiration). I also like to stress that ‘King Baudouin I’ would have known anything about what led to the genocide in 1994. In fact it is clear that around the time King Baudouin died of a hart attack, French influences -- became predominant in Rwanda .
As for the abovene mentioned Patrice Lumba the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after he helped to win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. A report since published by the Belgian Governement on the internet tells what happened with the remains of Lumumba.
The day atfter his murder a Belgian police officer Gerard Soerte, exhumed, and hacked the remains of Lumumba into pieces and dissolved them in acid. When he ran out of chemicals, he burned the rest. (www.lachambre. be/commissions/1mb). In fact the governement made shure nothing about the fact that Lumumba was was said for three weeks. When it next was finally announced on the Katanga radio, it was accompanied by an elaborate cover story, involving an escape and murder by enraged villagers.
And since the bodies of Lumumba and his colleagues had been destroyed, there could be no burial. Finally a funeral procession of around one hundred people was allowed. Pauline Opano, Lumumba's wife, marched at the head of the procession. Mourners carried white flags to symbolise their peaceful intentions. Despite the universal popularity of Patrice Lumumba among the people of the Congo in summer 1960, his regime was toppled in less than a year.
Then, in early in October 1990, 2,500 rebels of the Tutsi minority marched on the capital, the King Baudouin wrote to Prime Minister Martens that it was Belgium 's 'duty' to send troops. He also rang up a number of ministers to persuade them. The Cabinet gave in and sent 530 Belgian paratroopers to defend the Hutu regime.
In 1991, family members Habyarimana's wife, in preparation of a Tutsi genocide, distributed 20,000 rifles, 20,000 hand grenades and 25,000 machetes amongst extremist Hutu during 1992 and 1993.In 1993 the government of Habyarimana imported, three quarters of a million dollars worth of machetes from China .
All this was occurring at a time when Baudouin decided that he had to bring about a 'national reconciliation' between Rwanda 's two ethnic groups. Baudouin put pressure on Habyarimana, entreating him to guarantee the Tutsi a say in Rwanda . The new Belgian Constitution probably served as a source of inspiration for the proposal to introduce a parity rule for top civil servants and army officers. But despite his close personal contacts with Habyarimana, Baudouin did not notice that his 'Charismatic friends' were preparing a genocide.
On 1 February 1994, Johan Scheers, Habyarimanâ s Belgian attorney, warned Willy Claes the Belgian Prime Minister, and Leo Delcroix, the Belgian Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence of impending violence and trainings in Rwandan "army's camps" planning the "extermination of the Tutsi". Wilfried Martens, however, saw 'nothing alarming' when he visited Rwanda later that month. Neither did Delcroix and Marie-Johane Roccas, the head of the King's press office, when they toured Rwanda in March. (Belgian Senate 1, testimony Scheers 24 June 1997, doc. 1-90 COM-R; Humo, 16 Nov. 1999, p. 27.)
Also the commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda, Major General Romeo Dallaire on January 11, 1994, reported to the UN, and the next day went to see the Belgian Ambassador in person(writing in his book that the Ambassador seemed ‘informed already’) a "top level" informant, and trainings in Rwandan “army's camps” planning the "extermination of the Tutsi “.1) In February 1994 a group of Belgian soldiers, roughed up one of the directors of the radio station RTLM in Rwanda a Tutsi, Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza,. The Belgian UN soldiers had objected to one of his broadcasts, and they wanted Barayagwiza to know it. The soldiers broke into Barayagwiza's house, beat him in front of his family, and before they departed, aimed a gun at his head and told him that if he or RTLM ever insulted Belgians again, they would return to finish him off. The soldiers were never apprehended. Days later, a convoy carrying Faustin Twagiramungu, a leading moderate Tutsi politician, had been ambushed by what RTLM called "unknown assailants." Twagiramungu escaped, but one of his bodyguards was killed.
When next ten Belgian soldiers were killed, by Hutu’s however, the UN immediately pulled all of its troops out, basically stating Tutsi’s should take care of themselves. However the mass killings, carefully planned, were not a spontaneous, uncontrollable outpouring of ethnic hatred which, as such, could not be stopped. Nevertheless at least 800,000 people are estimated to have been killed in over just the 100 days days that followed- that was far faster than the Holocaust of the Jews in World War Two. Michael Barnett. Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda . (Cornell University Press, 2002) concluded that "Rwanda's absence of strategic relevance" by pushing for nonintervention on the grounds that it was civil war, despite UN General Dallaire's letters to the DPKO about "a very well-planned, organized, deliberate and conducted campaign of terror initiated principally by the Presidential guard". A more radical critique of this situation might suggest that those with the knowledge, power, and capacity to intervene in genocide are even more culpable than those illiterate peasants in Rwanda who actually wielded the machetes.
The distinctions between categories of perpetrators included 1) those who planned and oversaw the genocide (the “architects”), 2) those who commanded the army (“FAR”), 3) the local militias (“Interahamwe”), and 4) subordinates who carried out their orders. And perpetrators’ accounts suggested that it was not so much a politicized form of fear of future Tutsi control that motivated ordinary Hutu to kill, but rather well-structured, already entrenched mechanisms of coercion.
As for Bruno
Beger mentioned by me, he currently age 91 (2003) he lives with his daughter
(a snowy-haired woman in her sixties) next to Koenigstein Castle not far
from the rustic vineyards of the Rhine where people can sample the latest
vintage of their favorite Riesling or Mueller-Thurgau. So maybe someone
who reads this will follow up on what I with the above, could only hint
at. Beger keeps a low profile. I should ad for he refrained from listing
his name, as his neighbors do on the row of door buzzers at the main entrance
of the building where he lives.
