The abduction and killing of a group of tourists by interahamwe show the militia is intent on settling scores, report Chris McGreal and Anna Borzello
The Britons and Americans among the tourists killed in Uganda this week probably had no idea why they were singled out by their captors. It’s doubtful they even knew that the men holding them were members of the Hutu extremist militia, the interahamwe, which led the savage extermination of 800 000 Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
But the killers knew exactly who they were after, and why.
The murdered tourists were part of a group of 32 abducted from three tourists camps in the Bwindi National Park, near the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Five years ago, interahamwe militiamen had free rein in Rwanda to murder at will. Brutality was a demonstration of ethnic solidarity. The militia hunted Tutsis house by house and manned roadblocks at which even young children tortured, raped and killed their victims. It was not uncommon for the killers and the dying to have been friends or neighbours.
Churches offered no shelter. Priests were sometimes seen joining the interahamwe at the massacres taunting and terrorising before murdering Tutsis in 100 days of slaughter of unparalleled barbarity.
Then the Hutu extremist regime that organised the genocide was overthrown by the Tutsis and the interahamwe became nomads in Central Africa. They are unable to settle anywhere, hunted wherever they go. But old scores can still be settled.
Hutu extremists have long blamed Britain and the United States for their plight. They argue that the two countries colluded with Uganda to support the Tutsi rebel invasion of Rwanda in 1990 which led to the war, genocide and defeat for the interahamwe and the Hutu army. London and Washington have made no secret of their support for the present Tutsi-dominated administration in Rwanda.
Rwanda would like the militiamen back, but only to sling them in jail and try them for genocide. Uganda and Burundi view them as mass murderers. And eastern Congo, which provided a home to the interahamwe, is now in the hands of Rwandan-backed forces trying to overthrow President Laurent Kabila.
Some of the interahamwe believe they are the victims in Rwanda’s tragedy. About two million Hutus left Rwanda in the waning days of the 1994 genocide as Tutsi rebels swept across the country. Some fled out of fear of retribution. Others were herded across the border by the interahamwe and the Hutu extremist regime which was determined that the victorious Tutsis would govern a country without a people.
The bulk settled in what was then Zaire. Television pictures of more than a million Hutus traipsing into Zaire, and dying in their tens of thousands from cholera and dysentery, prompted a massive aid airlift. The exodus also led to confusion about who the victims of Rwanda’s tragedy really were. Some thought the Hutus had been the target of extermination. The Hutus believed they had been robbed of their country.
The camps fell under the control of the same extremists who organised the genocide. The defeated Hutu army and militiamen talked about the day they would take their country back. But they were beaten to the punch.
In 1996, Rwanda invaded Zaire to round up and drive home the refugees. The majority had no choice but to go. But large numbers of interahamwe and their families fled deeper into Zaire. After the Rwandans and Ugandans installed Kabila as the newly christened Congo’s president they expected him to banish Hutu extremists. But he didn’t, and another war has ensued which again put the militiamen on the run.
The interahamwe keep the flame of Hutu extremism alive by doing what they are practised at – murdering civilians and spreading terror. The co-ordination of the attack on the tourist camps in Uganda suggests the interahamwe is far from a spent force.
It is not clear what the interahamwe intended to do with the captives. They started marching them away, suggesting they had no immediate intention of killing them. Perhaps they just wanted to remind the world that Hutu extremism is alive and kicking. They have managed to do that.
President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has promised to hunt down the Rwandan rebels who butchered the eight tourists and also admitted that staff “laxity” was partly to blame. “The park authorities should have foreseen this problem and asked for support,” he said.
As Ugandan and Rwandan forces launched a joint manhunt for the Hutu rebels, Museveni warned: “If we don’t catch them, we shall kill them.”
An FBI team has flown to Kampala to investigate the murders.